Member Info for TheTrotsky

w4, i think the reference to a reduction in investment in certain sectors was in reference to pension schemes under aviva management and (supposed) virtue posturing. it's somewhat damned if you do and damned if you don't imho. if large investors are increasingly looking to move out of guns, ***s, oil, mining, booze etc. you can either ignore the trend or get ahead of the game. the reality is that, despite the occasional market-lead uplifts e.g. increased demand for commodities in (say) china, wars, gas/oil spikes etc, many of these sectors continue to trade on high yields because they've been unable to sustain these market gains in-between times and there's been an increasing shift in the market over (say) the last 10+ years towards the us model of chasing capital growth rather dividends (and selling shares to generate income). at the moment the us model is tending to win out in term of overall return but that could change.

So speaks the supposedly higher IQ individual laughing at everybody else's quandry whilst still supposedly, as far as I last recollect, still holding DEC shares himself! Not the sharpest tool in the box are we GG?

So, if you leave that should about double the IQ ;-)

Pick, I'm just suggesting that you read what people actually say, rather than what you think they say. You make some excellent points but, the fact remains that, at this present moment in time, the US spot price appears to be falling rather than rising, contrary to normal expectations at this time of year.

Part of the problem that the US has had, at least historically, is a lack of long-term gas storage and gas production appears to be currently peaking; so, short of getting producers to temporarily close off wells (if that's feasible) and/or reduce well output, the US has to sell its gas at the best price it can obtain (unlike some of its state-run, overseas competitors).

Obviously that can all change; already today BP has said that it's suspending all shipments through the Red Sea for the time being. It remains to be seen whether the Houthi will attack Arab owned shipping; that might be like biting of their nose to spite their own face (Qatar is the primary financial backer of the Houthi, if you didn't know - something else you find in the news if you'd care to read it).

As regards the DEC hedge price why don't you actually read what I said! Current hedge pricing in the US (if you want to open a hedge today) will be dictated by a number of factors, not least the current spot price, future price expectations, future production expectations etc. but the hedge price DEC is being paid today has absolutely nothing to do with with current hedge price (and I never said that it did, nor did I suggest that it was linked to anything other the HH price expectations).

Pickedpeck, Why don't you read the news articles rather than speculating? The whole point is that the European markets are already fairly well supplied at present (the weather thus far has been fairly mild and stocks are at, or near, an all time high). In the past the US suppliers have been able to leverage the price in Europe by transferring supplies to Asia but the partial closure of the Panana Canal meas that's not an option. As a result, the US spot price is already falling, at a time when it might otherwise be expected to be rising. I also appreciate that the US doesn't normally supply Asia via the Suez canal; I'm just saying that wouldn't appear to be an alternative option either for US suppliers to try and regain the upper hand in any price negotiations.

Bizarrely. Now would appear to be exactly the right time to be shorting natural gas albeit I'm not sure that shorting DEC solely based on the spot price makes sense (given its high hedge cover).

If you read the news today you'll find that traffic through the Panama canal has been significantly reduced due to low water levels, which means that the US can't ship LNG to the Far Eastern markets (most, if not all of its LNG terminals are in the Gulf or East Coast). Also, you would have read that traffic through the Suez canal is reducing because of the Houthi threat (which means shipping LNG through the Suez canal, rather than the Panama canal, is probably off limits too).

All in all, it means that the US is left with having to sell its LNG into European markets with little, or no, price leverage. Add to that the fact that European gas reserves are apparently at an all time high and its not too surprising to hear that analysts now expect US gas prices to fall as they try to offload excess supplies and that they've already downgraded expectations for Henry Hub spot prices through to the end of March.

Also, for all those who screamed blue murder about DEC's hedging policy, I suggest that they check out Telurian. It would appear that Telurian, unlike DEC, doesn't (significantly) hedge its gas production and that Telurian is now on the brink of collapse and is looking at a firesale to try and stave off said collapse. Who's laughing now?

I disagree. Director share sales have to be taken in context. Simply because they are directors of the company, I thinks it's unreasonable to expect them to have to tie up a susbtantial amount of their personal wealth soley in the company's shares.

You would never suggest that an investor should put all of their eggs into the one basket and yet that's what you expect of directors?!

All of the directors continue to have "skin in the game" despite their recent share sales and most, if not all, of the sales have followed the exercise of options, which are pseudo-earnings.

Instead, one should take comfort from the fact that, despite recent share sales, the likes of Bolton, Roberston & Deacon still hold c2.5m, c1.6m & c970k shares respectively; those aren't insignificant numbers.

As regards the price hike following the auction at the end of Friday's trading, I'd be surprised if the share price was to hold up come Monday morning's opening; the number of shares traded in the aution were relatively small (less than 10k).

Rooba, Blanc didn't say that she put in an extra check JUST for white men. That's simply how people in some quarters are choosing to interpret her comment and ignore the context in which it was given. As I say, I would expect Blanc to check and sign off all senior management appointments against various criteria and, if she's doing her job properly, she would want to ensure that all of the appointments are above board because she will be the one held accountable if the appointments are subsequently found to be wanting. In that vain, I would also expect her to also apply a "tokenism" filter (particularly to the appointment of women and non-white men). These are the truths that are often left unspoken but only come to light in such committee meetings. In my view, white males were singled out because of the purview of the committee (they wanted to hear about the direct actions being taken to root out sexism in the City); simply saying that all job senior applicants were reviewed would not have resonated with the aims of the committee.

Hey Ace, perhaps you should ask your "fragrant" boss whether you are sexist at your next job appraisal ;-)

The reality is that we're all sexist; it's just a matter of degrees (and what is, and what isn't, within acceptible norms).

It would seem that when you use the word ****** (even as part of a stock phrase and without suggesting that somebody is a ******) you lose all capitalisation at the beginning of your sentences. Weird.

The comment was made as an aside to evidence that something you thought was no longer an issue can suddenly reappear and take you totally by surprise.

The day after the Brexit referendum my wife and I were travelling on the motorway up north to visit our daughter and briefly stopped at a services. When I walked into the toilets they were in a bit of a state and as I was coming out the janitor just turned to me, apologised, and proceeded to blame it all on foreigners. He didn't know me from Adam and I'm sure that the day before he'd have apologised and left it at that. Brexit had emboldened him to say what he'd longed to say. Foreigners may well have been to blame for the state of the toilets in this instance but, in my personal experience, the British are just as capable at trashing toilets as the next person.

aceofclubs, it would seem that you have has much trouble understanding context as you do reading accounts. amanda was addressing a parliamentary committee on sexism (primarily, but not solely, against women) in the city and they wanted to know what av, was doing about it. amanda sent out a clear message that aviva, for one, was not about to lapse back into the "good old ways".

you either accept that sexism did, and unfortunately in some quarters continues to, exist in the city or you continue to have your head in the sand. one would like to think, hope, that things aren't as bad as they used to be but i suspect that some of the more overt sexual comments and innapropriate behaviour have simply gone underground for the time being (much like racism; everything seemed to be progressing along more harmoniously from the 1980s through to the mid-2010s and then along came brexit and every closet ****** thought they'd been given a licence to say whatever, and to whoever, they chose) or moved online.

in my own personal experience, there are still plenty of men (both young and old) out there who simply think about women in terms of their body measurements (demeaning their contrbution in the process) and also plenty of men, myself included (to my chagrin), who are guilty of condoning their actions by our silence (either because it's socially awkward or because nobody likes to be seen to be rocking the boat; after all "it's just banter").

You still here daneth? You've sold your shares and moved your pension. You've said your piece. AV no longer concerns you. Move on. Bye, bye!

So it's not discriminatory for old white men to get a job SIMPLY because they attended the same public school as somebody who is doing the hiring? Right got it!

Blanc is not discriminating against old white men; she's just ensuring that the additional criteria of merit and ability are also included, as they should have been all along! Nepotism and old school tie should never have been selection criteria.

Simply because an old white man doesn't get the job doesn't mean that it's discrimination. The applicant list has now been opened up to include women (both white and non-white) and non-white men, and it's inevitable that, over time, the make-up of senior management will change accordingly. It's an unescapable fact that, during the period of transition, some white men won't now get the jobs they might otherwise have expected when women and non-white men were excluded from the selection process. That, I'm afraid, is the price of progress and redressing the balance unless you (say) double the number of senior management and every other role!

What would be discriminatory is if Aviva, or any other company for that matter, now tried to implement a population quota selection process i.e. w% white men, x% non-white men, y% white women, z% non-white women etc. Aviva needs to ensure that everybody is given a fair opportunity but ultimately is should be selecting candidates based on capability regardless of age, sex or race (although some allowance may need to be given to women and non-white men for past experience during the period of transition; if you insisted on past experience no women or non-white male might make it past the starter post and the process of rectifying past inequalities would be dead in the water).

Robleo, if you are happy with your buy and hold strategy then I might suggest that you might like to have a look at CTY, AEI and TFIF.

CTY is a large established investment trust with a market cap of c£2bn which currently yields c5%. AEI is a much smaller investment trust with a market cap of £146m which currently yields c7.5%. Both trusts hold a diverse investment portfolio of (predominantly) dividend paying UK-listed companies and both trust have relatively low or negligible gearing. Their yields may be lower than some of the higher paying dividend shares in the FTSE100 and FTSE250 but they reduce the risks attendant with putting all your eggs in only a small number of baskets. Obviously the value of both shares tend to track the value of their underlying portfolios (both trusts tend to trade at a modest premium/discount to NAV) but they do reduce the risk inherent in an individual company potentially going bust or cutting its dividend (generally, individual investments tend not to amount to more than 3% of each trust's assets).

TFIF is also an investment trust with a market cap of c£750m which invests in gilts and bonds. It currently aims to pay out a dividend of at least 8pps (which would give it a current yield of c8%) but is likely to pay c11pps for both FY24 and FY25 (if there is no material change in the BofE interest rate before March 2025). I bought TFIF based on a Questor tip about 15 months ago and since then the share price has been fairly stable all things considered (the share price hasn't fallen more than c10% since I first bought back in September 2022 and is currently down c2% on my average cost of purchase, whilst having returned c10% of my purchase costs to date) and the yield has progressively increased in line with interest rates. The trust has a good investment record to date (none of the bonds it has bought have ever defaulted) and it tends to look to hold its bonds to maturity. Now that interests rates look to have peaked, it's likely that bond prices will now start to rise. So, in principle, the NAV of the trust ought to start rising too. On the other hand, the trust's income is likely to be reduced (due to a decline in its index-linked bond income) and, as a result, it's payout is likley to fall back from the current c11pps to c8pps. So, if you bought TFIF today, you could be looking at (over the next 3-5 years) capital appreciation of 10-30% and a dividend of c8pps.

I currently hold both AEI and TFIF, and have held CTY in the past.

Obviously the usual caveats apply. Caveat emptor! These are not intended as recommendations. They're just a few shares that might be of interest to a dividend investor who is looking to maximise their income whilst minimising their capital risk.

Bye bye!

I said you should crawl back under, not crawl out from under ;-)

If you are going to get phased, it's important that you get phased for the right reasons ;-)

Joncl, I'm not missing anything, let alone by a counrty mile.

Blanc should be reviewing and signing off ALL senior management appointments.

Nothing in her statement to the committee suggests that she's doing anything other than that or that she is indeed biased against white males (she is however biased against white males who have only obtained the job through nepotism and/or the old school tie and not by merit).

To suggest that she should apply the same criteria to each candidate is plain daft. For starters, males aren't females (let's not get into the wokist definition)! The key criteria are that each candidate is treated fairly and appointed on their merits. When assessing white males, Blanc is looking at, amongst other matters, whether they may have unfairly benefited in the appointment process from nepotism or the old school tie (the key word being "unfairly"; family connections and education should not preclude a white male from getting the job if they are indeed the best candidate). Likewise, when looking at (say) white females, I would expect Blanc to consider, amonst other matters, nepotism and (for example) tokenism and so on and so forth for each different group of candidates. There is nothing wrong in applying different criteria to different groups provided the underlying aim is always to select the best candidate for the job. Obviously nepotism would be a common criteria to consider for most, if not all of the groups.

"Just curious which method most people get the best return on"

That's a difficult one because people tend to either fall into the one camp or the other ;-)

You're probably best to address that question to somebody who's changed their strategy but, even then, prevailing market conditions would probably make a comparison difficult. I suspect that in reality one strategy will work better than the other in a given market condition and it doesn't necessarily follow that the same strategy should be applied to all shares all of the time. In my experience, for any given share, you can have a gently rising/falling market (where the share price incrementally rises/falls every day/week with little or no daily volatility over a sustained period), you can have a becalmed market (where the share price hardly moves from one week to the next) or you rising/falling volatile market (where the share price trends up/down over a sustained period but with rapid sharp drops/rises, generally within a trading range, on a daily/weekly basis in a sawtooth fashion).

I would suggest that the latter is the ideal market for sidi's trading approach and has been the prevalent type of market since the invasion of Ukraine. As long as you buy/sell at the right time, it can be highly profitable but it can be quite easy to buy/sell at the wrong point and be caught on the wrong side of the trade. Obviously it can be quite fraught if your strategy is to buy and hold for the long term in a falling market (somedays you're left asking yourself why you are bothering when all you appear to be doing is cannibalising your capital to pay your dividend and the rest) but sidi's strategy can also be quite fraught too.

A few years ago I tried day trading a share (using spread bets) which I'd noticed had fallen into a "sawtooth" trading ranges. Needless to say, I didn't time my purchase right (the share price dropped out of its previously observed trading range) and, over a few days I'd managed to clock up a potential loss of £5k (and very stressed) and then, the next day, the company issued an RNS and I found myself £5k in profit (and very relieved)! Personally, I've found that I can do without that kind of stress ;-)

Joncl, You are still missing the point. She didn't say that she ONLY signed off senior management appointments of white males. I would be very surprised indeed if she doesn't sign off on ALL senior management appointments (because the buck stops with her). However, she was responding to questions from a parliamentary committee looking into sexism. If she, or any other male CEO for that matter, simply said that they signed off on all senior managements appointments it would have been an empty gesture. What does that do to try and prevent sexism in the workplace?

Saying that she signed off all white, male, senior management appointments would have resonated with the aims of the committee; evidencing that both she and Aviva are taking the (perceived) problem seriously and trying to put past practises in the past, where they belong. She might have limited the comment to males, as opposed to white males, but historically (in the City) it's been white males that have predominantly benefited from nepotism and the old school tie and, more often than not, white males who have courted claims of sexism (because the City was a white male bastion for so long, although things started to change from the 2000s onwards). The reality is that sexism is not just limited to white males but, in the City, they have historically been the primary culprits.

It's horses for courses. The comment has to be seen in the context of who she was talking to and why.

PS. Report away. It's a free country.

If you don't mind me asking, struggling how? I'm sure there are plenty of posters on here who've had their fair share of struggles (in some shape or form) and sometimes it can help to share. If you want to talk, some of us will listen.