Funds Question

Prism

poppy10_2 said:

Prism said:

aroominyork said:

Prism said:

I would watch a couple of the shareholders meetings videos at https://www.fundsmith.co.uk/tv and decide yourself if you prefer this kind of approach or passive funds instead. 

Not sure I agree with that advice. As a novice (or indeed for many experienced investors, I would think) it's hard not to be impressed by The Terry Smith Show. But it should only be one small part of your decision making process.

Shrug, its where I first started. Its interesting to hear the point of view of the manager of the UKs biggest fund and then decide if its for you or not. I'm sure someone else will post the Lars Kroijer vids for another point of view

If you'd listened to Woodford three years ago you would have lost half your money

Not sure what that has to do with the OPs request since as we both know Woodford doesn't run any funds anymore. Anyway, I did listen to him several years ago - points of view are always interesting even if you disagree

in_your_face

I watched one of Terry Smith's fundholder meetings, and saw him bullying his subordinates, and giving somewhat disingenuous reasons for selling Imperial Brands shares.

On the latter, he had 3 main reasons:

1) It doesn't have enough exposure to the emerging markets, and those are where more growth is expected in tobacco. Which he admittedly knew when he bought the shares; however, at that time he hoped that there would be new opportunities for Imperial from selling Cuban cigars to the USA if there were a let-up in the US blockade of Cuba. And the likelihood of the latter has faded in different political conditions.

I've no real problem with this reason.

2) It has no exposure to vaping / other "next generation" products.

So I looked on Imperial's website, and there was lots about those new products. Now, perhaps he meant they were too slow to move into the new products, or their current position in them wasn't big enough. But why not say so?

3) He quoted a piece of management gobbledegook from Imperial's top management.

So what? Management often comes out with some meaningless spiel. But it doesn't really matter, unless it affects the company's strategic direction.

Now, I'm not saying that TS may not be right about Imperial Brands. Nor that you might not learn something from him.

But you are watching a sales pitch for his actively managed fund. Why would you do that? For a start, it seems to be mixing up two different decisions: should you use active or passive management? and (if you use active) is his fund the one to use? A sales pitch is hardly the right place to answer the first question; you need something more evidence-based for that. And picking the right active manager is a tough job which should involve listening to their sales pitch but also some more solid evidence. You have to ask yourself: do you have the resources and skills to make that pick? Just exposing yourself to sales pitches, without a proper plan about what evidence you need to pick the right manager, is likely to end up with your falling for one of the sales pitches (and it's almost certain to be for one of the most popular managers, because that's who you stumble upon, though not necessarily the first one you come across).

(And if you conclude that picking the right active manager is too hard, that in itself can be a genuinely good reason to choose passive instead.)