Member Info for steph

By the way I've been buying on my spread. Just think a way forward will be found shortly.

a nation of lions led by donkeys.

The trouble with TM's Brexit is that there will be years of wrangling and cliff edges to come with few supporters on the UK end accepting the basic compromise contained in it. The constituency for a mid way point between Canada and Norway does not exist except in TM's rigid imagination. All she did is take a ruler and choose a midpoint like a robot would. It was not what a majority of leave voters were expecting and is too hard a Brexit to the 48% who voted remain. It is inherently unstable.

A real compromise position was probably Norway minus (no customs union or at least no long term customs union) with an option to make that harder at a much later date. Gove's Norway for now" option. At least then the UK could flit around the world negotiating free trade agreements. I personally don't think that process would come to much we don't have already but it is real flag waving treaty signing sovereignty. TM in her home office mindset thought it was all about immigration and thus no single market. I'm sure Thatcher, if she was alive, would have disagreed as she was a big single market fan.

IN any case Norway has a pretty big safety brake on immigration. We need most of our EU immigration (doctors, it specialists, creative types, head office staff and nurses rather than than welfare scroungers) anyway and the UK might have been able to harden that up the safety brake in negotiations just to reassure the public outside London. Also don't forget the free movement was reciprocal. I've never heard TM lament the loss for UK citizens of that. I for one like the right to live and work in Spain, Italy or France. Germany, charming as it is, I might give a miss though.

TM has only agreed the divorce settlement so far and only then is barely able to stand up and defend her work on that.

Fastest route to stability is Philip Hammond suggesting May's deal be put to a referendum. If vote remain in 6 months time end of business uncertainty for 2 decades (political uncertainty a different issue). If endorse Mays deal at least the basic concept of out of single market and customs union (at least once we exit the backstop) but close to it will have a strong tailwind to get through UK Parliament in the many negotiation decisions with the EU ahead without major challenge.

To get the best deal with the EU and the world we can not have such uncertainty on what we want. If TM manages to scrape her unloved deal through by a few votes after bludgeoning Parliament to do so we will go into major negotiations as weak as we could possibly be.

Any of the first 3 options have a majority if the other 2 are eliminated.

There seems to be tactical voting going on. Those who believe passionately in a second referendum (lets call them the no brexiteers) are not all voting for the soft Brexit options as you might expect. . There were also Brexiteers such as Flint voting for soft Brexit options but not a second confirmatory referendum.

I suspect they will regroup on Wednesday. Fun stuff if we were not investors.

wish I could make money off this political chaos. I can't read it.

I did sell a lot of TEF on my spread seconds after the June 2016 referendum result (not my ISA holdings) but should have gone all the way to short (which I've never done). I did sell two buy to lets within 2 months and glad I did. They have both gone down a bit in price since.

Maybe posters better than I have a way of gaming this but I feel risks are priced in ( so no short term opportunities even to short). It is a market only for long term holders who can add during this volatile period in good companies with excellent long term prospects. Step forward TEF.

I still think risk of crashing out is low (10%) but pretty scary to rely on May to do the right thing within the time limits. I'm cheered by many mainstream economists thinking crashing out hurts but it is not 2008 all over again.

TM may just have a meltdown and not push the "extend" button on time. I'd expect EU to allow us to crash out (no choice without UK request to extend) but maybe allow us back on same terms at same point in Article 50 process when we ask days, weeks or months later but I don't know the EU legalities of that. Might not be easy. As a minimum we would probably lose our right to stop article 50 ticking unilaterally which is a useful card to have up our sleeve.

I'm amazed the nations the EU trade with are not complaining about the uncertainty on whether or not UK is in or out of those terms. Not just EU but whole world has been pretty tolerant of our inability to make decisions. This is a great chance to screw us but we have few real enemies. Russia just wanted to mess with us a bit to weaken NATO and prevent the eastwards march of the EU (Tony Blair) but no real enmity.

We are a valued member of the global club even if we are having a bit of a tantrum right now over precisely that.

150 MP's who say they actually want to crash out is a large number. I expect most are posturing and don't expect to ever be held accountable for that outcome actually happening. They may just have an an eye on the upcoming leadership contest and the plums for supporting the winning candidate but you never know.

What a mess.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/27/property-and-financial-shares-slide-as-referendum-fallout-hits-stock-markets

I'd imagine if the political gridlock lasts much longer we will get another downgrade. That will cause stocks to dip a bit -especially banks but also builders.

Roller coaster ahead I'm afraid but I am still optimistic and think the upside bigger than the down.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/mar/31/hedge-fund-that-inspired-the-big-short-takes-position-on-barclays

I am betting against this expert shorter (who obviously thinks we are all going to hell in the UK) on my TEF top up and planning to do a bit more and fill my ISA soon. Nervous but I think the TEF buy in price is good relative to the risk. I believe our politicians are at peak chaos and it will look more stable in a few weeks time.

thanks for the info.

I lean towards Sain in that as the full implications of BTR are clear the rate of EPS growth of TEF and in which year that will be delivered will cause results to significantly exceed current guidance. Currently guidance is anticipating a disappointing 2 years with nothing solid about what happens after that. Thus a low SP. Even just better forward guidance will help and I expect that in the interim and final results this year coming up shortly.

Brexit is the black swan that seems to keep growing like some irradiated cartoon character. The whole system of British governance, once the envy of the word, is now on trial.

As the stakes are raised so should the desire for a proper solution. Once we do that , and I think we will, the UK will have shown the world that our flexible constitutional and Parliamentary system can adapt and solve the type of tricky problems that other nations might struggle with without any resolution.

Ukraine comes to mind. A split on how close be to Russia or EU resulted in the Ukraine having neither and effectively making itself poorer and less governable for the foreseeable future.

I still am betting as an investor in TEF that we will find a way forward and that roadmap is not far off. Looks like chaos now but that will pass.

No deal (hard brexit) is polling well -even better than May's deal. A process that in the end achieves a new consensus must include serious consideration of all popular options. If that means putting no deal on the ballot as an option so be it.

May has been a spectacularly bad communicator explaining the merits of her approach and getting to that point through a transparent process of option identification and debate. It is not "a job of work" to deliver her specific vision - as she seems to think -but a strategic direction that is only starting to be debated. Historians will be cruel to May and she deserves all of it.

Luckily May was not our first female Prime Minster so her personal failure has not become a misogynist rant against all future female leadership. Oddly the advantages we associate with female leaders (humanity, sensitivity, ability to listen) are precisely the ones she lacks in relative terms to male colleagues. She is no "hug a hoodie/husky" Cameron or a "peoples princess promoter" Blair. Historians will have fun with that.

Well spotted yes a short term misreading of politics by your truly -again- resulting in a short term loss. We are living through a very unusual time . I hope we are not investors in 1940 Germany or japan just before it all went so wrong for them after 7 very fat years. They had a biblical scale decline for 7 years but both recovered in the end. Too long scale for me though. I hope this crisis has brought unsustainable political forces to the surface and in the end we will resolve things and reach a stable new consensus. Can’t see that happening without a multi question referendum with all the main options on the ballot and then slugging it out. A referendum just between mays brexit and remain will generate a resentment and feeling of betrayal from those promoting something harder than both options that will limit good governance for decades. Mays attempt at triangulation was unsustainable. It is actually a winner take all contest for the direction of the country. For decades the winners were the international integrationists. Now the opposition to that feel it is their turn. That consensus crossed party lines so opposition had few formal places to go. Rich newspaper owners made money off the angst but offered no coherent party political program which is why the Brexiteer leadership seem so uninformed. The questions are basic and emotive. Who are we and what degree of sovereignty are we willing to share to obtain the benefits of an increasingly integrated economic and regulatory world? We have to resolve those questions once and for all to have political and economic stability again.

Bought 4k shares on my spread. Just feel things can only get better. 2.90 is silly. Maybe some clarity on Brexit soon.

Of course every time I've bought in the last 4 months TEF has gone down immediately afterwards. Lets hope today is different.

good for TEF.

London land market adjusted to the requirement to provide on site affordable housing because it was universal. rivals could not offer a product free of affordable housing pepper potted or at least adjoining.

I prefer no "poor door" and to pepper pot the mix. Good on TEF. Needs the affordable element to have a modest % of Blood Brother type "problem tenants". Shared ownership is less problematic than open market sales as open market can go to "buy to let" and in turn tenants who have money but might be young and party creatures. Shared ownership is highly regulated on who is there. All micro stuff. It is not affordable housing per say that can cause problems but the details of the housing association strategy of who goes in. Very little publicity or study on this but TEF appear to be on the ball and have gotten good quality social sector tenants which has protected the value of the open market and allowed for the elimination of the "poor door".

Poor door in the beginning was introduced more by the housing associations than by developers -who were willing to pepper pot. It allowed the housing associations to have a lower level of service and a lower service charge than the open market sales. Missed opportunity for fine grain social mixing.

You are quite right a lack of regulatory alignment between countries does not prevent exports nor imports between them. Indeed we all import much from China, Vietnam etc which are not at all in regulatory alignment as a country. It just means goods and agricultural products need to be compliant and certified at a company level and need to be inspected at the border to ensure no cheating.

Of course if you are an importer in, for example the EU, and you have a choice of a good or agricultural product that needs inspection coming from the UK and a good from an EU country that does not at the same price guess who you will choose? It is not just an absence of tariffs that help our exporters.

The upshot is that for TEF no deal is bad. It would seriously disrupt some trade flows for a significant period and hit business confidence and thus in turn affect the London land market and TEF's product.

Of course after a few months things would settle. It would not be WW3. A shallow recession is probably but not a deep one. EU as well as individual nations likely to grant temporary exemptions from the new rules for practical reasons so impact would be less cliff edge than it looks in theoretical models. City of London jobs will be quite resilient as they can find a way around almost any set of rules. Likely the BOE would restart the printing presses to compensate which is very good for all asset classes including land.

Still from a business confidence point of view why do it? If we are to transition to being outside the single market and customs union why not do it slowly and orderly? A Brexiteer minster (or ex like BJ) who tells you it will be easy to crash out and a WTO agreement that covers goods and services is there as a backstop or there for the asking is lying to you. It will take a long time to establish a new set of trading and regulatory relationships.

What is the basic strategy for our future trading and regulatory environment is a big enough topic where I do think many citizens of the UK would welcome town hall meetings. Populists in their own self interest (amplified by a very small number of news owners and editors) claimed it was simple and it's not. It is "friggin" complicated.

Even leaving with no deal means a set of complicated trading and regulatory relationships that need negotiation and reciprocal enforceable rules. For tariffs we need to negotiate a schedule of WTO rates with sovereign counties many with a bone to pick with us. For product safety and food safety standards if we have our own standards not recognized by anybody we can't (without a lot of company level paperwork and hassle) export to anybody. It is an interconnected world I'm afraid.

TM made it sound simple "Brexit means Brexit" and "lets just get on with it". She did nothing to prepare the public for the complicated business Brexit actually is or the trade offs her deal and approach entailed. That is a failure of communication and leadership on an epic scale. For this she should be dumped ASAP and go down as the worst PM in UK history. Lord North now firmly in number 2 slot.

We can have Brexit and we can have an ERM endorsed relatively hard Brexit (Canada) but it takes time and a orderly process to get there. Personally I don't think either a hard "Canada" or soft "why bother" Brexit is worth it but for those of us who wish for a hard Brexit surely an orderly process is better than this chaos?

Canada in any case has NAFTA. Nafta covers more than tariffs and gets into regulatory alignment on food, goods and transport enforceable by a court. It also has freedom of movement for Mexican professionals (TM visa).

Canada was keen to stay in that even with some pokes from Trump and a history of American bullying.

whatever ones views on the merits , or lack of, for Brexit it serves nobody to have this much uncertainty on our basic trading and regulatory systems/relationships. TM has catastrophically failed to steer a consensual path through. It was a difficult but not an impossible job. She would have been a poor PM at the best of times and this was a time of major challenge.

Before article 50 was ever triggered what was needed was a white paper followed by town hall meetings and workshops up and down the country narrowing the Brexit options to 2 or 3 front runners perhaps decided upon by a referendum without remain on the ballot. This openness is the opposite of TM. That would have created clarity and stability around a single Brexit option. Those whose favorite Brexit option was not in the final could at least feel they had their say and their opportunity.

Then the UK could have served article 50 and negotiated aggressively on the winning Brexit option with a much more united parliament and nation behind it.

What we got with TM is her version of Brexit rammed through at every stage without real discussion of alternatives harder or softer. The result is business chaos and national humiliation. Nobody envies us.

I think that now only a referendum can create stability and closure. I prefer all the Brexits and remain be on the ballot now with a transferable vote as options are eliminated. Let the public decide. No other process will do now it is such a mess.

wish we did not have to decipher the politics and our investment strategy.

We are living through a bit of history. Never a good time to be an investor unless a hedge fund and/or willing/able to short.

Must say the march reignited my pride in being British. We may be in a mess at the top but the people are still world leaders. What other country can put a million on the street for something that is not at its heart a pocketbook issue.

Hope the Tories dump May for Lidington as an interim leader ASAP. Never has a British PM deserved being dumped more than May does right now. Her mental health must now be under question. It is beyond bad judgment.

If Corbyn had been a better debater we might have seen her collapse at the dispatch box -which apparently there were plans for in case it happened so worried were officials she was on the verge of mental or physical collapse. The literal "men in white coats" scenario. Philip May is doing her no favours to urge her to carry on. It is destroying her not just as a politician but as a sane rational individual. What board will invite her now to some lucrative non exec role? What after dinner speaker group will want her droning on during dessert? Her value to anybody is now zero.

Dennis was a much better private advisor to Thatcher. Thatcher thus got out with her dignity in tact.

It will be interesting to see the numbers on the protest Saturday.

I agree Cameron is to blame overall. May just f..ked up implementation which is hardly surprising as she f..ked up at the home office beforehand mindlessly trying to implement Cameron's needless and unachievable immigration targets. Mindlessly trying to implement the unimpmentable is a May long suit to be sure. Pity she hurts us investors so much while flailing about trying.

Having a referendum which no parliamentary party in favour of leaving was asking for trouble if the vote went against. There was no stable executive to implement the result. It is like asking the scots in a referendum for independence before the SNP was formed and had gained a majority in Stormont. Fine if the vote is to stay but who really can implement a decision they campaigned against?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/27/uk-cannot-simply-trade-on-wto-terms-after-no-deal-brexit-say-experts

If even a 1/4 of that happens people will feel cheated indeed.

I agree there is now no way forward where a substantial sector of the population will not feel cheated and aggrieved. That is bad for business confidence and thus bad for TEF.

Where May has so spectacularly failed is she has stoked division rather than helped the nation coalesce, however reluctantly, around a specific option and got there with the least disruption to the economy and reputation of the UK as a stable place to do business.

8 days to go and I have no idea what will happen. Imagine the temper of the UK exporter unable to know how much tariffs will be charged on his shipment which are now in a container on route to its destination. Will that same exporter when later given a choice to stay in UK or set up elsewhere not remember the stress they were put through?

You would think we were in the grip of some radical left or right movement uninterested in what business may think rather than "the conservative party". What on earth is the use of the "conservative party" if they don't conserve things.

referendum itself was a non binding vote which May herself refers to as a clear instruction.

It is possible that May may on the third attempt get her deal through Parliament. However if she does it will be so unstable as many feel due process has not been followed on the options of leave from a softer to a harder option. We will not have stable trading relationships with the EU and beyond for many years because we can't decide on what we want and May has left no process open to us to chose except for her version.

May's insists her version of Brexit is the only viable version and this is not true now nor will it be true in all the complex negotiations to come.

I'd support a new referendum even without remain on the ballot but between competing versions of Brexit.

Our posters who think no deal (crashing out) will be ok will be sleeping easy right now regardless of what happens.

For those of us who think it is a disaster the risk of that disaster has gone up in spite of what appeared to be a large parliamentary vote which May herself supported that instructed the government to do no such thing.

I don't really understand how TM can not be held in contempt of Parliament. Her approach to the short extension and avoidance of crashing out (which she herself voted on) is predicated on her deal passing even though it has been massively voted down twice. Surely the two actions are in contradiction? How can she guarantee not crashing out with only a short extension to go on?

I was never ashamed to be British under Thatcher even though I disagreed on much of her policy direction and publicly said so. Thatcherism was a legitimate strand of UK public opinion championed by people who thought they were acting in the public interest. On some issues time proved them right -evidenced by the lack of any demand to reverse some policies and actions that were highly controversial at the time.

May and the current crop of "leaders" I don't feel anything in common with. I cringe when she speaks on the world stage. In a just world she would be in prison for manslaughter due to those UK citizens who died due to her shameless incompetence at the home office during the WIndrush scandal ,

It is the debasement of politics to mico self interest. Shameless, unaccountable incompetence is now the norm. We are a nation of lions led by mice -and not even healthy mice but old, rabid, diseased mice at that.

Ground rent is a scandal and complete breakdown of a functioning property market where those who make money have put in money at risk in proportion to earnings.

I'd support a nationalization of ground rent following by gifting it to the tenants. Price paid should be as low as we can legally get away with. One small benefit of leaving EU is that the owners will not be able to appeal to ECJ for "human rights violations". Most ground rent owners have contributed nothing to development but have made windfall profits anyway and deserve a heavy boot. Parasitic capitalism at work not productive capitalism.