How crap TLF has become

[csearle]

I could not tell you that ratio although all my posts are available for scrutiny so you can determine that for yourself if interested.

For some strange reason, the full stats which show a user's most used board etc don't appear on your profile. No idea why - but the usual stats don't seem to available on your profile although they are for others.

For some reason when you become a Full Lemon certain stats vanish from your profile. I don't think this was explicitly ordered by the site owners. It is much more likely the default phpBB behaviour. C.

[the0ni0nking]

I think I was more active on TMF from an investment perspective than I am here.

That's partly for 2 reasons:

(i) My current role massively restricts my availability to trade individual shares and therefore dents any desire to do lots of research etc. I'm prevented from dealing on a raft of shares (without getting permission in advance of the trade) and even on lots of others I need to notify my employer after I've dealt. When I took the particular role in question [which I'm no longer in but the rules still apply], that also covered a requirement for reporting on family shareholdings (I had to tell my employer what shares my dad owned for example!)

(ii) I'm more focussed on aligning my tax affairs to the next stage in my life (both job wise - retirement; and geographically - not the UK). & broadly speaking that doesn't involve individual stocks (as opposed to trackers etc).

I never made any money on SOCO but I did on other O&G shares - IIRC Dana springs to mind and also Stagecoach both helped facilitate house deposits over the early/mid 2000s

[tjh290633]

I am happy to view and discuss low yielding shares (though preferable IT's) as they often provide better growth prospects than the higher/highest yielding ones. I'll keep a watch out for your posts on the subject.

It's an odd feature of some high yielding shares that capital growth can turn them into low yielding shares.

There is and has been debate about whether they should be culled at that stage in the search for more income.

There is also the point that, if capital has to be realised, low yielding shares are first in the firing line.

TJH

[Bubblesofearth]

I think most folk on here just buy a global tracker or suchlike these days. When you can buy the world for a couple of tenths of a percent and then forget about it for a decade or 2, then it seems rude not to.

This is perhaps the biggest difference to the equity investment landscape from when I first started investing in the 80's. Back then I would have to phone my broker to trade and it was always individual securities. The cost of trading was significantly higher than today which encouraged a LTBH mind-set.

Low cost Global trackers have made it more and more important to answer the question 'do I have the skill to beat the market?'. Just as in gambling psychology, anyone who has early success will be more likely to believe they have this skill than those who don't. Statistically there will emerge some that have had several consistent successes and they will come to believe themselves to be genius investors. No amount of discussion will convince them otherwise. They will be able to produce reams of clever rationale that 'proves' it was skill.

If I look at my own portfolio (still mostly individual shares) then those shares that have done best are not ones I would have predicted! At the moment Sage is my best performer and that was tucked into the satchel purely to give diversification into a sector thinly represented in the UK. The share that is quickly becoming my worst performer is Reckitt, thanks to the recent US litigation against their food subsidiary. If asked a few years ago which share should I overweight then my answer probably would have been Reckitt! Global brands etc so what's not to like? Just shows however much research we can do on a company it will always be vulnerable to 'unknown, unknowns'. If people have gone big on companies in the past and been successful then fair play to them but they have been lucky to avoid a left-field event that could have caused things to turn out very differently.

BoE

[Clariman]

Moderator Message:
I'm going to lock this topic because it has run its course. I'd like to emphasise Redsturgeon's comment that you don't have to be an active investor to use this website and become part of the TLF community.