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National Grid Finals

For discussion of the practicalities of setting up and operating income-portfolios which follow the HYP Group Guidelines. READ Guidelines before posting
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Arborbridge
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Re: National Grid Finals

#223099

Postby Arborbridge » May 20th, 2019, 9:58 am

Lootman wrote:
Arborbridge wrote:
JoyofBrex8889 wrote:I dumped my NG last month. Proceeds are now safely offshore in SE Asia. There is no way Marxists are going to rob me of a penny while I draw breath.

It makes no difference to me whether it's imaginary red under the bed or self-engrandising, greedy or hubristic directors wrecking a company. Both are equally objectionable, though the latter are a real and tangible danger, the former just a possibility. :(

A low probability risk is still significant if the outcome of that event happening is extremely harmful to you.

An incomptent or greedy bunch of directors may harm the value of your investment in that one company (and I am not saying NG is an example). A confiscatory anti-capitalist left-wing government could wreak havoc upon your entire portfolio, especially a UK-based one like HYP. Rich old white people are not a sympathetic demographic to those who seek to redistribute wealth. They are the target.

Political risk and single-country risk are things that I think are not fully weighted by HYP investors, perhaps because it is 40 years since we have had a government who sees private wealth as suspect. But those of us who remember the 1970s cannot discount it. And the potential privatisation of utilities is a useful warning indicator in my view to the damage that could be wrought on many UK-based investments and investors. By the time you see it, it may be too late.


I hadn't intended to go too far OT with my little quip, so this will be my last on the subject:-

I agree with most of what you say, though not necessarily with the emphasis - I suspect we'll survive a change of government as we always have, if only because we have a fairly well established set of checks and balances in this country. Short of complete revolution, governments of any colour find they cannot achieve what they want: it's never as bad nor as good as you imagine it will be, so one is 8-).
I was really warning against attaching probably unwarranted labels: if done in a repetitive way, this can alter perceptions, not always for the best. Language is important and we should be circumspect about its use.

And as an old white person, whilst not rich, undoubtedly richer than some struggling on the first rung of the ladder, I do feel targetted at times.

Arb.

richfool
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Re: National Grid Finals

#223141

Postby richfool » May 20th, 2019, 12:37 pm

Also, as proved and reinforced by recent experience, governments don't always do what they say they will do, often change their plans, can't get sufficient support within parliament, or change their priorities, etc, etc.

I recollect before the last General Election, Corbyn saying that Labour would do away with student's university fees, (which whilst it probably attracted a lot of student's votes, actually cost him or the country nothing, because he wasn't elected). When questioned after the elections as to how he would have funded it, he intimated that he probably wouldn't have been able to carry it out!

I continue to hold NG and am looking forward to the next big dividend, but (the above said) will keep one eye on the rhetoric when we approach the next general election.

idpickering
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Re: National Grid Finals

#223154

Postby idpickering » May 20th, 2019, 1:07 pm

richfool wrote:
I continue to hold NG and am looking forward to the next big dividend, but (the above said) will keep one eye on the rhetoric when we approach the next general election.


Likewise, and as I mentioned further up this thread, I might buy more this Thursday as part of my monthly investments.

Ian.

NeilW
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Re: National Grid Finals

#223410

Postby NeilW » May 21st, 2019, 12:05 pm

richfool wrote:When questioned after the elections as to how he would have funded it,


You don't need to fund it. You just shut down the Student Loans Company and forget about it. Student 'loans' aren't actually loans on the books of the SLC. The SLC is technically insolvent on its filed accounts. There's no loan assets there.

The whole thing is smoke and mirrors to maintain a list of middle class kids done well that can be taxed 9% higher than anybody else. Eventually somebody will fancy their votes and tear that list up - giving them a tax cut. They then spend the money, the economy makes more stuff and somebody else pays the tax on the profits of that activity. In the usual fashion.

Similarly with National Grid. If Labour does anything it will simply be an asset swap QE style. They get shares, you get Gilts or Sterling - depending upon what income they want you to have.

Arborbridge
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Re: National Grid Finals

#223424

Postby Arborbridge » May 21st, 2019, 12:53 pm

NeilW wrote:
richfool wrote:When questioned after the elections as to how he would have funded it,


You don't need to fund it. You just shut down the Student Loans Company and forget about it. Student 'loans' aren't actually loans on the books of the SLC. The SLC is technically insolvent on its filed accounts. There's no loan assets there.

The whole thing is smoke and mirrors to maintain a list of middle class kids done well that can be taxed 9% higher than anybody else. Eventually somebody will fancy their votes and tear that list up - giving them a tax cut. They then spend the money, the economy makes more stuff and somebody else pays the tax on the profits of that activity. In the usual fashion.

Similarly with National Grid. If Labour does anything it will simply be an asset swap QE style. They get shares, you get Gilts or Sterling - depending upon what income they want you to have.


A big fiddle, in other words. If I had wanted guilts, I woudl have bought some! Hardly a fair swap, but gorvernments don't care if they are following their ideology - of either or any colour. There are ideologues in all parties who seem to be unable to compromise for the benefit of the majority.

Arb.

Julian
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Re: National Grid Finals

#223426

Postby Julian » May 21st, 2019, 1:01 pm

NeilW wrote:...Similarly with National Grid. If Labour does anything it will simply be an asset swap QE style. They get shares, you get Gilts or Sterling - depending upon what income they want you to have.

Knowing s*d-all about gilts it would be interesting to hear from an expert on fixed interest about how any gilts involved in a shares-for-gilts swap might behave price-wise once the swap took place. I agree with your assessment above, and I would think it would probably be more likely to be a swap for gilts rather than sterling since that forces the shareholders to become the lenders that fund the re-nationalisation rather than needing to put out extra gilt issues to auction. But then again I did say that I know nothing about the gilt markets so maybe my understanding and hence logic is false there.

In any event, if it were to be gilts, I assume any gilts would be at a fairly low interest rate assuming today's interest levels so I would want to dump them ASAP to preserve as much of the capital that the day before was tied up in NG shares so that I could redeploy it as I saw fit which is why I would be interested in some expert observations about how the value of such gilts would likely behave in the days and weeks immediately following the swap date which I assume would also be the issue date for the gilts. As I (don't really) understand it I believe there is a reasonable amount of mathematics that at least plays some part in valuing fixed-interest on the secondary markets taking into account time to maturity, future interest payments, yield curves etc so comments about how the gilt price might behave in a short window after issue might be a bit more credible than random speculation about some share price in the face of various rumours and how the markets might react to those.

- Julian

PrefInvestor
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Re: National Grid Finals

#224318

Postby PrefInvestor » May 25th, 2019, 12:03 am

Hi All, I sold all my utilities (CNA, UU, SSE, NG) towards the end of 2018 mainly due to the Corbyn threat. Hard to see that Labour can fully follow through with their plans even if they won an election, but as their recently revealed plans show they fully intend to try. Personally I wouldn’t want to get caught in the rush for the exits if an election suddenly gets called.

Even if that doesn’t come to pass it looks as though Ofgem are after reducing the dividends paid by the energy stocks, see the following article https://www.investing.com/news/stock-ma ... bs-1878089 . Not till 2021 mind so not an immediate issue, but not a good omen.

ATB

Pref


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