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Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

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dspp
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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228581

Postby dspp » June 11th, 2019, 8:45 am

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:Once upon time people could only do various graphical and media processing work by buying a s/w and installing locally. Now one merely has to google "XYZ to ABC file conversion online" and the tool is available, often for free in a webpage. I'm not sure of business model (i.e. £££ for the supplier), even if there actually is one, since some software nerds just enjoy writing code and distributing it.

Matt


So you have to find 'bundles' of software routines that are large enough to outlast the enthusiasm cycle of the freelance open source types building competitive solutions. And in an arena where the competition are not funding 'paid for' open source product development simply to kill a competitor's core business.

So, think, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Intuit, Sage, etc ........

- dspp

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228588

Postby vrdiver » June 11th, 2019, 9:08 am

Hi Matt,

I started my career as a programmer, working with mainframe and mid-range computers (ever heard of ADIBAS/Natural or IBM's System/36 and the RPG language?) I remember when "Minesweeper" was encouraged to improve mouse usage!

I started work developing bespoke applications for my company (as part of the IT department) and after a few years we found that for our multiple-site based operations, the business case for a package became compelling compared to the costs of developing and maintaining our own application. So packages became the norm, with the IT department switching from development to customisation (!) and first line support.

Roll forward a few years and I managed some pretty complex system implementations for some interesting (to me) projects, parts of which were standard stuff (purchasing, materials management, manufacturing, ERP etc.) and some were quite exotic for the time (decision support systems, A&M modelling, global tax modelling, supply chain optimisation, forecasting, capex/opex optimisation etc. etc.)

What all of these had in common was an army of consultants being required to get them to work and a cash burn-rate that made the realisation of their benefits recede rapidly into the future. As the industry settled down, some of the costs were reduced by offshoring the labour, some by implementing via play-books and standard processes; but even then, the cost of ownership was still high.

The industry faced two problems; the cost of implementing commercial applications was too high and the number of customers who could afford to do so too small. The bigger companies (like SAP for example) started to tailor their applications to fit smaller companies with all the other vendors following.

Even today, there are big IT projects going on, but most IT executives are interested in reducing risk and getting a specific service for a known cost. Oracle, SAP and a host of others have entered the SaaS market, offering to take a client's data and run it in a pre-configured implementation, where they (Oracle, SAP etc) will manage the hardware and the software upgrades, whilst the client just pays for the service.

For companies that can live with the offering, a lot of the IT headaches disappear, along with the risks and overheads. I think that, longer term, SaaS will grow simply because every time a feature is added to the standard offering, more businesses will find the alternative (in-company run copies) less appealing.

The industry is still young, so who will win is very much up for grabs, but with network access making remote computing trivial, I suspect any software not required to be running in the event of a network catastrophe will migrate to SaaS - even MS Office, the personification of "Personal" computing, has returned to a type of SaaS model.

Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle) once said that "writing cheques is cheaper than writing software". I suspect this applies to implementing it too...

As to where to invest, I'd be cautious of direct investment in anything "emerging" in this space. Better (IMHO) to go for a big player with the cash reserves to buy up small companies with good ideas, or else buy a basket of technology via an IT and let the professionals keep an eye on which companies are winning.

VRD

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228618

Postby JamesMuenchen » June 11th, 2019, 10:36 am

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:Hi James
Sorry to move your post! What's fintech in a nutshell? More smoke and mirrors like SaaS?

Matt

Financial technology. It covers a multitude of sins from Payment to Crypto. Wasn't recommending it specifically, just pointing out that UK has a large attractive tech sector for those who don't want to deal in US stocks.

To be honest though, I don't think you'll find many investable tech stocks using your FA methods , and if you did, you wouldn't be able to live with the volatility. That's not intended as criticism, just an observation .

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228622

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » June 11th, 2019, 10:49 am

Hi VRD,

vrdiver wrote:I started my career as a programmer, working with mainframe and mid-range computers (ever heard of ADIBAS/Natural or IBM's System/36 and the RPG language?) I remember when "Minesweeper" was encouraged to improve mouse usage!

Mine started in the mid-90s for the EPOS retail and back office industry. Mostly "PC" based, weird DOS variants, with task-switching bolt-ons with C for the tills, and some VB+Oracle, C++ and SQL etc. for back offices. Man, was EPOS stressful! I remember the support calls if anything in-store went wrong.

Roll forward a few years and I managed some pretty complex system implementations for some interesting (to me) projects

Possibly my most exciting role involved a GUI for British American Racing (BAR back in the day), which collected information to feed to a simulation engine. Then onto protocol stacks and DSP work in the telecoms sector. Enjoyed that. Now (for past 8 years or so) writing debuggers for our firms micro-processors, still find it fairly rewarding.

But in all that time, I've never really been involved in packaged software, likes of which people buy in PCW or whatever (if those shops still exist).

What all of these had in common was an army of consultants being required to get them to work and a cash burn-rate that made the realisation of their benefits recede rapidly into the future. As the industry settled down, some of the costs were reduced by offshoring the labour, some by implementing via play-books and standard processes; but even then, the cost of ownership was still high.

One time in EPOS in the 90s, I was at firm with about 6 permies. In order to deal with a "large" new project, we expanded that with about 15 contractors over about a year and half. It was totally crazy. Like the wild west.

Even today, there are big IT projects going on, but most IT executives are interested in reducing risk and getting a specific service for a known cost. Oracle, SAP and a host of others have entered the SaaS market, offering to take a client's data and run it in a pre-configured implementation, where they (Oracle, SAP etc) will manage the hardware and the software upgrades, whilst the client just pays for the service.

Predictability of cost does seem about the most attractive feature to Saas to my mind.

The industry is still young, so who will win is very much up for grabs, but with network access making remote computing trivial, I suspect any software not required to be running in the event of a network catastrophe will migrate to SaaS - even MS Office, the personification of "Personal" computing, has returned to a type of SaaS model.

Really?

A ha! Do you mean the likes of Office 365?

Is that SaaS then? My role is suitably served with a much older version of the office, and as a programmer I'm involved in build and general UNIX power tools in any case...

As to where to invest, I'd be cautious of direct investment in anything "emerging" in this space. Better (IMHO) to go for a big player with the cash reserves to buy up small companies with good ideas, or else buy a basket of technology via an IT and let the professionals keep an eye on which companies are winning.

Thanks. Can you refer me to any software-focussed ITs?

Many thanks
Matt

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228626

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » June 11th, 2019, 10:56 am

JamesMuenchen wrote:Financial technology. It covers a multitude of sins from Payment to Crypto. Wasn't recommending it specifically, just pointing out that UK has a large attractive tech sector for those who don't want to deal in US stocks.

Thanks.

To be honest though, I don't think you'll find many investable tech stocks using your FA methods , and if you did, you wouldn't be able to live with the volatility. That's not intended as criticism, just an observation .

Don't worry about criticism in any case. All information is useful. I'm starting to agree in any case.

Some have crazy PEs which yoyo all over the shop.

From here about "First Derivatives", my bold:

FD is a fantastic company. The problem is simply valuation. Historically, it has been too highly valued as a software company. However most of FD's revenue is through consultancy, hence the re-rating in October/November. (To put it simply, FD's profits are growing linearly with increased headcount (consultancy) rather than exponentially as would be expected with a software company where increased sales needs little investment in people) It's the balance of actual software/consultancy that will determine its future valuation. You pay your money and take your chance.

Matt

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228630

Postby dspp » June 11th, 2019, 11:00 am

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:Hi VRD,



A ha! Do you mean the likes of Office 365?

Is that SaaS then? My role is suitably served with a much older version of the office, and as a programmer I'm involved in build and general UNIX power tools in any case...


Many thanks
Matt


Of course it is. Why do you think I am recommending you check Msft .......

- dspp

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228632

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » June 11th, 2019, 11:03 am

This looks like an IT somewhat involved in s/w investments (?)

https://www.hgcapitaltrust.com/

The bit about unquoted seems a little scary, but at least they are being upfront about it [*].

* Unlike Mr. Woodford's investment products

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228633

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » June 11th, 2019, 11:06 am

dspp wrote:
TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:Hi VRD,



A ha! Do you mean the likes of Office 365?

Is that SaaS then? My role is suitably served with a much older version of the office, and as a programmer I'm involved in build and general UNIX power tools in any case...


Many thanks
Matt


Of course it is. Why do you think I am recommending you check Msft .......

- dspp

Sure. My issue with the US at present is the current poor £ to $ exchange rates. I'm not ruling out ever making state-side investments, but I just don't think now is the best time for me to do so. Any opinions?

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228635

Postby dspp » June 11th, 2019, 11:15 am

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:
dspp wrote:
TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:Hi VRD,



A ha! Do you mean the likes of Office 365?

Is that SaaS then? My role is suitably served with a much older version of the office, and as a programmer I'm involved in build and general UNIX power tools in any case...


Many thanks
Matt


Of course it is. Why do you think I am recommending you check Msft .......

- dspp

Sure. My issue with the US at present is the current poor £ to $ exchange rates. I'm not ruling out ever making state-side investments, but I just don't think now is the best time for me to do so. Any opinions?


The GBP - USD could get a lot worse and stay worse if the lunatics carry on running the asylum. My point is that you have to run the numbers now and see what they show. Then you can start taking decisions based upon facts.

Also I think you are unlikely to get an investable solution by just running the numbers. You also have to understand the sector, and then figuring out what are the appropriate investment analysis models for the sector, as what is an appropriate lense for a growth sector is not suitable for a decline sector or a cyclical sector etc. I've said the same thing about other sectors in the past when you have asked for input. Problem is I don't think that any of us can become sufficiently informed about all the sectors, and you do seem to be on a stamp collecting journey.

regards, dspp

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228639

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » June 11th, 2019, 11:27 am

dspp wrote:
TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:
dspp wrote:
Of course it is. Why do you think I am recommending you check Msft .......

- dspp

Sure. My issue with the US at present is the current poor £ to $ exchange rates. I'm not ruling out ever making state-side investments, but I just don't think now is the best time for me to do so. Any opinions?


The GBP - USD could get a lot worse and stay worse if the lunatics carry on running the asylum. My point is that you have to run the numbers now and see what they show. Then you can start taking decisions based upon facts.

Maybe. I'm still green on currency so I'm leaving US investments alone.

Also I think you are unlikely to get an investable solution by just running the numbers. You also have to understand the sector, and then figuring out what are the appropriate investment analysis models for the sector, as what is an appropriate lense for a growth sector is not suitable for a decline sector or a cyclical sector etc. I've said the same thing about other sectors in the past when you have asked for input. Problem is I don't think that any of us can become sufficiently informed about all the sectors, and you do seem to be on a stamp collecting journey.

I'm only as you say "running the numbers".

The stamp collection ref. is basically just my way of researching a few ideas ready for the next market correction. I remember last year I looked at several quality firms when they were very pricey. And when we had the autumn/winter correction I felt properly prepared to purchase some of them. It's just my way.

I'm just describing the collection process online......because it elicits feedback and thus more information. ;)

Matt

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228688

Postby gbjbaanb » June 11th, 2019, 1:29 pm

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:One of my other objectives in this thread was to discuss SaaS, or "Software as a Service". As a software engineer myself for the last 25+ years I can't help but view the profitability of this as an investment idea as being a little bit dubious.


"the cloud" was always a fancy word for "data centre server", but because it gained buzzword status, suddenly became much mroe than that.

right now I'm looking at somewhere to host a website. Previously I'd look at 1&! or similar and rent virtual space for £5 a month, but I noticed everything I do has "get it on Azure" "host with Azure" "Azure this" "Azure that" (Azure being Microsoft's cloud), so I looked into that.... £40 a month for a basic package.

And then you realise that SaaS and cloud stuff is about a lot of money being spent, and that means a lot of mareting money used to persuade gullible managers to put their stuff in the cloud, or to offer SaaS products. That these things are also then sold on a subscription (rather than one-off purchase) also means companies selling them rake in the cash.

Microsoft used to sell Office for a few quid. Now they sell Office 365 for a monthly sub.. They've basically changed their entire business model - from selling Windows at first, to selling productivity software like Office, and now they're basically a cloud provisioning and sucscription provider. Hence all the effort put into their mobile stuff - all connected to the cloud, to get people used to paying a small monthly fee...

So SaaS, it isn't going away. The jobs market is all web based stuff now, nobody wants desktop products, its all internet connected, web provisioned, cloud enabled.


The biggest cloud providers now are Microsoft and Amazon, but you could look to others like RedHat who are getting into it with their openshift products, and Google and IBM.

but I think to focus on this is wrong, as they all do it and there's little to differentiate them, chances are the ones to make the most are those who have "enterprise" opportunities, such as MCRO or CCC who can take their big old boring customers and migrate them to a shiny new cloud platform with all the profits from selling the migration, and then the subscriptions forevermore. That's where the money is.

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228695

Postby SalvorHardin » June 11th, 2019, 2:17 pm

dspp wrote:You also have to understand the sector, and then figuring out what are the appropriate investment analysis models for the sector, as what is an appropriate lense for a growth sector is not suitable for a decline sector or a cyclical sector etc. I've said the same thing about other sectors in the past when you have asked for input. Problem is I don't think that any of us can become sufficiently informed about all the sectors, and you do seem to be on a stamp collecting journey.

Indeed. Many years ago I decided that to invest in the IT sector, because it was clearly going to become increasingly important to the global economy. But IT was (and still is) so far outside my circle of competence that the proverbial dart throwing monkey is a much better IT stockpicker than I could ever be.

So I delegated everything IT-related to an investment trust; Polar Capital Technology. Man's gotta know his limitations. That said in the late 1990s I used to run across a lot of IT specialists at work who knew a lot about dotcom companies and their products. Most of them learned the hard way that they knew very little about company valuation.

A major concern for me is that the IT sector has much stronger network effects which reinforce (or weaken) the position of a company than in the sectors where I'm happy to stockpick. The speed with which Excel took the spreadsheet market away from Lotus 1-2-3, or how Netscape went from hero to zero, is not something that you see outside the IT sector.

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228703

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » June 11th, 2019, 2:56 pm

gbjbaanb wrote:right now I'm looking at somewhere to host a website. Previously I'd look at 1&! or similar and rent virtual space for £5 a month, but I noticed everything I do has "get it on Azure" "host with Azure" "Azure this" "Azure that" (Azure being Microsoft's cloud), so I looked into that.... £40 a month for a basic package.

About 8-9 years back I decided I wanted to have a crack at writing server side nonsense (I'm actually a much more systems/low level etc. type nerd). I also wanted email address continuity and offsite backups of stuff.

I tried "Vidahost" they did all the above + domain reg. pretty cheap, and the service was fantastic. I think it was a few chaps in a shed, really dedicated. They are now taken over by these folks https://www.tsohost.com/. I can't comment on them, cos about 6 months ago I decide to simplify my home-geeking life (bored of IT except as a tool or a job), so I cancelled the (cheap) service. I just use free email providers (gmail, aol etc) and free dropbox and I've given up playing with web scripts....

And then you realise that SaaS and cloud stuff is about a lot of money being spent, and that means a lot of mareting money used to persuade gullible managers to put their stuff in the cloud, or to offer SaaS products. That these things are also then sold on a subscription (rather than one-off purchase) also means companies selling them rake in the cash.

Definitely. When I worked on protocol stacks (VoIP) the CEO of firm, was always suspicious of it's merits in our sphere of influence, but we just developed bits and pieces, since he knew it was hyped back then (in the 00s) and we could make sales with VoIP/PSTN gateways to punters trying to do cheap calling card solutions in Peshawar, Mumbai etc.

The biggest cloud providers now are Microsoft and Amazon, but you could look to others like RedHat who are getting into it with their openshift products, and Google and IBM.

but I think to focus on this is wrong,

I agree in a sense. I wanted to start a discussion on it, to see if I was missing anything.

thanks Matt

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228778

Postby JamesMuenchen » June 11th, 2019, 8:21 pm

SalvorHardin wrote:Indeed. Many years ago I decided that to invest in the IT sector, because it was clearly going to become increasingly important to the global economy. But IT was (and still is) so far outside my circle of competence that the proverbial dart throwing monkey is a much better IT stockpicker than I could ever be.

So I delegated everything IT-related to an investment trust; Polar Capital Technology. Man's gotta know his limitations.

I thought the same, but if you look through you'll see that most of these collective funds don't do any stock picking anyway. Its basically all FAANG and other usual suspects.

Looking at your PCT fund top holdings, the only mild surprise is that MSFT is their top holding at 8.5%. I'm sure the team of 7 sector specialists you're paying for don't really add value, anything else they bring in will be too small to move the needle.

Each to his own, but that's how I saw it with my funds.

And it wasn't just tech funds, I saw the same with my Growth/Global Growth funds as well.

So I sold them and put the cash direct in Amazon and MSFT to start and new money goes into my own Saas selections.

My only regret is that I still kept one tech fund as I didnt want the tax hit. Its since doing relatively poorly because Google.

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228798

Postby Urbandreamer » June 11th, 2019, 9:49 pm

JamesMuenchen wrote:I thought the same, but if you look through you'll see that most of these collective funds don't do any stock picking anyway. Its basically all FAANG and other usual suspects.

Looking at your PCT fund top holdings, the only mild surprise is that MSFT is their top holding at 8.5%. I'm sure the team of 7 sector specialists you're paying for don't really add value, anything else they bring in will be too small to move the needle.

Each to his own, but that's how I saw it with my funds.


Elsewhere on TLF we have someone who has sold his SMT for PCT, as they have broadly the same holdings (in his opinion) and SMT is on a premium. I would disagre with both of you. There is quite a difference between a collective that is 1/10th invested in Amazon and another that is 1/35 in Amazon, but 8.5% MSFT. Actually analysts are waking up to how much MSFT make out of cloud services so there is a bit of commonalty. However the point is that there ARE different opinions and, unless you are a dedicated passives investor you pick something that matches your view.

I confess to being a bit of a fan of SMT, who bought into Alibaba before it was publicly quoted and still hold the shares. I have nothing against PCT, it's just not for me. However I also hold the etf ROBG which may or may not be of interest to the OP.
https://roboglobaletfs.com/

It's NOT software, athough it is described as Robotics and AI. So for example they include shares in a gearbox manufacturer! Ok, so their gears went to the moon and are stunningly compact and almost always used in robot wrists, but a gearbox manufacturer? They sit side by side with the likes of Cognex, who apply neural network techneques to machine vision and Nvidia who as well as doing graphics stuff for PC's are into procesing for self driving cars.

PS, yet another 80's software engineer. In this case motion control and embeded systems.

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228817

Postby vrdiver » June 12th, 2019, 12:08 am

Hi Matt,

Just following up on Salvor and DSPP's comments.

I agree with Salvor when he suggests IT experts aren't particularly good at making financial investment decisions in IT; we tend to assume a good technology will be a good investment, forgetting all the other things that make a business succeed or fail.

I think DSPP makes some good points about picking companies like Apple etc.. You might want to read this link for an overview of SaaS investment: https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/08/ ... -saas.aspx Even better may be to pick an IT like your suggested HTG (not a recommendation - just an example). I haven't looked at ITs in this area very much - I'm already overweight with an ex-employer's shares which overlap too much for me to want to add more until I can reduce the current exposure.

Do note that an Investment Trust is not the same as a Fund such as Neil Woodford's recent problem child; in a fund, investors can withdraw their money from the fund, forcing the manager to liquidate assets to raise the cash, which can go horribly wrong, especially with illiquid assets (Neil's problem). With an IT, investors can sell the shares on the open market just like any other company's shares, so whilst they may go up and down in price, the manager doesn't have to raise cash if investors get nervous. Some IT managers will buy and sell their own shares to manage any discount to the underlying NAV, or borrow money (leveraging) which can consume cash, but that's a different issue.

VRD

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228822

Postby Yoda » June 12th, 2019, 4:31 am

Pendrainllwyn wrote:If you are interested in software and IT it might be worth looking at the US market. Isn't that where the world's leading companies in this field are? I doubt the UK will catchup any time soon if ever.

Pendrainllwyn


Completely agree the US has most of the leaders in IT like Goolge, Microsoft, IBM etc. All very stable and have great future prospects. Anit-virus is an evolving field and in my opinion becoming less relevant as operating systems and browsers implement forms of sandboxing to contain executables.

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228825

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » June 12th, 2019, 6:11 am

Urbandreamer wrote:However I also hold the etf ROBG which may or may not be of interest to the OP.
https://roboglobaletfs.com/

It's NOT software, athough it is described as Robotics and AI. So for example they include shares in a gearbox manufacturer! Ok, so their gears went to the moon and are stunningly compact and almost always used in robot wrists, but a gearbox manufacturer? They sit side by side with the likes of Cognex, who apply neural network techneques to machine vision and Nvidia who as well as doing graphics stuff for PC's are into procesing for self driving cars.

Thanks UD,

Good tip, obv. Nvidia I know of well.

PS, yet another 80's software engineer. In this case motion control and embeded systems.

Waa - hey!!

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228826

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » June 12th, 2019, 6:27 am

vrdiver wrote:Do note that an Investment Trust is not the same as a Fund such as Neil Woodford's recent problem child; in a fund, investors can withdraw their money from the fund, forcing the manager to liquidate assets to raise the cash, which can go horribly wrong, especially with illiquid assets (Neil's problem). With an IT, investors can sell the shares on the open market just like any other company's shares, so whilst they may go up and down in price, the manager doesn't have to raise cash if investors get nervous. Some IT managers will buy and sell their own shares to manage any discount to the underlying NAV, or borrow money (leveraging) which can consume cash, but that's a different issue.

Thanks VRD,

I'd pondered that issue. According to HL it is a closed Inv. Co. so won't have same issues as NW's entities.

I'm still really struggling with the idea of using my £s to buy foreign assets. I hear what DSPPs is saying when he states that the £ might sink even more. But that's the future which I don't know, whereas I do have facts on the past which reveal a more advantageous £/$ situation.

And Salvor Hardin did earlier refer to a "circle of competence" (sounds like a Buffet remark). Indeed the £ to the $ is not mine.

Perhaps I'm worrying too much about the £/$ thing. We do have a fidelity OEIC world equity index tracker, I guess that's a foreign investment too (albeit one with a much lower annual charge than PCT).

Matt

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Re: Investing in software and IT, e.g. Softcat, Sophos, Saas

#228827

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » June 12th, 2019, 6:32 am

JamesMuenchen wrote:
SalvorHardin wrote:Indeed. Many years ago I decided that to invest in the IT sector, because it was clearly going to become increasingly important to the global economy. But IT was (and still is) so far outside my circle of competence that the proverbial dart throwing monkey is a much better IT stockpicker than I could ever be.

So I delegated everything IT-related to an investment trust; Polar Capital Technology. Man's gotta know his limitations.

I thought the same, but if you look through you'll see that most of these collective funds don't do any stock picking anyway. Its basically all FAANG and other usual suspects.

You're quite right James. There's no rocket science there at all.

Presumably PCTs NAV should have been hit a tiny bit of late: with DJTs stranglehold on suppliers to Huawei (ALPH and TSMC).

So I sold them and put the cash direct in Amazon and MSFT to start and new money goes into my own Saas selections.

I think if you have the inclination (i.e. using £ to buy $ assets) then this seems to be the best way esp. with PCTs +1.7% fee.

Matt


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