Professor Glen Arnold

There are lessons for modern day investors in the way that American Express with its extremely strong franchises can take some duff “strategic” decisions and end up lowering the value of the firm to shareholders.  I must remember that I musn’t assume that those companies I’m looking at today which have historically thrived because they […]

For a book I’m working on I’ve been examining why Warren Buffett bought into American Express in the 1990s.  It is all about the quality of the economic franchises.  I thought it might be useful to describe the thought-process for identifying resilient economic franchises – the basis of Warren Buffett’s approach today. Warren Buffett versus Mr Market What […]

It has been a tumultuous few months on the markets.  To protect the downside risk I sold a number of investments in the winter and early spring, particularly those associated with creating, maintaining or holding property: Dewhurst sold 26th February at £7.22 (buying prices ranged from £3.18 to £5.64) TClarke sold 26th February at £1.1215 (buying price […]

The OECD estimate that United Kingdom GDP will fall by 14% in 2020 if there is a second virus outbreak later in the year (the double-hit scenario). Even if the Covid-19 crisis eases considerably from this point and the economy opens up UK GDP falls by 11.5% this year. That represents an awful lot of bust businesses […]

The Economic Outlook report published a couple of weeks ago predicts very poor prospects for most economies and businesses over the next two years. It presents two possible scenarios: one where the virus continues to recede and remains under control, and one where a second wave of rapid contagion erupts later in 2020. A single-hit […]

Ben Inker is GMO’s Head of Asset Allocation (GMO is a $118bn fund). In GMO’s most recent letter he offered some thoughts on the economy and the market. The title puts his argument pithily “Uncertainty has seldom been higher; oddly, neither has the stock market”. Since March we have had six years of “normal” equity […]

Jeremy Grantham and his team released the latest GMO quarterly letter a couple of weeks ago. In an article entitled “The virus, the economy and the market” he starts by noting the predictability (and predicted) of previous crises, from the Japanese property and equity bubble of the late 1980s, the Tech Bubble of the late 1990s […]

Billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham was brought up in my part of the world; a Doncaster lad who studied economics at Sheffield University (he also picked up an MBA from Harvard – wherever that is). He is co-founder and chief investment strategist of the $118bn GMO asset manager.  His particular interest is bubbles, and last week he […]

On Thursday I bought put options on the Dow Jones Industry Average Index.  The exercise price is 180 and this right to exercise expires on the third Friday in December.   I’ll explain. Let’s start with what a put option is: a right, but not an obligation, to sell the underlying at a fixed price at […]

Character Group (LSE:CCT) has a very good record of producing high profits and return on capital employed. Today we take a closer look at profits generated relative to net tangible assets under the control of the directors. Profits, assets and liabilities £’000s  Year end 31 August   2019   2018   2017   2016   […]