Time to String Up Lauren Booth?

Only in a decadent society in terminal decline could a ghastly creature like Lauren Booth be tolerated. This utterly talentless woman has made a good living for the past 15 years thanks solely to the fact that she is the half sister of the Wicked Witch herself, Ms Cherie Blair.

Now we learn that despite the Daily Mail paying her a vast fortune over the years to churn out unimaginably bad bilge she has declared herself bankrupt. This means that she will avoid paying all the debts she has racked up (thankfully including some to the Wicked Witch) but of course those to whom she owes money will claw it back from other customers who would rather not take the easy route.

To celebrate Ms Booth took herself and her two kids to the Opera where – she admits – the tickets cost £100.

This is almost a Marie Antoinette “let them eat cake” moment from a privileged member of our ruling elite as millions of Britons struggle to make ends meet. Why on earth do we put up with this nonsense? Piano wire was almost  invented for people such as Lauren Booth who live a life far removed from “ordinary folk” who she treats with such obvious contempt.

At the very least the Daily Mail should have the decency to fire this woman at once.  At that point perhaps the devout war criminal Blair or the Wicked Witch could show some Christian charity to the despicable booth and support her with some of their ill gotten gains. The next thing you know the Opera loving Booth will be claiming benefits.  I kid you not and bet you a tin of whiskas that she will be receiving taxpayer support within weeks.

I despair…

Kitosh The Cat​

Taking the Long View

by Tom Winnifrith

The great debate I have with myself about once a week is where to invest on a 30 year view? Occasionally I have this debate with others. The argument goes as follows.

The UK – and to a greater and lesser extent respectively Europe and the US – is in decline. The only question is the speed of that decline. The great growth opportunities lie in Asia and South America. For cultural and historic and sound economic reasons my chosen runner & rider in the BRIC field is India. So should one buy shares (or whole companies) in the UK/Europe/US on a PE of 3, 4,5 or pay more for enterprises in, say, India?

The argument for the UK investment is that the decline will be managed over a couple of decades and so if you can buy on a very low cashflow multiple you will get your money back several times over before the balloon goes up.

The argument for India is two-fold. Firstly you cannot be sure of the pace of UK decline and so if it is quicker than most folks think you may not get the bargain you thought. And secondly the rise of BRIC is inevitable and so you need to get some exposure. The problem with India, etc is that the multiples you pay are higher than in the UK (so you are paying a price for the growth on offer) and also that as a relatively immature market there are risks: accounts may not be utterly pukka, there is some element of endemic corruption and the bureaucracy of doing business is a nightmare.

Having said all of this, I cannot escape the conclusion that 2011 is the year when Rivington Street Holdings as a company and me as a fund manager must start to gain some BRIC exposure and this will happen where we already have relationships and connections, in India. I am, after all, technically entitled to hold an Indian passport since my maternal grandmother was born in pre-independence India. I think that it would be a monumental error to bet the ranch on India and against the west at this stage. I still believe that the value investor can make huge returns in the UK. But now is the time to start taking a long view and gaining some, selective, exposure to the countries which will be the world’s economic powerhouses of the next decades. Watch this space…

Tom Winnifrith
www.t1psim.com
www.JPJShare.com
www.t1ps.com
www.RivingtonStreetHoldings.com

We Are Top of, Top of the League...

I do not of course refer to West Ham. We are bottom of the league. I refer to the two Unit Trusts managed by t1ps Investment Management here in the Isle of Man. The statistics (which you can check out at Trustnet.co.uk) are amazing. If I was Evil I might start getting a bit conceited. I am certainly very proud of the efforts of our team of James Faulkner, Robert Sutherland Smith, Ross Jones, Malcolm Burne, Spiros Kurtidis, Nick Woolard and myself for what we have achieved during 2010.

The SF t1ps Smaller Companies Gold Fund was the best performing Unit Trust out of 2,819 in the UK in 2010. Its one year return is 127.8%. The next best fund (Slater Growth) made 76.7%. The third best performing Unit Trust and the second best performing gold Unit Trust, Smith & Williamson Global Gold and Resources, managed a gain of just 65.8%. Black Rock (the one Hargreaves Lansdowne and others advise their clients seeking gold exposure to back made just 42%). Whatever way you look at it our gold fund did brilliantly.

The SF t1ps Smaller Companies Growth Fund finished the year in the second quartile with a return of 31.8% ( marginally ahead of the sector average of 30.8%). But its three year record (a gain of 78.1%) leaves it as the second best performing small cap fund out of 60. We are just 5.8 percentage points off the lead but 31.6% ahead of the third placed fund. The average return over 3 years of the 60 funds is just 16.7% – and we have managed 78.1%. That is, once again, pretty spectacular.

There is a third table on Trustnet which I might also draw your attention to. It looks at how individual managers have performed in terms of all the funds they manage (in my case two). There are 1,402 lead fund managers in the UK. I attach a link to the one month table as I am only third (and a modest fellow). You can however look at the league table for 6 month, 1 year and 3 year performance and in all those league tables my modesty prevents me from revealing which of the 1,402 fund managers comes top. You can have a play with these league tables by clicking here  

Of course the Daily Morongraph still reckons our funds are nowhere, the Daily Mail does not rate us at all but that is a loss for their readers. The judge and jury for us is hard evidence of absolute returns.

We look forward to a prosperous 2011 and hope that you are prospering with us.

Tom Winnifrith
www.t1psim.com

Buy Park Group (PKG) at 32.5p

First tipped in the July 2010 issue at 20p, Park Group shares have since increased in value by over 59%! But with a strong position in its market, significant asset backing and a good yield, the experts at the AIM & PLUS Newsletter believe the shares have much further to go.