Member Info for lordloadsoflolly

robleo - You're welcome. I'd say it's actually worth considering AS you build your holdings, not just when you have. That way you might stand a slightly better chance of not buying near the peaks (or in due course selling in the troughs)

robleo - thanks! I should add I'm not always that good at timing my buys & sells and have made my fair share of mistakes over the years. But I'd certainly encourage current & potential SMT investors to take a good look at the premium/discount chart. It may not be perfect. But it does at least give SOME indication of when might be a decent time to increase/reduce your holding slightly. Right now - given the historically high premium - I'd be very wary of adding.

robleo - let's face it, nobody knows where SMT's share price is heading (or any other share for that matter). But one thing I find really instructive is to look at the long term discount/premium chart. You can view it for the past 10 years at Hargreaves Lansdown amongst others. It shows that at its current price, SMT isn't far off an all time premium high. There could be all sorts of reasons for this. But it tells me, above all, to be cautious for now. Which is why I sold a small part of my holding as the price climbed above £15. I also did this when the price briefly exceded £14 back in Feb, buying back in at just below £12, again just below £11 and one final time just below £10. Yes, the price has briefly dropped below £10 this year - though it rallied to close just above this level on 5 March.

Not necessarily a concern. Just an alternative to a placing, which would definitely have diluted Opti shareholders. This way, all that's diluted is our future holding in SBTX. So whether it's concerning or not depends on what they plan to do with the £2M raised (and how SBTX's share price performs in the future).

It's hardly a major drop. I wouldn't call it long-lasting either so far, but of course there may be more to come.

I hold Fundsmith in my Halifax ISA. They charge a small flat annual fee rather than the sort of % platform fee nonsense HL imposes. And, as DorsetLSE alludes to, they bought I class shares on my behalf which have the lowest Fundsmith fee structure. Makes a big difference over time, even if the share class % charges appear fairly similar.

The joys of spellcheck, changing Tim to Tom! Or maybe he moderates this board after all and was trying to cover his tracks!

lambo - "the rise here back towards previous highs of 170p could be epic". I guess it could, but with Tom at the helm I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. He's sunk more companies than I care to mention.

Shakx7 - fair enough. I hadn't seen your 25 Aug post, so apologies for that. Intersting you say "when a holding occupies close to 10% of the portfolio it is worth trimming". Wonder how many posters here have done that with SMT! I, for one, have traded a small part of my holding (around 5% each time) when things begain to look a bit toppy. It paid off earlier this year, when I was able to sell at just over £14, then buy back in a few months later 25-30% lower. It has yet to pay off for the latest sale I made at just over £15.00, but we'll see.

Shakx7 - hindsight is the best sight! SMT's managers have generally called short term stock movements well, reducing holdings if they sensed a particular share price was overheating. No-one gets it right every time. And who knows, Moderna may increase above its current level again quicker than you think.

Everyone's investment objectives are different. I periodically like to lock in gains on a small portion of my holding, keeping the remainder invested. Then if the share price subsequently falls below the price I sold at (as it did significantly earlier this year with me), I'll buy fully back in at the lower level. Only ever a profit once banked.

Agreed, though it's only in the last 4-5 years that PHI's share price has done very much. And really only since March 2020 that it got rocket boosters. Always worth bearing this in mind, as stellar outperformance (like the move from around £2.50 to £9.25 over the past 18 months) won't last forever. I'm not saying this isn't a good IT to own. Just that it'll probably come back down to earth eventually, so I'd advocate slight caution at current levels. Same goes for SMT, which I also hold, and has also had a stellar run recently.

When I say "£X & £1" in my previous post, I mean selling another 5% once SMT's share price has risen another pound above the previous tranche you sold. I also never set limit orders at exact rounded pound levels. So I'd always set a limit sell order at, say, £15.08, rather than a round £15.00.

If you're already well into profit here and own a decent number of shares, you could do worse than set limit sell orders on, say, 5% of your total holding at £1 intervals. In other words, set a limit order to sell 5% at £X, another 5% at £X+£1 etc. Of course, 5% has to be worth it from the commission & CGT angle. If you've only a few £K invested in SMT, selling 5% may not be worth it in terms of dealing commission. And if your holding isn't sheltered from CGT, take into account the annual limit there too. I've done this a few times now to lock in profits, buying back in when the price eventually fell back (as it surely will one day, though second-guessing when is a mug's game!)

Me too (only with Halifax - they're far cheaper than Hargreaves Lansdown, levying a low flat fee half yearly rather than any % based charges)

nbe22 -Agreed; Fundsmith & SMT are very different animals. But as private investors, does that really matter? All we're basically interested in is performance. I generally avoid OEICS for that very reason, as they're costlier & less transparent than ITs. You generally don't even know exactly what you're buying or selling them at, as they're forward priced. Which seems woefully archaic to me, though I get why. As mentioned, I do hold Fundsmith as he enjoys a long, generally successful track record. It also provides some diversification alongside SMT. But Fundsmith's the main exception to my rule about shunning high-cost OEICS.

DorsetLSE - Scottish Mortgage WAS heavily invested in Tesla, but it has scaled this back dramatically (selling out a large chunk around the peak to move from 8.9% at the start of 2021 to 4.3% at 31 08 21). As the following link shows, Baillie Gifford's other funds have largely followed suit: https://citywire.co.uk/investment-trust-insider/news/20bn-scottish-mortgage-halves-tesla-to-keep-huge-gain/a1464007. Whilst 4.3% is still significant, it's nothing to lose sleep over. Nor is the fact that they sold down near the peak. That's just good management. Fundsmith Equity (which I also hold) has fallen back over the past month or so, and is now only performing marginally better than SMT (if at all) since Jan 2021. More importantly, over longer timeframes it's performed FAR less well than SMT. If anyone's considering diversifying a bit geographically, Baillie Gifford's Pacific Horizon IT is worth a look. It has performed outtandingly over the past 5 years, though it trades at a significant premium currently, which I don't much like in terms of a buying signal.

AquaeSulis01 - that may be true. But it's easier to deliver on promises when you're not generating any revenues. Which is kinda my point. SBTX's valuation is heavily based on the prmise of future riches. This may be justified given Stuart's track record, but it's by no means a given. Which, I suspect, is why the increased paper value of Opti's holding in SBTX hasn't been fully priced in. Yet.

You may be proved right (in which case I'll gladly apologise!). But personally, I think you're delusional if you think inflation is likely to abate within the next couple of years, let alone in 3-9 months.

Yes, sweetbiotix could be a game changer. But I suspect it would only boost the share price long term once some chunky commercial deals were in place. Though there'd likely be a positive knee-jerk reaction short term as well. Illogical though it seems, I think we'd have already had a re-rating from Opti's SBTX holding if we were ever going to. After all, SBTX was under 6p a share as recently as March 2020. So even with Opti selling down its holding since then, the total value of its stake has increased significantly. Yet Opti's share price has "only" moved from around 30p in March 2020 to 46p today, as opposed to SBTX's ten-bagging. My take on this is that there are just too many imponderables with Opti's SBTX stake. 1) They may continue to sell it down, to fund their own working capital. Whilst this is positive in many ways, as it makes cash calls improbable, it also makes it harder to predict what % of SBTX Opti will own in the future. 2) SBTX's own value may plummet. Despite all the positive news, it's capitalised at almost £100m. That's pretty rich for an unprofitable company with - as yet - negligible revenues. So it's very much a valuation based on the huge potential for growth, which may or may not happen. 3) Opti may actually deliver on its dividend promise for long-term/long-suffering? shareholders. Whilst this would again likely boost Opti's share price short term, it could be a bit of a one-off. And it once again introduces uncertainty over the likely long term size of Opti's SBTX stakeholding.