Member Info for strictlybricks

"You are definitely right about focusing on the underlying process and letting the market prices take care of themselves, which, over time, they do of course."

..............................

Vlad, going by the overwhelming percentage of comments across the different house builder share chats here on LSE, that's not how most investors see it....

Of course, by speculating upon, and worrying about, short term future price movements, they've necessarily put themselves in the ring to spar with Mr Market.

And, as we well know, he's a mad bar steward... :-)

So, my view is, keep clear..!

Strictly

Vlad,

From what you've said, i.e. that you've achieved low 20's in terms of average percentage annual gains since the start of 2013, that would seem to underline that there is has been a benefit to sticking with house builders rather than venturing elsewhere into other sectors during that time that is greater than the just 2% gap between us when measured from May 2009.

The clue to that might be in your comment "2009 to 2010 was a period of particularly high gains". I had a flat 2010 so, by itself, that would account for the difference I would say.

I don't imagine I would have shifted to investing in more sectors even if you could have shown me a worthwhile difference in favour of it based on past performance, as I'm too long in the tooth, too set in my ways, and way too lazy...!

So, it's a relief, to some extent, that it isn't so - and especially as I feel that we, as a group, have managed to up our game in recent years..... not hugely, perhaps, but maybe sufficient to add another percent or two gain a year above what we would have achieved previously...

You've mentioned the game of investing being invasive to the mind.... I absolutely get that, as I would say I've lived my life like that since the age of 22 when I started a business that grew rapidly and was pretty much all consuming of my thought processes....

However, in my early 30's, my wife and I both learned to meditate and it became something we were both able to make a habit.... it was a game changer for both of us, and I'm talking in a very practical sense rather than as some sort of new age tree huggers.... if you haven't experienced what mindfulness can do for you, I recommend trying it....

You also mentioned in your Telegraph comment words to the effect of that despite doing so well, it is so volatile that it never seems to feel like you are winning steadily...

I think my response to that is that because I'm constantly nagging my lot on our blog to focus on the underlying progress rather than share prices ~ we have a parable called "The Old Git & the Dog" that was created for this purpose (I won't get into explaining that here - you can always sign up for the blog if you're curious about it...?) ~ and spending so much time repeatedly banging on about that to them seems to have largely left me able to fart in the general direction of Mr Market and I don't pay too much attention to him, to be honest.

And I don't suppose you do, either, really...?

Strictly

2227,

I like Redrow and for the same reasons...

However, history can repeat itself and last time Steve Morgan left the business, still as a large share holder, it all went Pete Tong which is why, as I understand it, he returned.

I really didn't like that B share wheeze the company pulled last year, though, and Redrow have lost some brownie points with me in that I don't trust them quite so much any more.

Steve Morgan might have still been there when it happened, but he was nearly out of the door by then and I'm guessing it wasn't his idea and, as an investing group, we STILL don't agree on exactly what happened there in respect of share holder value, and we're paying close attention, unlike some of their shareholders, I imagine...?

Up to that point, they were on a par with Bellway for us but now have a small weighting applied to their BVPS - the other advantage of Bellway being that they have achieved top of sector profitability over the long term (I mean, over decades) while, at the same time, consistently having the safest balance sheet.

A more leveraged balance sheet ~ and I mean taking into account all liabilities not just bank borrowings ~ is all fine & dandy.... until it isn't..!

And that's the key word with Bellway.... consistent.... they are truly in a class of their own in that respect.

Strictly

2227,

As a footnote to this, there might be some quibbling within our investing group about relative book value weightings between the four companies I've mentioned that I'm holding, such as whether Redrow should be on a par with Bellway in that respect, whether Crest should be handicapped more heavily because it got London more wrong than the others and also whether Inland should be less well rated due not only to its size but also borrowings...

But there is absolutely no quibble about the very much universally agreed notion among us that both Barratt and Taylor Wimps warrant a lower relative PBV than Bellway (as our benchmark) yet their PBV is actually currently significantly higher.

This makes no allowance for what the market may do, of course ~ as, for example, it's been getting Bovis seriously wrong for literally decades, ask anyone who has bought and held that company's share for thirty years - easy to recognise, they'll be the investors with the long faces ~ our sole concern is to single mindedly pursue perceived best value at any time.

Strictly

2227,

Bellway, Redrow, Crest and Inland are all very much on my radar and, in fact, currently constitute 100% of my investments in descending order or percentage holding: Bellway, then Inland, then Redow & Crest level pegging at somewhat smaller amounts.

IMO, Inland are by some margin current best value, but of course they're a relative tiddler so share trading liquidity becomes an issue.

Barratt & Taylor Wimps are fine companies of themselves ~ if you ignore that they put themselves into existential threat in the crunch and in undertaking those rights issues back them wiped out most of existing shareholder value, especially Taylor Wimps ~ but currently way too expensive for me, I mean, 40% price drops in relative terms required for both of them to get into the zone for me.

Persimmon are at a ridiculously high PBV by house builder standards so, to my mind, are potentially an unexploded bomb, value-wise, if the market wakes up one day and forms a different view of them...

And Vicky Pollard and Battersea Dogs home, aka Galliford and Bovis.... best to not even go there...!

So, just the four for me to trade between, then, but that's sufficient...

Strictly

Seagull,

If you're interested in looking at all this further, and in more detail, you may have noticed from comments to Bogdan/Vlad both here and in an extended discussion between us in a Telegraph investing article that I have a blog dedicated to this game.

This is the relevant Telegraph article:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/investing/shares/number-stocks-falling-investors-protect-savings/

If you put up an email address here, albeit a temporary one just to be able to make contact separately to on here, I'd be happy to get in touch directly and from there send you a blog invite - that'd be some serious lockdown reading, all in all, but also, I reckon, plenty of food for thought for you.

Strictly

Seagull,

I feel like I'm marking your homework here..... :-)

But, seriously, keep working at it and make it your own - that's the way to go, IMO.

My numbers are:

Bellway 2018:
BVPS 2018 of 2,079p less BVPS 2017 of 1,786p plus divs paid of 48p & 84.5p = 425.5p reality check EPS divided by 2017 BVPS 1,786p = 21.2% ROE

Redrow 2020:
BVPS 2020 of 461.11p less BVPS 2019 of 450p plus div paid of 20.5p = 31.61p EPS divided by BVPS 2019 450p = 7.0% ROE

Redrow 2019:
BVPS 2019 of 450p less BVPS 2018 of 401.4p plus div paid 29p = 77.6p EPS divided by BVPS 2018 of 401.4p = 19.3% ROE.

Another element to this ~ using the scribblers' EPS forecasts, which you can get from yourselfhttps://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/BELLWAY-P-L-C-9590129/financials/
for free ~ you can easily make a calculation for an updated estimated BVPS each month by splitting the scribblers' forecast EPS into twelfths and adjusting BVPS accordingly, but don't forget to also knock off the div to be paid on ex div date 'cos the market won't forget.

Providing you do this accurately, you'll be working with a far more up to date, and therefore far more accurate, BVPS than Sid & Doris will be, and so you can also therefore obtain a more accurate PBV from that.

From there, I use a weighting for each house builder's BVPS - such that dogs like Bovis/Vistry (and, previously, Galliford, when they had a house building arm) get marked severely down so they wouldn't even come into the frame unless they were right priced in bargain basement territory - which certainly doesn't happen in the case of Bovis as they've been a builder of relatively p.ss poor performance for more than three decades yet the market has never seemed to notice.

So they never make it into the target zone and, IMO, that's a good thing for me..!

When you see such strong & enduring evidence like that, it really does help one to trust and believe in the notion that so-called market rationality really is for the birds...

Anyway, good luck with this, as it makes a huge difference in the long term.

My target is to beat Bellway by an average of 10% a year.

Until this year, for the past seven years which is the period I've been measuring it accurately for, it'd only been around 6%.....

However, thanks to largely dodging the covid iceberg, my eight year average is now over 12% a year... I anticipate that sliding again, but hope to at least keep it in double figures...

I'm now a relatively old git, in my late 60's, but a thirty year investing career of beating Bellway by an average of 10% a year would mean that, by the end of the thirty years, you'd have made around sixteen times what you would have otherwise done by simply parking your dosh in Bellway then just sitting and scratching your bum (metaphorically speaking, of course - as, otherwise, that would be one very sore arse!)

Thinking about it does make your eyes water, though, doesn't it? (the gain, I mean)

Strictly

"Do you have a different pot of money to trade with and another for buying and holding or just go the whole hog with the same lump of cash?"

........................

John, "Buy & hold" does not really exist in my lexicon, it's all in there to be traded...

Traded isn't really the right word, though, as I regard myself as a "Seeker of perceived value".

If you click around on this LSE site and look at comments under sections such as TW., you'll no doubt find there's much day trader type chat there - speculation about where the price will be this afternoon, tomorrow, next week, next month.

Personally, I don't give a monkey's about all that.... the prices overall can go up, or they can come down, I really don't care in the short term because if you're fully invested it doesn't matter - what very much does matter are the gaps which open and close between the relative perceived value of different builders' shares.

Which is a profoundly different thing, and that's what you really do need to get your head around at the outset - I find I'm often banging my head against the wall with some of my lot about this as it's alright while everything's hunky dory but, come a bit of volatility, all the rationality can evaporate in panic...

The most important rule in investing, IMO, being "Don't be flaky".

Because, if you are, the market will almost certainly find you out and punish you accordingly.

Sometimes, when it comes to it, I can be all in one share.

Within the past seven or eight years, when it's seemed appropriate, I've been 100% Telford, or 100% Bellway or 100% Redrow.

Many of my group are somewhat daunted by the prospect of committing that far, and don't venture there.... and I'm certainly not recommending it to you - we all have to take our own decisions...

Right now, I'm across Bellway, Inland, Redrow and Crest.... that's four different companies currently in my portfolio... by my standards, that's serious diversification...!

But, if you get your head properly round this game of investing purely in house builder shares ~ and I'd be the first to acknowledge it's not for the faint-hearted as it's so volatile ~ my experience, and that of others in my investing group, has been that it is like winning the lottery in slow motion, and I'm not seeing why that should change as things stand (ceteris paribus, and all that...).

Strictly

"......however seems like there are opportunities if were inclined."

................................

John, if you spend a bit of time over Christmas skimming right back through this (BWY) share chat and also TEF share chat, and also click on the names of any posters on those two share chats who's comments seem to have something worth while (so that's a lot of scrolling back in all, though it's not for me to recommend individual posters...!), I'm sure you'll find plenty of food for thought.

But, to answer your question directly, yes, absolutely there are opportunities for trading and if you can add around 5% a year or more to what the builders themselves make ~ and I've been at this game for around two decades now and I can confirm that that is eminently do-able ~ then the power of compounding means that, at that rate, you double your overall gains every fifteen years...

But, to do that, you do need to keep paying attention to the market and you do need to develop your own process of assessing best value between different house builders and you do need to stick to that or you are likely to be in danger of "trading yourself backwards" - if that makes sense? (that's how we refer to it in our circle at any rate).

Once you've sorted your "perceived best value" process, you'll probably find that you're down to well less than half the house builders at most at any time and that, right now, the two you've mentioned are definitely in that very select group, IMO.

But my closing caveat is that I think that you do need to be confident about your best value rating process, otherwise it's probably safer to stay with buy & hold.

Anyway, hope that helps..?

Strictly

Sea,

Forgot the little matter of the worked example you requested... but I could smell dinner cooking.... that distracted me.... honest guv...
And now I've eaten, so back onto this...

Anyway, on here, go to BWY Live RNS, scroll down to 20/10/20 Preliminary Results, then scroll down to the balance sheet.

Take the £2,994m total equity figure and take off the intangibles which, in good old Bellway's case, is zilch.

Then go to the RNS 3/8/20 Total voting rights (i.e. the first after the year end) and take the 123.345m shares in issue and divide that figure into the £2,994m equity which gives you BVPS of 2,427.32p.

To find reality check earnings, take off last year's BVPS of 2,372p and adjust for the 100p div paid during the year and this gives EPS of 155.3p.

Divide that by starting BVPS of 2,372p gives reality check ROE of 6.5% (well down, but this is the year of covid don't forget).

And Robert's your Dad's brother... that's it.

If you start to get serious about this, then you could go further by making yourself an updated BVPS each month or ex div date by taking a percentage of forecast EPS and adjusting accordingly, not forgetting to knock the BVPS back for the div amount on ex div day.

If you're looking to buy and hold, that's probably an unnecessary step. If you're looking to trade between house builder shares ~ as I do ~ then, apart from this, you'll also need to take a view on assessing relative value.

I sometimes move between house builder shares on a perceived value gap of 5% or so though usually look for 10%.... I find I can normally, but not always, come up with an assessed BVPS that ends up within 2% of the actual when announced in due course, and that's realistically close enough.

Depending on your timescale, and amount invested, this may or may not be worthwhile for you to do.

My target is to beat Bellway by 10% a year but, before I dodged the covid iceberg, I was only managing about 6%, and now I've hit my target averaged over the past eight years

Even that modest 6% would double your otherwise resulting capital over 12 years, though, and quadruple it over 24 years.

Vlad may or may not give you his three halfpence worth on this, though I think his primary habitat is lurking in the shallower areas of water in the Telegraph online Investing section, like a hungry pike.... but if he does spot your lure, he may make a grab at it...?

Strictly

Sea,

If you go on to this Telegraph article below, and scroll down to my response to Maria there on 16th December, that will hopefully give you a reasonable outline of what you want to know.

And if you have the available time and are a glutton for punishment, click on my moniker here and scroll back through my comments.... many of them are rather long-winded, but that's me, I'm afraid, so I make no apology for that.

But the short answer is that, no, you don't really need to "delve deeply" as you put it.... this is more like keyhole surgery, and far from rocket science once you know where to make the appropriate small incisions... :-)

You're welcome to come back to me here though.... while I think I've given up on reading the investment section of the Telegraph as largely a waste of time, I'm a sucker for an appropriate & sensible investing question on here.

Strictly

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/investing/shares/questor-housebuilders-divi-coming-home-sweet-home/#comment

"Thank you for your informative posts but to a layman like myself the in depth analysis is quite difficult to grasp so would you say that generally investing in house builder shares and in particular BWY has been and should be a good long term investment choice to make?"

...........................

Hap,

I think I need to separate out two different couplings of your words to deal with this....

"Has been" and "should be".

If you've read back through some on my posts, you may well have grasped that I invest largely by looking carefully in the rear view mirror.

"Has been" is easy to answer.... if you'd started investing in Bellway in 1983, and, metaphorically and investment-wise, had just sat there and scratched your bum ever since, you'd probably have outperformed pretty much anything else in sight given that that would have been 37 years @ 16% a year (just whack that into a spreadsheet to find the compounded result and make your eyes water).

So, the answer to that one is an easy & emphatic "Yes!"

My group of investors have a private investing log, dedicated to house builders, of which I am the eponymous author, and I frequently go to pains to make, and to repeat, a continual core point there - which is that I'm telling them what I'm doing and why, but they then have to make their own investing decisions and take full ownership of them.

Apart from anything, because that old b.stard, Captain Hindsight, is never around when you need him.

So, my answer to your second part is "I couldn't say, but I'm steaming full ahead remaining invested in house builder shares on the basis that the future will most likely more or less emulate the past"

To add to that, though, over the past couple of weeks or so, I've skimmed various investment prospects in the Telegraph online, investing section, main written under the Questor column there... every company reviewed there, to my eyes, was a nightmare, to a lesser or a greater extent, as an investing prospect... it didn't help that the columnists were boldly and confidently advising would-be investors one way or the other, and that's without appearing to have much of a clue what they were talking about...?

I put a few comments there, under the moniker Gunga Din, mostly in conversation with Vlad, his moniker there being Bogdan, but I don't think I'll bother any more with either commenting on, or even bothering to read, the Telegraph articles in that section as, with the notable exception of Vlad's comments there, it's all a bit naff & dispiriting, IMO.

Sorry that's probably not very helpful, but many of my lot have spent years trying to get me to make such predictions, and I have developed quite a thick skin for rebuffing them on the matter.

One final point, which might assist, though.... remember that the four most dangerous words in investing are reckoned to be "It's different this time"

Strictly

Vlad,

Having re-read what you wrote and my response to it, I felt it might be worth some further comment....

In the hypothetical example you've given, if the reality check figure of the equivalent of 10% of share price or more is being made, providing you're happy with that, then I would have said that any additional evaporation rate would be pretty irrelevant...?

That's no really come up for consideration in that way for me I would say...

And if house builders as an average over the long term sell at 1.5 x book, the 10% would equate to 15% ROE and that's a pretty good ball park long term average for the sensible house builders in the sector.

For a company selling below book, it then wouldn't even need to make a 10% ROE to meet your target.

But the difference is that I'm a one trick pony, only investing in house builders and, regardless of how profitability goes, house builder share prices have always been seriously cyclical.

And if the share price is well out of whack with current profitability, that's going to impact on the shareholder return percentage that for you seems to be your preferred indicator.

And if house builder shares are suffering or doing well as compared to other sectors, it could be that your indicator is moving up and down between the house building sector and other sectors, so implying that house builder shares are relatively a good buy or not such a good buy.

So, for me, this is an unnecessary distraction... My time spent on investments is pretty much full on trying to evaluate one house builder share against another, and I then frequently trade between them, always as a seeker of perceived best value.

I start with the book value, and the share price then comes into it as a component for PBV or P/E, but for the example I gave in my previous comment, the return on equity of the one company is four times as high as the other....

As a fellow aficionado of long term compounding, I don't need to even say to you how awesome that difference is over a number of years, and I think that working off book value not price is more appropriately accurate.... I'm trying to avoid saying that working off of the price is more of a blunt instrument as, to be fair, it does give a reasonable indicator...

It's probably a fairly subtle point, overall, and so also probably worth giving further consideration to.

Elsewhere than here, I'd be happy to go into further detail on how I'm trying to better evaluate the different house builder shares, and put that to you to throw metaphorical bricks at.... I've had some interesting discussions on the blog about some of the finer detail of this, particularly with people who've come onto the blog from this LSE share chat who've been following their own investing path but in a similar direction to me and so trying to compare notes to hone all this further....

Strictly

Vlad,

Although you seem to be on by far the most similar investing song sheet to me of anyone I've come across (other than people from within my own investing circle) I would say that there are a few differences...

I suppose the more discussion we have they more we'll understand those differences...?

One thing is that you're measuring off of market cap rather than net assets. I can see that that gives you an immediate measure of real return on capital.

However, if you consider two companies, shares for both priced at 100p and P/E of 10, but one company has underlying assets of 50p and the other has assets of 200p... those are very different beasts, aren't they, and this may be a very poor use of metaphor, but price is like a newspaper, good for the day but destined to be tomorrow's chip wrapper, while assets are real and are much more enduring and slow changing.

To directly respond to your question though, and allow that I'm only looking at about half a dozen companies in depth, and I keep on anally looking at those same half dozen companies all the time to the exclusion of everything else (because that's what has worked for me and my investing crew for two decades) barring a couple of weeks recently skimming stuff in the Telegraph online as part of the dialogue we've been having there, I've already got chapter & verse on the naughty boys of the sector, like Galliford, when it comes to any gap between mythology and reality check.

But, for a quick skim, your question doesn't even have to come into account for me.

Take Next, for example. Using The Share Centre's numbers, tangible BVPS went from 201.66p to 307.51p in four years to 2020, an increase of 105.85, plus they declared 583.5p in dividends in the period, so that's 689.35p real return, which is 172.3p a year which is 2.4% return based on price which is how you calculate it I think except I'm working off a single share because, as I've previously said, I think that simplifies things.

So, if I'd not discovered the house building sector and instead spent the investing part on my week endlessly skimming for new opportunities, Next would have lost me there already.

If I'd gone to the next stage, to find that even with that p.ss poor return, the company was typically selling at between 20 and 25 x book value, I'd probably have had to take a break for a quick lie down.

I can see I'm already running out of available characters to carry on here.... if you've scrolled back through my posts, you'll have no doubt noted that I and others have a private blog dedicated to the fine art of investing in house builders.

I have no doubt that you could bring something useful to that, and maybe get something back in return... if it interests you, then perhaps put up an email address, albeit a temporary one as others have done, just to make contact and then we could take it from there and also carry on a further conversation on all this.

Strictly

"I think that Vistry/Bovis has traumatised you. Years of watching the relatively weak performance has taken a toll on you. Have you considered Bovis watchers stress counselling for Bovis trauma!"

...........................

Vlad, that is very perceptive of you....

I did undergo a lengthy period of therapy for post traumatic stress disorder in 2015 after clearing out some Bovis shares (which I'm almost embarrassed to own up to and which I'd bought in 2013), just after my folly of also having invested part of my capital into supermarket shares...

Talk about being tempted onto the rocks by sirens...

The treatment did the job, though, and I've been a firm advocate of counselling ever since....

Especially since I've kept pretty accurate numbers on investment performance ever since and what that folly might have otherwise cost me screams out at me from the first page of my spreadsheet every time I look at that particular section.

And providence clearly did smile upon me at the time, as I came out back then at an average price above today's, and actually made a profit, believe it or not....!

2014 was the year I started using book value weightings, though, which I feel has upped my game since, and, once I'd had that insight, even though I hadn't at that point fully thought through that process and refined it to how I use it now, Bovis's days as part of my portfolio were numbered...!

Hopefully, barring a ridiculously big relative fall in price, which I don't easily imagine occurring, as there seems to be enough investors being fooled by the same old same old bullsh.t, I'm now firmly an ex Bovis smoker.

Now THAT might be wacky baccy...?

Strictly

"Now you have advised me of this platform I should probably check out the other relevant share chats!"

Bindog,

Probably also worth scrolling back through the past comments of individual commenters who seem to have something worthwhile to say.... here, and on TEF chat, for the past....

While you do get a lot of day trader chat on these pages (much more so on chat pages for such as TW. rather than here, but even so, there are several apparent tradesmen contributing regularly there so what they have to say is worthwhile as a view from the sharp end), which may be of limited use and mostly includes zero numerical analysis which, I suspect, is what is now interesting you?, I would say that here is a very different platform to Telegraph online...

Even the articles written by the columnists on the Telegraph ~ who presumably are supposed to know what they are talking about ~ are quite a surprise to me... I had hardly read any of those until very recently, when I started opening them up for a quick look in order to pursue a conversation with Vlad seeing as he's the first person contributing there who seems very much on the same song sheet as me... there are several here on LSE with whom I have kept up a steady ongoing communication elsewhere via email and a private blog, but maybe only one of whom is, I would say, on the same song sheet as me to the extent that Vlad seems to be...

Mind you, I'm interested to see what Vlad's own number crunching on Bovis turns up for him now he's had a nudge..!

Re the investing articles in the Telegraph online, IMO they are so badly researched, and so plain wrong, that I'm surprised the Telegraph allow them to even be published...?

After all, encouraging people ~ many of whom, I suspect, don't have much idea about what they're doing ~ where to specifically invest their money is a big responsibility, I mean, it's a bit more serious than the racing tips on radio 4's Today programme...

Of the articles in the Telegraph I've clicked on to, most of them I've barely skimmed unless comments below them have aroused my curiosity enough to look again, and maybe even do a brief bit of legwork on the numbers.

But, 100%, I mean, without exception, every company I looked at there I reckoned to be a long term investing nightmare... I don't mean that the share price necessarily wouldn't go up in the short term - it might do, but that's not the basis on which I invest.

So mostly I haven't commented there about them.... too tempting to become too disparaging.... but it has served a purpose of sorts - which is, yet again, it reaffirms why I ONLY invest in house builder shares.

On the basis of: "If it don't need mending, don't fix it..!"

And hence the moniker...!

Strictly

"Bovis will still likely beat the market and may do okay relative to the HB sector in the sense that the relative weakness is in the price. "

.................................

Vlad, that's part of my point though.... there is no weakness in the price, quite the opposite.... especially as I mistakenly gave Bellway's PBV earlier, not Bovis's....

As of close of play tonight. Bovis's tangible PBV, by my reckoning, is 1.29 against Bellway's now 1.12.

Providing you agree my maths, I'm imagining you'd agree my statement above...?

If I sit in the driving seat of the car called Bovis, all I can see in the rear view mirror is a trail of carnage behind me....

Right now, I can't see through the windscreen.... the scribblers are trying to assure me that it's a nice straight road ahead with no hazards...

Maybe they're right, but I have other cars on other roads to choose from, and for which the rear view mirrors tells me all was well before.

So, why take the chance..?

In Warren Buffet's world of baseball metaphors, he has:

“The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don’t have to swing at everything – you can wait for your pitch. The problem when you’re a money manager is that your fans keep yelling, ‘swing, you bum!'”

or

“What’s nice about investing is you don’t have to swing at pitches. You can watch pitches come in one inch above or one inch below your navel and you don’t have to swing. No umpire is going to call you out. You can wait for the pitch you want.”

Strictly

"MR Clyde is from a management culture where getting in the first strike in a meeting is seen as an objective"
.............................

Vlad,

A bit like Don Quixote then... tilting at windmills....?

I'm anticipating a comment back from you at some point in response to my Bovis numbers.... I scrolled back a few comments for you, and it seems you rated them back in May...

Maybe you still do...?

That could be a discussion to be had...

Strictly

Vlad,

If you allow that Crest have had a couple of duff years through having got London more wrong than our more favoured house builders, and so take a longer view over the past eight years from 2013 to 2020, then these are the key numbers in comparison to Bovis as seen through the eyes of a single share:

Bovis average ROE 5.6%, PBV 1.10
Crest average ROE 17.3%, PBV 0.89.

On that basis, if Bovis share price dropped by more than half on Monday to 400p, and Crest's stayed the same, Bovis STILL wouldn't make into my buy zone...

That's how overpriced I reckon they are...

Of course, not everyone bothers like small things such as an estimated loss per share this year of 185p, after adjusting for intangibles, so I'm not imagining any relative excitement on their share price any time soon.

The market has been putting up with this right from the get go... if you take the 22 years of declared results for Bellway and Bovis from 1998 to 2019, which is as far back as I go for Bovis, then Bellway's average ROE for that period was 17.4% compared to Bovis's 11.9%.

I'm sure you are a fellow compounding aficionado...?

Just think about that gap of 5.5% running for 22 years and how that has widened the relative outcomes....

And now, hard to believe, but Bovis have got even worse!!!

What I don't get is: how do these companies keep on getting away with it..?

Strictly

Vlad,

Getting a bit tetchy on Telegraph online investing comments today, wasn't it...?

I really didn't understand why Mr Clyde seems to have some sort of bee in his bonnet...?

Some sort of denial, perhaps..?

I don't think I'll bother responding to him again unless he comes up with something rather more constructive, even though it was tempting to ask him to give us an indication of his long term investing record...

In the end, that's always the "Show us your w.lly" question, isn't it, and, funnily enough, I find that most can't, or won't, give me an answer on it.

Not that I have any interest in seeing their member, you understand, I'm just being metaphorical.... :-)

Strictly