Alaric wrote:csearle wrote: So providing posters accept this with respect to the High Yield Portfolios (HYP) - Practical
It's probably the use of the TLA (three letter abbreviation) that causes the problem. The term HYP has no general financial meaning, so its context isn't clear. Leave out, or not notice, the TLA and the title might be interpreted as "higher yield portfolios (practical)", thus of interest to anyone who was an income seeking investor either with a view to reinvesting or living off it.
Perhaps a board "TMF legacy - HYP" would be better.
You might be onto something there, particularly your observation that "The term HYP has no general financial meaning". I suspect that every other investment strategy discussed here is "mainstream", in the sense that you can probably find websites devoted to it, books written about it and myriad references to it on Twitter, in the financial press and so on. Even something practiced by a relative minority - technical analysis - has its sites, books and is regularly quoted or presented on CNBC and Bloomberg.
Compared with that HYP is like home-brewed beer. There is no external reference to it in the investment media. Rather it is a body of folklore, musings and anecdotes that are collectively assembled as a strategy almost exclusively as the result of one site (TMF) and one individual who (sometimes shamelessly) promoted it. It is local to the UK and focused on about 3% of the global equity universe. As such it is a little like an endangered species, and may well die off in a decade or two as the retirees who are its main followers die off and younger folks instead prefer other and racier approaches.
And i mean none of that as a criticism, but rather as an attempt to understand why HYP should enjoy the special status of having its own board, where dividend-based strategies that are even slightly different are bounced to another board. No other strategy here enjoys that exalted status and protection.
So perhaps this special treatment is justified because, without it, and absent Bland's marketing and the financial interest of TMF behind it, it would otherwise wither on the vine. Moreover it doesn't seem to change or develop, as most strategies do. Partly because criticism is shunted elsewhere, and partly because the original work and texts that developed it are seen as over-arching texts that cannot be too radically questioned.
So your idea that it be deemed a "legacy item" has merit. You could not sell it to BlackStone (believe me, I used to work there). But there is enough local, community support to desire and ensure its survival. If that justifies special treatment then so be it.