Member Info for zac0_4

Charlesrixon- my favourite top 5 stocks? I've been moving away from individual shares for some time now. 4 left of which 3 will go when the time is right. So, my 5 favourite holdings are as follows:

Fundsmith Equity fund
Smithson Investment Trust
LF Blue Whale equity fund
Stewart investors Asia Pacific leaders
L&G global robotics and automation

Mojo has just made a statement that 5% to 10% annual returns were once regarded as good. I'm in that camp.

The 1st 4 on the list produced excellent returns for me last year in what must have been one of the worst market crashes I can remember!

It's interesting reading the various posts on this board.

Clearly a large proportion of posters here are treating BP as a recovery stock ie bought sub £3.00 and will sit and wait (if they have the patience) for the share price to recover (not sure to what level though)

Others trade regularly either for monetary returns or to increase the number of shares held.

My questions are what did you hold at the start of 2020 and how did those holdings perform last year? A lot of people give the impression that they're doing very well. And they might be. But I can't believe everyone was simply sitting on cash pre-pandemic and just invested at the bottom. That's the impression that's given.

Me, I'm a passive investor, in so much as I simply buy and hold (22 holdings) and am pretty much always fully invested. I might add that I'm extremely patient!

Smithy2019 - you could simply buy a trust that focuses on the mining sector. BRWM is down 12% in the last 4 weeks or so.

I've held here since 2017. I've finally decided that the oil and gas sector will not be a continuous long term investment for me. I'll sell my holdings in both BP and Shell when I consider the time to be right and move the cash into less cyclical, more robust, sectors. Interested in others views and plans.

Happy

. . . . " the UK alone is insignificant to world oil consumption. The top 10 consuming nations account for 60-70% of global oil demand. The UK is about 15th " . . . . yes, I'm always amazed at investors who don't look further afield than the UK when investing. We're about 3% of the global economy!

I hold a total of 22 investment funds, investment trusts and individual shares. If I go back to Jan 1st 2020 and look at performance to date all have delivered a profit during that timescale with the exception of 2 - RDSB and BP.

I'm beginning to really question as to whether the oil and gas sector, and BP and Shell in particular, have been rerated by the market.

I'm a patient man and will give my holdings in both the benefit of the doubt currently. However, I'll need to see some tangible evidence in positive share price performance to encourage me to maintain my holdings past the end of 2021.

Stockready1 - I use HL and Fidelity. I know HL aren't the cheapest but I've used them for years so am comfortable with them. No charge for holding shares and investment trusts in a general account. 0.45% charge for holding investment funds.

Stockready1 & Share-be-alright - my mistake the website for the association of investment companies (trusts) is www.theaic.co.uk

Share-be-alright - here's some answers to the points you raised as agreed. Investment trusts and investment funds (there is a difference between the 2) do have charges. However, you don't see the charges as they're taken directly from the trust or fund. I'd probably say the charges average around 1.00% annually.

You don't have to lock money up with either. Both can be bought and sold freely. Investment trusts are bought and sold just like shares. I hold 4 currently. Smithson Inv Trust (sson) for capital growth, and Henderson High Income (hhi), Henderson Far East Income (hfel) and Merchants Trust (mrch) all for dividends. Merchants is know as a 'dividend hero' in that it's increased its dividend for 20+ consecutive years (39 years in fact). www.aic.co.uk is a useful website for info on trusts.

With funds you buy and sell similarly but it's not an instant purchase or sale. It generally takes around 24 hours due to the way the units are traded. I use Hargreaves Lansdown as my trading platform. Their website is superb. I hold a number of funds, some examples being Fundsmith Equity, LF Blue Whale Equity, Rathbone Global Opportunities. I only invest in the accumulation version of each fund, where any income is automatically reinvested.

A good starting point for a tracker type investment is to look at what Legal & General funds are offered via the HL website. They offer funds tracking markets ie L&G FTSE all share index, L&G UD index, L&G International Index etc, or funds that track sectors ie L&G Global Healthcare, L&G Global Tech Index, L&G Global Robotics and Automation. This will help give you a flavour as to what's available.

Hope this helps. Good Luck.

Share-be-alright - I'll come back on your points in the morning.

and be mindful that it's going to be 1.5% less than last quarters

Mojo - Do you have other investments / investment strategy?

I'm down to 4 individual dividend paying shares. Over the last couple of years I've migrated from my dividend shares into dividend paying investment trusts. Less risk to both capital and dividends. Once my holding in BP (and Shell) reaches a level that I'm comfortable selling at then capital from here will be reallocated as well.

I'm also well diversified in a number of global and UK funds. My one piece of advise to any investor, despite any trading you might well be involved in, would be to invest every month without fail, year after year after year into a global investment fund. You don't have to invest a lot. Just do it every month. You'll be surprised how your capital builds!

nuri123a - if you, or others, are basing your investment here on an increasing dividend any time soon I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed!

I've held here for close to 5 years. My average purchase price is £4.45. However, taking dividends received to date into account my break-even price is £3.49. The one positive thing I will say about dividend paying shares is the longer you hold the better they look!

My strategy here is simply to hold and wait. There's so much unknown as far as I'm concerned at the moment. How much revenue has been lost through traditional asset sales? How much revenue has been gained through renewable asset purchases? When will volumes return more in line with pre-pandemic levels? I think I'd like some clarity around those points, at least, before I decide whether to sell or continue to hold. The price of oil is somewhat irrelevant as it has always fluctuated and will do so in the future.

Charts mean nothing to me. I've no real interest. The dividend is what it is and, in my opinion, has no relevance to future share price performance. Others disagree, I know. So, I'll sit and wait for the time being. GLA.

Bigbadbaz - there must be other schemes available as directors are awarded shares worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Look at the options awarded to CEO. My comment around shareholders seeing no benefit from this current buy-back programme is based on the following statement taken from the BP RNS dated 28th April.

"The purpose of the Programme is to reduce the issued share capital of the Company to offset the expected full-year dilution from the vesting of awards under employee share schemes, as announced by the Company on 27 April 2021 . . . "

Gavster-NBC - It was your example my comment referred to. I might well be misunderstanding your post. You stated that currently the benefit from buy-backs vs dividend is about the same. You've then used a figure of £250m for both buy-backs and dividends to make your point. If buy-back figure and dividend return are the same then, providing the share price doesn't move by much, then the return would be the same. That's all I was saying.

Henrythecat - I've no idea. Certainly the aim of this initial buy-back is to negate the full-year dilution caused through the vesting of share scheme awards.

So, they might say they are returning cash to shareholders but in the case of the current buy-back programme we're actually seeing no positive gain.

Bigbadbaz - totally agree with your comment below. Plenty on here choose to ignore company statements around cash returns to shareholders when it suits though!

"The board has stated the financial plan to 2025 . . . "

" . . . Interestingly the benefit from buyback compared to dividend, is currently is about the same. See below.
£250m on buyback @323.2p is 77.4m Shares = New Share price with same MC = 324.43 p a profit of 1.23p
£250m on dividends between 20,238m shares = 1.24p"

Of course it's the same. The example shows a return to shareholders of £250m in each case, so it would be the same!

3.7118p per share