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hello and welcome to our latest Insider interview today in the studio I have with me Nick train for manager of the lindel train UK Equity Fund and the finby growth and income Investment Trust Nick thanks for coming in today Carl it's a pleasure or I think it might be a pleasure I'll tell you in 25 minutes time a lot of our viewers will be very familiar with your investment process but for those that are not could you summarize it to me it's about trying to keep things simple trying to in a sense behave well and by that I don't necessarily mean morally well although I hope that that's also the case we try very hard not to trade too much everybody knows that that's a detractor from value we try very hard not to diversify our portfolios letting them get cluttered by too many ideas keep things simple and we also try very hard to avoid knowingly investing in speculative or low quality Investments and what I found I have to say not over the last couple of years let me just put that in there but what I found is if you follow those three simple tenets don't trade too much keep things concentrated and focused and keep investing in high quality businesses then over time good things can happen for you so the funds and Investment Trust that we're focusing this interview on invest in the UK stock market now UK equities have been out favor for several years now pretty much since the brexit fa why is the UK so unloved and what needs to happen for that to change I agree with you I mean it's been such a frustrating few years as a career-long UK equity guy- which I am um and you know there are so many theories about why the UK's been so disappointing and no one's got any resolutions or answers to it I I have to say I think when you look at what's worked globally over the last 5 years of course it's been either big Tech digital winners or it's been luxury of course you know we've seen the French stock market for a brief period of Time nudger ahead of the UK in terms of its market cap because France is the home to Von and and Ms and and others and I suppose you have to say if the UK had either had a true Global Tech winner or preferably two or three an apple say or it had had a Heritage luxury stock maybe people would be feeling more enthusiastic about this Market I I think to me that's the the absolute knob of the issue um I would say though that if you look just underneath let's say the top 10 or 15 biggest companies in the UK actually I think there are reasons to be encouraged because there are a number of in our opinion anyway true globally significant Tech winners in the UK and were invested in some of them and also some if not luxury certainly premium product companies also um invest in the UK which well all of those that I'm alluding to to us look undervalued and maybe global asset allocators are missing a trick if they don't come back and have a look at this uh Market in more depth the UK Market has a rich dividend Heritage but income Seekers they now have more Choice due to those interest rate Rises that have been taking place since the end of 20121 you can now get around about 5% on cash and also on certain types of bonds such as short datas UK government bonds known as guilts so how would you make the case for UK equities versus those other assets which are considered lower risk well I I think I would say never invest in equities for income if you need income then as you wisely remark there are many other assets that you can turn your attention to but you invest in equities for however trite it sounds longterm protection of the purchasing power of your capital and if you're more than a bit lucky some real growth as well I I I think it's so important to make this uh this fundamental observation I I hear people saying should I be investing in guilts should I be investing in cash deposits listen the best investment to make is backing honest smart hardworking people with a good idea do you know what I mean that that's what that's what really makes you money investing with capable honest people who've got a good idea for a business and we are I still think not withstanding what we've just said about the UK stock market we are fortunate that we live today in what is still an open fair business oriented economy and I said it's a shame we don't have an apple and it is but a bit of that truly I think is bad luck you know there's enough res Arch going on in our universities there's enough people starting up businesses in all fields to make me believe in 10 years time we'll look back and say that was just a blit for the UK this is actually an entrepreneurial honest business oriented culture and you ought to make money investing in that culture and just following on about your point about income in a recent note to investors you made the point that several of your companies you think the share price would be higher if their respective boards focused on maximizing organic growth over dividends so could you elaborate a bit more on this does this reflect that you think the the face for income among investors is over prioritized by some companies there's a variety of explanations for why the UK stock market has been disappointing um one of them I don't think it's the only one is you could arguably blame my generation of professional investors um I'm not going to say how old I am but I was active in the market from the early 1980s onwards and there was a quarter of a century probably maybe even slightly longer there was a quarter of a century where investing for income really worked in the UK stock market and I was part of that period and like a lot of professional investors of my vintage got into the way of thinking that all you needed to do was invest in a share on a reasonably attractive dividend yield and tell the board to keep growing the dividend at all costs yeah we got into that habit I think in hindsight and the lesson of the United States the lesson of NASDAQ is there for us all to see is that that that is a destructive way for companies to run themselves companies we want them to focus on organic growth opportunities and if that means investing all of the earnings and not paying out any dividends that's that's really what we need and so maybe there has been a cultural issue for the UK um I hope perhaps it's changing a bit even at a individual stock level you you mentioned what I wrote in the report we've had really candid conversations with senior Executives and some of the companies we're invested in questioning the dividend policy and in some cases I think I'm pleased to say they've either slowed the rate of dividend growth or in some cases not grown the dividend at all all reinvested more in the business and we've seen some better outcomes as a result of that so let's move back to to the way that you invest so as you mentioned you sell them trade you buy and hold for the long term you look for high quality growth businesses in terms of your existing Holdings how often are you taking profits or do you continually run your winners barely ever you know I think your terminology is exactly correct the effect and I I mustn't say it more strongly than this because I don't have a lot to shout about at the moment but okay you know we're all trying to do our best according to a set of investment principles and approach but absolutely at the heart of what I'm trying to do we're trying to do is identify winners that's not so easy identify winners and then run them because when you look back over history and I'm talking decades it's amazing how well companies and share prices do if you forget about the two or threee noise you you know you can suddenly look up 10 years later and think my God you know I almost without noticing this thing's trebled that's the sort of effect we're trying to capture is there anything wrong with taking your profits and reinvesting no there's nothing wrong with it is running your winners and not trading the edges of your portfolio always right no no I can demonstrate it's not always the right way to do it what I would say though for us one it works with us kind of psychologically cuz it's what we want to do two the one thing for sure about the sort of activity you're talking about is that it's costly you know there are transaction costs involved in taking profits and reinvesting and what you're reinvesting has to do as well as what you've sold and I figure that just at the margin with no guarantee of superior performance but just at the margin doing as little as we do keeps more pennies within the portfolio keeps more pounds over time within the portfolios that's that's all I'd say the fund and the Investment Trust have around 20 Holdings do you have like a universe of stocks that you you think you know I've got 35 40 stocks that I could select if the price is right for example or do you not think about it in that way we absolutely do think about it in that way and you're right there are roughly 20 Holdings currently there there's easily another 50 that we could we could we could access question is always though by the way let me say this um going back to how we do it the other thing I think it's important is to be fully invested all of the time so when people entrust their savings to our Equity strategy I don't want to hold cash for them I'm assuming they've sorted their cash their income requirements out somewhere else they've come to us the equity Market to own equities so I'm pretty you know I'm fully invested all of the time so I maybe have 15 other interesting ideas but I've got to be sure they're more interesting than what I currently own um because if they're not then I'm just shuffling debt chairs on the Titanic no I don't mean that you know I'm just I'm just shuffling assets around and and costing my investors my investors money I do think you know there's such an emphasis in this business placed on what's your next idea what's the novelty that you can show me have you done something for me over the last quarter and you know grass isn't always greener you know sometimes it is best to stick with what you already own um anyway that's our mindset so that leads on to my next question when was the last time you had a new idea an actionable new new idea or a new idea that could be on a substitute bench that you could one day invest in well I'm going to be a COI and a bit of a tease we're currently actioning a new idea for the UK strategy we initiated it about 3 weeks ago it's a company that we first seriously looked at about eight years ago we've monitored it ever since maybe it would have been better if we bought it 8 years ago but it definitely wouldn't be better if we bought it 5 years ago it's done nothing for about 5 years the Stars aligned and this seemed like an interesting time for us to initiate a new holding that's the third new position in this UK strategy since 20120 to me that feels quite active but I guess for most professional investors it would seem like lacad isical inactivity but you know just to give you an idea yeah uh so I guess that's one one new idea every year something like that on average Nick thank you for your time today well Carl Andel thank you and your viewers that's it for this episode you can check out the rest of our Insider interview series on our YouTube channel you can like comment and subscribe and I'll hopefully see it again y
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