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HYP and foreign shares rule

Formerly "Lemon Fool - Improve the Recipe" repurposed as Room 102 (see above).
Wizard
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HYP and foreign shares rule

#337111

Postby Wizard » August 31st, 2020, 10:33 am

For the avoidance doubt, by starting this topic I am not:
- challenging the HYP-P Guideance
- suggesting or lobbying for a change to the HYP-P Guidance
- questioning any decision or comment by any moderator
I would be very grateful if anyone responding to this post adopts the same approach.

Recently there have been a couple of threads on HYP-P and HYS&S that have debated the inclusion of foreign shares in an HYP. Having read most of the posts in those threads I think it is reasonable to say that much of the posting has been trying to understand why PYAD would have precluded foreign shares in an HYP. However, so far I do not believe there has been any definitive reference to anything PYAD said in any article that precludes foreign shares, nor has anyone highlighted specific reasons PYAD said they should not be included, though some have highlighted their own reasons for not including them, such as tax complexity.

Recently Gengulphus responded to a comment by Arborbridge and made what I think is a very interesting comment, as part of a longer post, he said:

Gengulphus wrote:
Arborbridge wrote:What's the point of a thread discussing why foreign shares are not allowed in a HYP, if you as you are saying, they are allowed? In point of fact you and if know perfectly well, that foreign shares have never ever been allowed in a HYP, ...

I'm afraid I don't know any such thing, unless your "never ever" is somehow only intended to mean "never since 2017". Specifically, the rules we had between 2008 and 2016 about what was allowed in HYPs (or to be precise, in posted discussions about HYPs) were in the TMF HYP Practical board guidance (2008 version, 2012 version). They don't contain any prohibition of foreign shares - indeed, they don't mention the question of UK vs foreign shares at all, not even indirectly through index membership as the TLF guidance does. And during that time, it was entirely possible to discuss foreign shares on the TMF board - provided one recognised that a lot of the board's posters had objections to foreign shares and didn't allow oneself to be drawn into flamewars about them (the sensible thing to do if one wanted to discuss foreign shares was to tolerate the replies expressing personal objections without posting in response to those replies, and to report the replies telling one off for trying to discuss them, again without posting in response to those replies). In short, foreign shares were allowed in HYPs during that period, though decidedly unpopular - and self-discipline was needed as it is generally is when posting about unpopular subjects. It's only since the TLF guidance came into existence in 2017 that we've had rules saying that foreign shares aren't allowed in HYPs discussed on this board - with the de minimis exception your partial quote comes from.

As far as I can see nobody has challenged Gengulphus' recollection and I think his knowledge of such matters is pretty much universally respected. This then seems to suggest that in the recent discussions people may have been looking for something that does not exist, i.e. the reason(s) PYAD precluded foreign shares from an HYP as he defined it.

The HYP-P Guidelines make clear that shares when bought should be constituents of the FTSE350, and while some argue what "should" means in this context, it seems from a recent modbox comment that this should be understood to mean 'must'. Given what Gengulphus recalls it therefore seems that the preclusion of foreign shares is not a part of HYP as defined by PYAD or indeed discussed on the previous boards on TMF, but is a new feature specific to the TLF HYP-P board.

Therefore, the question of why foreign shares (which could qualify in all other ways) are excluded from discussion on HYP-P is not one for PYAD but actually one for the moderation team on TLF that wrote the guidelines. I would be really interested in understanding this. If Gengulphus' recollection is correct, logically it seems to me that there can be two possible reasons for the guidance precluding foreign shares:
1) those that wrote them thought they were precluded in HYP as described by PYAD and discussed on the old TMF board; or,
2) they recognised this was a new restriction and had specific reasons for including it in the guidelines.

I would be really interested if one of the moderation team involved in the guidelines could explain.

Many thanks in advance.

This is a long post, so some readers may have forgotten my opening comment, please do not use this thread as a vehicle to challenge the HYP-P Guidelines, try to have them changed, or question any comments / actions by mods.

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Re: HYP and foreign shares rule

#337118

Postby Itsallaguess » August 31st, 2020, 11:08 am

Wizard wrote:
Therefore, the question of why foreign shares (which could qualify in all other ways) are excluded from discussion on HYP-P is not one for PYAD but actually one for the moderation team on TLF that wrote the guidelines.


PYAD said this on November 6th 2000 in his 'Retirement Pays Dividends' article -

Whatever the money available, even very large sums, no more than about 15 shares are necessary to take strip out the excessive risk of too few shares.

Stick to FTSE 100 companies and spread the holdings around sectors.


https://web.archive.org/web/20140219210446/http://news.fool.co.uk/news/foolseyeview/2000/fev001106c.htm

As someone who doesn't run a single-share HYP now, I won't attempt to advocate the merits or otherwise of Pyad taking the above position in that 2000 article, but I just wanted to point out that your claim that the 'foreign share' angle has never been influenced by anything that Pyad himself has said is not correct...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: HYP and foreign shares rule

#337124

Postby SalvorHardin » August 31st, 2020, 11:17 am

Wizard wrote:Recently there have been a couple of threads on HYP-P and HYS&S that have debated the inclusion of foreign shares in an HYP. Having read most of the posts in those threads I think it is reasonable to say that much of the posting has been trying to understand why PYAD would have precluded foreign shares in an HYP. However, so far I do not believe there has been any definitive reference to anything PYAD said in any article that precludes foreign shares, nor has anyone highlighted specific reasons PYAD said they should not be included, though some have highlighted their own reasons for not including them, such as tax complexity.

You may have missed several posts on a recently deleted thread which went into this at some length.

When I registered on TMF UK in 1999, one of the most popular boards was Value Shares. The most popular definition of a value share was one which met PYAD's four PYAD rules. There was a lot of debate as to what constituted "value". Just like HYP today a lot of posters persisted in trying to purify the value shares board by restricting debate to only those shares which met the PYAD rules, or were close to meeting them. PYAD was heavily promoted by TMF.

Very few foreign shares could meet PYAD's four rules, mostly because foreign shares tend to pay lower dividends than the UK market, so whenever a foreign share was mentioned there were complaints. Consequently the Value shares board developed an anti-foreign shares attitude. Investments trusts were similarly derided because few could meet the PYAD rules.

HYP grew out of the Value shares board, by popular demand which was driven by the interest in PYAD high yielders. The anti-foreigner and anti-fund attitude on the Value shares board carried over to HYP. As did the zeal for rules to restrict what could be discussed.

Note that it wasn't only foreign shares which were cold shouldered on Value shares. A UK company would also be shunned if it had huge foreign interests (e.g. Soco International). The word "bongo" was often used in response to one of these companies and if they were a small company they were also derided as "tinpot". Posts featuring “bongo tinpots” on the value shares board were routinely rubbished and sometimes deleted solely because they didn't meet the four PYAD tests for investment, even though by most other definitions of value they were value shares.

We ended up being kicked off the value shares board and onto the oil & gas board. Most of the remaining traffic on value shares prioritised yield and this led to the HYP board being spun off from Value shares. HYP drew a lot of posts which would previously have been on value shares. The Value shares board quickly went from being one of the most popular investment boards to just another board.

Some of the "bongo tinpots" were oil explorers which turned out to be spectacular successes. This led to quite a bit of ill-will from some HYP and Value shares purists directed against the Oil & Gas investors, jealous over what some of us were making on oil explorers like Soco.

Also Doris didn't own any foreign shares or funds. If it was good enough for Doris then it should be good enough for HYP investors.

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Re: HYP and foreign shares rule

#337133

Postby Wizard » August 31st, 2020, 11:32 am

Itsallaguess wrote:
Wizard wrote:
Therefore, the question of why foreign shares (which could qualify in all other ways) are excluded from discussion on HYP-P is not one for PYAD but actually one for the moderation team on TLF that wrote the guidelines.


PYAD said this on November 6th 2000 in his 'Retirement Pays Dividends' article -

Whatever the money available, even very large sums, no more than about 15 shares are necessary to take strip out the excessive risk of too few shares.

Stick to FTSE 100 companies and spread the holdings around sectors.


https://web.archive.org/web/20140219210446/http://news.fool.co.uk/news/foolseyeview/2000/fev001106c.htm

As someone who doesn't run a single-share HYP now, I won't attempt to advocate the merits or otherwise of Pyad taking the above position in that 2000 article, but I just wanted to point out that your claim that the 'foreign share' angle has never been influenced by anything that Pyad himself has said is not correct...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

OK, many thanks. Rather than saying they are excluded explicitly, implicitly they are excluded by not being FTSE100 listed, similar to the TLF Guidelines saying should be in FTSE350. But nothing on why, hence the mystery people have been trying to solve. Then TMF chose not to enforce that as a rule on its HYP-P Practical equivalent board, hence the discussions Gengulphus recalls. So a divergence of what PYAD said versus what TMF allowed on the HYP board. All a bit clearer now, thanks again.

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Re: HYP and foreign shares rule

#337182

Postby Lootman » August 31st, 2020, 4:20 pm

Wizard wrote: Rather than saying they are excluded explicitly, implicitly they are excluded by not being FTSE100 listed, similar to the TLF Guidelines saying should be in FTSE350. But nothing on why, hence the mystery people have been trying to solve. Then TMF chose not to enforce that as a rule on its HYP-P Practical equivalent board, hence the discussions Gengulphus recalls. So a divergence of what PYAD said versus what TMF allowed on the HYP board. All a bit clearer now, thanks again.

There is a more fundamental question here. Should we regard HYP as something that was fixed for all time in a document written 20 years ago? Or should the method be allowed to evolve as all other investment methods surely do?

So for instance the FTSE-100 rule (or guideline or recommendation) has evolved here to be the FTSE-350. ITs are still barred but REITs have been admitted to the club. It is natural that a method should progress and evolve, otherwise it might stagnate. So I don't always understand these references to scriptures written long ago, rather than the collective wisdom of the Fools and Lemons who carry the torch for this in the absence (mostly) of the original writer.

I certainly would not want to be held to things I wrote on TMF in 1999 and 2000 (and I was there, debating pyad and others at the time). I have learned a lot since then and so have others. So why regard this or any method as timeless and frozen?

In the late 1990s the UK market cap was about 10% of global market cap. Now it is half that and all the signs are that it will decline further. Probably only Japan has declined more by that metric in the same time period. At some point the UK will be regarded as inadequate in terms of reward and risk. It is already highly skewed to natural resources and financials, and under-weight in the major growth sectors. I think there are compelling reasons to diversify outside the UK. But whatever your view on that, we should certainly be able to discuss it

The rules for HYP reflect the biases of the original promoter. He focused on what he knew and chose to omit areas where he felt his knowledge and experience were less. That made sense for him, but the same emphasis might not make sense for others with different skillsets and areas of expertise.

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Re: HYP and foreign shares rule

#337193

Postby tjh290633 » August 31st, 2020, 4:55 pm

Wizard wrote:The HYP-P Guidelines make clear that shares when bought should be constituents of the FTSE350, and while some argue what "should" means in this context, it seems from a recent modbox comment that this should be understood to mean 'must'.

The guidelines say "should" and mean "should". They do not say "must".

That, surely, is the end of the discussion.

You might say "ideally should", but individual HYPs are never ideal.

TJH

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Re: HYP and foreign shares rule

#337201

Postby Arborbridge » August 31st, 2020, 5:25 pm

Lootman wrote:[

In the late 1990s the UK market cap was about 10% of global market cap. Now it is half that and all the signs are that it will decline further. Probably only Japan has declined more by that metric in the same time period. At some point the UK will be regarded as inadequate in terms of reward and risk. It is already highly skewed to natural resources and financials, and under-weight in the major growth sectors. I think there are compelling reasons to diversify outside the UK. But whatever your view on that, we should certainly be able to discuss it

The rules for HYP reflect the biases of the original promoter. He focused on what he knew and chose to omit areas where he felt his knowledge and experience were less. That made sense for him, but the same emphasis might not make sense for others with different skillsets and areas of expertise.


Whilst agreeing completely with your post, what we would end up with wouldn't be a HYP, but a HY portfolio. That could be a very sensible move and indeed many people bundle all their holdings together in one portfolio as it suits them - it's more convenient that way. However, it wouldn't be called a HYP and such a portfolio wouldn't be discussed on HYPP.

As to Wizard's question "why" we've had many reasons put forward in a couple of threads, all of which go to make up a valid picture. It's all been explained, and there doesn't seem much mileage in discussing it further.

Maybe one of our difficulties is that we aren't the investor HYP was aimed at. Some here are way out of the HYP league and very knowledgeable, but HYP was intended as a simple routine which would perform well enough for those folk who wanted income but fell into the trap of over trading or surrendering their capital to insurance companies or various sharks who would take a fat fee for doing nothing. Do this, this and this - stick with it and it will turn out moderately OK. And part of that formula, to keep life simple, was not adding foreign shares. On HYPP there is the Bree exception which has been referred to, to enable a HYP stalwart to post his portfolio where he had for years had a small non-conventional holding. That was a reasonable loop hole for those who featured in that group, which includes people who obtain foreign shares due to take-overs, for example. It was never intended as an encouragement to load up your HYP with up to 5% of them! which is how Wizard seems to have interpreted it.

This, I'm afraid, is just another storm in a teacup, based on nothing much :)

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Re: HYP and foreign shares rule

#337213

Postby Gengulphus » August 31st, 2020, 6:09 pm

Itsallaguess wrote:PYAD said this on November 6th 2000 in his 'Retirement Pays Dividends' article -

Whatever the money available, even very large sums, no more than about 15 shares are necessary to take strip out the excessive risk of too few shares.

Stick to FTSE 100 companies and spread the holdings around sectors.


https://web.archive.org/web/20140219210446/http://news.fool.co.uk/news/foolseyeview/2000/fev001106c.htm

As someone who doesn't run a single-share HYP now, I won't attempt to advocate the merits or otherwise of Pyad taking the above position in that 2000 article, but I just wanted to point out that your claim that the 'foreign share' angle has never been influenced by anything that Pyad himself has said is not correct...

Thanks for remembering that bit about the FTSE100! And I'd better clarify what Wizard quoted me as saying, which was:

Gengulphus wrote:
Arborbridge wrote:What's the point of a thread discussing why foreign shares are not allowed in a HYP, if you as you are saying, they are allowed? In point of fact you and if know perfectly well, that foreign shares have never ever been allowed in a HYP, ...

I'm afraid I don't know any such thing, unless your "never ever" is somehow only intended to mean "never since 2017". Specifically, the rules we had between 2008 and 2016 about what was allowed in HYPs (or to be precise, in posted discussions about HYPs) were in the TMF HYP Practical board guidance (2008 version, 2012 version). They don't contain any prohibition of foreign shares - indeed, they don't mention the question of UK vs foreign shares at all, not even indirectly through index membership as the TLF guidance does. And during that time, it was entirely possible to discuss foreign shares on the TMF board - provided one recognised that a lot of the board's posters had objections to foreign shares and didn't allow oneself to be drawn into flamewars about them (the sensible thing to do if one wanted to discuss foreign shares was to tolerate the replies expressing personal objections without posting in response to those replies, and to report the replies telling one off for trying to discuss them, again without posting in response to those replies). In short, foreign shares were allowed in HYPs during that period, though decidedly unpopular - and self-discipline was needed as it is generally is when posting about unpopular subjects. It's only since the TLF guidance came into existence in 2017 that we've had rules saying that foreign shares aren't allowed in HYPs discussed on this board - with the de minimis exception your partial quote comes from.

The clarification is that the "to be precise" remark near the start of that is important: it's all about what was allowed to be posted about HYPs on the TMF and TLF boards, rather than about what people are allowed to invest in (neither TMF nor TLF have any authority to rule on the latter, and they probably wouldn't want to even if they did). The situation before the TMF board split in 2008 and the publication of the split boards' guidance (*) was that there was just one TMF board about high-yield strategies, named "High Yield Portfolio", and it didn't have any specific board guidance: basically, the board title alone was all the guidance posters had (most TMF boards were like that, just like most TLF boards are today). That guidance provided by the board title was not interpreted as "only portfolios strictly in compliance with TMFPyad's pronouncements", either by the board users or by the TMF moderators (who incidentally didn't include pyad - he was a staff member at the time, as indicated by his username then, but not a moderator). A good thing too, because his pronouncements did exhibit some inconsistencies - for instance, Itsallaguess's link says "Stick to FTSE 100 companies" but a week later, in https://web.archive.org/web/20140528041 ... 01113c.htm, he said "To obtain a little more choice, I went marginally outside the FTSE 100 index and set £1.5b as my minimum capitalisation filter.". Another example is that in https://web.archive.org/web/20140220112 ... 011123.htm (**), he said "On underweighting, I advise to readers to avoid some sectors. Construction, engineering shares, shares in rapidly advancing technological industries such as telecoms and computers, airlines spring to mind ...", but under five years later, he selects BT for HYP1, in https://web.archive.org/web/20170213040 ... sort=whole - and it's not a case of telecoms having ceased to be a rapidly advancing technological industry in that time.

So basically, a somewhat-expanded version of what I was saying was that as far as restrictions on what can be posted about HYPs on the appropriate boards are concerned:

* Before the TMF board split in June 2008, the only one was that posts had to fit the board name "High Yield Portfolio" (in the TMF moderators' opinion).

* From June 2008 to when the TMF boards were closed in late 2016, the TMF HYP Practical guidance applied to the TMF HYP Practical board and did not contain any restriction on foreign shares;

* From the creation of TLF in early November 2016 to the original TLF HYP Practical guidance being posted in late November 2017, I'm uncertain whether one should reckon that there was no restriction about foreign shares on the TMF HYP Practical board because it had no guidance at all, or because it was operating with the 'inherited' TMF guidance which contained no such restriction, but it hardly matters!

* Since that posting of the original TLF HYP Practical guidance, the restriction on foreign shares required by its restriction that HYP shares should be in the FTSE350 has been in effect, either because that guidance was in effect or because a newer version with the same restriction was in effect.

As far as restrictions about what can be in a HYP (as opposed to posted about HYPs) are concerned, I didn't say anything about that in the quote. But my view is that that's up to the individual HYPer - I don't really see how it can be otherwise! If they want to use a more restrictive definition than the board guidance uses, IMHO they should be clear about that being a personal preference or recommendation and not a rule they can try to impose on others - it's fine to say "I never sell a HYP share voluntarily" or "I recommend never selling voluntarily", but not "You're not allowed to sell voluntarily" or "If you sell voluntarily, you're not a real HYPer" (the latter both because it's a personal comment and because it is tantamount to trying to impose a non-existent rule on the person addressed). If they want to use a less restrictive definition than the board guidance uses, IMHO they need to keep quiet about it on the HYP Practical board. Whether they do that by using the "When reporting on a HYP portfolio, there may be times when it is impractical to exclude overseas shares, Investment Trusts, or preference shares. In such circumstances, these shares can be included within a published portfolio if they make up no more than circa 5%. They must NOT be discussed on this board." exception allowed by the guidance, by only posting about the HYP part of their portfolio on HYP Practical, or by avoiding posting on HYP Practical at all depends on the size of the difference and their own preferences.

I might add that the question of what's allowed in a HYP was one of the issues that contributed to the TMF board split in 2008. That issue was that the TMF moderators only had the board name "High Yield Portfolio" to go by when trying to adjudicate whether posts were on-topic or not, between hugely varying views on the issue that ranged all the way from "only portfolios that adhere strictly to TMFPyad's pronouncements are HYPs" (with some differences of opinion about which TMFPyad pronouncements that meant to complicate things...) to "any investment post can be related to HYPs and so is on-topic". And none of the TMF moderators were actually HYPers themselves, which meant that they basically had an impossible job adjudicating what was on-topic on the "High Yield Portfolio" board before it was split. That was basically the reason why the TMF HYP Practical guidance was written with a number of reasonably objective tests in its section 6, that the TMF moderators could use to help them rule on whether posts were actually about HYPs.

Anyway, I have wondered why the guidance about being a FTSE350 constituent was ever brought in, given the non-existence of any sort of UK-only requirement in previous guidance. My best guess has been that it was a "three birds with one stone" change, combining (a) a somewhat-crude-but-good-enough lower limit on market cap that adjusts automatically to the general level of the market; (b) when used together with a check on a share's yield, an easy objective test for moderators to make to determine whether a share is on-topic; (c) outlawing a type of thread that quite frequently led to heated discussions in practice. I saw two variants of that quite a bit in practice: the first when someone proposed a foreign share, someone else objected saying "foreign shares not allowed!" and the proposer then engaged in an argument about whether they are on-topic rather than reporting the objector for trying to impose a non-existent rule; the second when someone proposed a foreign share, others replied saying "foreign share - not for me" and the proposer then launched a diatribe about how a good share wasn't being given a fair chance rather than just accepting that foreign shares aren't for everyone and restricting their responses to those who replied more positively.

One other bit of context is that I made that guess shortly after the guidance about being a FTSE350 constituent was brought in, in late 2017 and only about a year after the TMF boards were closed. The relevance of that is that I don't remember whether I'd frequently seen that sort of heated discussion arise on TMF, on TLF, or on both. And I should emphasise that it really is a guess - I have no actual knowledge of or even hints about the reasoning that went into introducing the FTSE350-constituents-only bit of guidance, just guesses about what might have made some sort of sense to those who introduced it.

(*) For completeness and in case anyone is interested, the TMF "High Yield - Share Strategies" guidance is here. And if anyone is wondering why it's post number 52212 on that board, whereas the 2008 TMF HYP Practical guidance was post number 2 on its board, the reason was that "High Yield - Share Strategies" was a renaming of the original "High Yield Portfolio" board, while "High Yield - HYP Practical" was a newly-created board at the time. It was done that way to ensure that discussions that were ongoing on "High Yield Portfolio" at the time remained on-topic, rather than suddenly becoming off-topic as the HYP Practical restrictions came into effect.

(**) I also find that link interesting because of the following:

Number one is market capitalisation. I advocate that investors stick with big caps only. Say FTSE350 but preferably FTSE100. Alternatively set an actual limit such as £1bn. The reason for this rule is security. I believe that in general big caps are going to be more secure than smaller ones both in dividend payments and in a lesser likelihood of the company going bust.

The point that strikes me is that although he mentions the FTSE100 and FTSE350 indices in it, they're illustrative market-capitalisation limits, and a number such as £1bn is suggested as an alternative. So there is an option there that doesn't restrict one to UK shares - and there's no rule saying "UK shares only", "No foreign shares", "No overseas shares" or anything similar despite the article being entitled "High Yield Selection Rules". Of course, that may have been because it was an HYP-basics article addressed to a UK audience, so he might have been presuming that foreign shares wouldn't occur to them in the first place - but it certainly doesn't indicate that he thought sticking to UK shares was a vital part of the strategy.

Gengulphus

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Re: HYP and foreign shares rule

#337966

Postby xeny » September 3rd, 2020, 5:53 pm

Itsallaguess wrote:
PYAD said this on November 6th 2000 in his 'Retirement Pays Dividends' article -

Whatever the money available, even very large sums, no more than about 15 shares are necessary to take strip out the excessive risk of too few shares.

Stick to FTSE 100 companies and spread the holdings around sectors.


https://web.archive.org/web/20140219210446/http://news.fool.co.uk/news/foolseyeview/2000/fev001106c.htm

As someone who doesn't run a single-share HYP now, I won't attempt to advocate the merits or otherwise of Pyad taking the above position in that 2000 article, but I just wanted to point out that your claim that the 'foreign share' angle has never been influenced by anything that Pyad himself has said is not correct...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess


I at one point had everything in Fundsmith which at most has held I think 30 shares, so I don't consider myself a stranger to a concentrated portfolio.

I'd still regard 15 shares all in the one national index as excessively concentrated.

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Re: HYP and foreign shares rule

#337968

Postby Itsallaguess » September 3rd, 2020, 6:03 pm

xeny wrote:
Itsallaguess wrote:
PYAD said this on November 6th 2000 in his 'Retirement Pays Dividends' article -

Whatever the money available, even very large sums, no more than about 15 shares are necessary to take strip out the excessive risk of too few shares.

Stick to FTSE 100 companies and spread the holdings around sectors.


https://web.archive.org/web/20140219210446/http://news.fool.co.uk/news/foolseyeview/2000/fev001106c.htm

As someone who doesn't run a single-share HYP now, I won't attempt to advocate the merits or otherwise of Pyad taking the above position in that 2000 article, but I just wanted to point out that your claim that the 'foreign share' angle has never been influenced by anything that Pyad himself has said is not correct...


I at one point had everything in Fundsmith which at most has held I think 30 shares, so I don't consider myself a stranger to a concentrated portfolio.

I'd still regard 15 shares all in the one national index as excessively concentrated.


For the avoidance of any doubt, I completely and strenuously agree with you, but the initial point of my post on this topic was just to highlight the error in Wizard's first assumption in his argument, and then exit swiftly via the side door, although I did hope that the caveat I added above would have been enough to highlight that I was certainly not trying to advocate Pyad's November 2000 'guidance' just because I was bringing it to his attention...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess


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