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2024 in review - geopolitics, AIM woes, and the most-viewed stocks on Stockopedia
1k Plays4 months ago
In our final episode of 2024, Lawrence sits down with Megan Boxall to review the year that was 2024. We discuss the year’s big winners against a turbulent geopolitical backdrop, a tough 12 months for UK stocks, and highlight some interesting trends and insights into the stocks which Stockopedia subscribers have been looking into over 2024.
If you enjoyed this, you can read daily analysis on noteworthy and hard-to-research shares with Stockopedia’s Daily Stock Market Report. You’ll also unlock award-winning investing insights, tools, and education to speed up your research process and help you make more informed decisions.
Try Stockopedia free for 14 days at stk.pe/pod.
Let us know what you thought of this episode: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NG3L235
Extra Stockopedia content we mention:
Sign up for our January webinars here: https://www.stockopedia.com/academy/events/
Translating the market lingo (subscriber only): stockopedia.com/content/translating-the-market-lingo-1018436
The top 20 clearest trending US stocks - with dominant returns over UK small and mid caps (subscriber only): stockopedia.com/content/the-top-20-clearest-trending-us-stocks-with-dominant-returns-over-uk-small-and-mid-caps-1016205
The top 20 clearest trending mid-caps - and some more themes for 2025: stockopedia.com/content/the-top-20-clearest-trending-midcaps-and-some-more-themes-for-2025-1015223
The top 20 clearest trending small caps - with implied themes for 2025 (subscriber only): stockopedia.com/content/the-top-20-clearest-trending-small-caps-with-implied-themes-for-2025-1014683
The case for Overlapping Value - An alternative approach to valuation (subscriber only): stockopedia.com/content/the-case-for-overlapping-value-an-alternative-approach-to-valuation-1017536
Presented by: Lawrence Judd and Megan Boxall
Disclaimer: We do not provide personalised financial advice. None of our content constitutes or should be understood as constituting a recommendation to enter in any securities transactions or to engage in any investment strategies discussed in our content. We do not provide personalised recommendations or views as to whether a stock or investment approach is suited to the financial needs of a specific individual. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment based on your own personal circumstances.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, Lawrence from the editing studio here just before we get into today's episode. I hope you had a lovely Christmas. I just wanted to give a quick heads up that ah there are a couple of crackles in Megan's audio track at times. I've done what I can to mitigate those, reduce those. um It shouldn't impact things too much. We still think you're going to get a lot out of this episode. That's all. Enjoy the episode.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Companies and Markets Weekly. A couple of things just before we get started. We are recording this ahead of its release date, just so we can have a bit of a Christmas break.
00:00:52
Speaker
But what that does mean is that if we mention any statistics or any particular bits of data, obviously they were correct at the time of recording, which is about a week before it's meant to go out. Hopefully nothing changes too drastically between now and then. um But just a little disclaimer that data was correct at the time of recording may have changed a little bit since then.
00:01:12
Speaker
Uh, other things as with all of our episodes, we may mention individual stocks. Obviously this is not financial advice stocks go down as well as up. We may hold some of the stocks that we talk about. Uh, if we do, we will disclose that in the, certainly in the episode description, we'll try and mention it live as well. Um, but yeah, now let's get into it. I'm joined this week by our head of content, Megan. Hello, Megan.
00:01:40
Speaker
Hi, thanks for thanks for having me. um And thanks for scheduling this recording, as you say, not quite in the ah main hubbub of Christmas. So yeah that's good. You're getting us before we've both eaten and drunk a lot over the Christmas period. So hopefully we may be sharp. Maybe slightly sharper and fresher than we might otherwise be. um This week's episode again, a little different from our standard fare.
00:02:09
Speaker
um were going to take a look back at the year that was 2024 and what a year it's been. Yes, ah what a year it's been. I think a stat Lawrence that you um you like because you've added it to the notes and you've also said it pre-recording. So, i'll let I'll let you say it, but it's a good one. It is a good one. I mean, obviously, we'll dig into the markets and the companies in a bit and that will obviously be the the main focus of all of this. But
00:02:41
Speaker
It's been hard to exist in 2024 without being aware of the the global so geopolitical backdrop to to all of this, which I think has had some influence on on how the stock markets have played out over the year. We've had more than 60 elections across the world.
00:03:01
Speaker
won South Korean impeachment. I did look up whether we'd had any coups in Africa. We'd had seven since 2020, but apparently we had none this year. oh Things have been calm in Africa. They haven't been calm anywhere else. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. I think, um yeah as you say, it's the it's the companies that we we really like to talk about in soccer media, but it's hard to get away from the fact that politics has had a ah fairly big role in how the markets have been behaving.
00:03:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I was doing a little bit of reading ahead of this, and I found a ah really fascinating essay by the Pew Research Institute in Washington. um And one one bit of data that they shared stood out to me was that they polled a whole bunch of people across 34 different countries. And in each country, a median of 64% of people said they felt that the current economic situation in their country was bad.
00:03:57
Speaker
and more than half of them said they felt the way that democracy was working in their country, they were dissatisfied with it. So, I mean, my sense is that we, but this year especially, people have come out and are very willing to talk about how broadly unhappy they are with the the quote unquote, the systems that are governing and sort of having a major influence on their lives. and Obviously the the markets are one of those.
00:04:27
Speaker
ah Obviously, we very recently in the States, we've had the the murder of a ah healthcare insurance company CEO. And it's been really interesting to look at the the response to that from people, which again is is very much this this bubbling sentiment of we're not happy with the way that things are going. how like Looking ahead, how insulated do you think markets and companies are from this these effects of people just not being happy with the systems that they're in place at the moment? um I actually don't think they're very insulated. I i think ah the fact that we are kicking off this podcast and it's what we're talking about, I've read today an article which is going to be published by the time everyone listens to this, but it is not published at the time of recording, but it's it's been written by Mark and he has started. 2024 has been a been a momentous year and
00:05:22
Speaker
he's talked about the political situation. He's talked about the UK has had the first Labour government in 14 years. he's He said perhaps as much as a protest at the terrible job of the previous incumbents. The US has elected Donald Trump despite him possessing character traits that would have discorded disqualified him from any office, um let alone the highest one. i think i I think it is very, very hard to talk about markets be involved in markets, invest anything without having some sort of awareness. and So I don't think they're particularly insulated. um I think because there is a lot of, obviously, i sentiment, positive, negative sentiment um that ah that drives what but how investors are what investors are doing. And I think more so than
00:06:15
Speaker
ever in my investing life have the behaviours and traits of the actual market had so much of an influence over what's doing well and what's doing badly. And I think it will be interesting when we talk a bit about some of the numbers, but looking at the individual stocks that have performed well, the individual sectors that have performed well, the markets that have performed well,
00:06:40
Speaker
it is very, very hard to make a fundamental investment case on those best performing um stock sectors markets. um And I think that makes it incredibly difficult to find opportunities. It also means that there are opportunities um which are not being priced in by the market at the moment. and but it does make it very, very difficult to find and time them. And I think that is largely because we are currently in a period of pretty turbulent economic times. yeah i was I was looking at not just the the stocks in the markets that have gone up, but obviously reminding ourselves over the course of this year, gold has gone up about 28%.
00:07:24
Speaker
Bitcoin has more than doubled. It's now more than $100,000 per Bitcoin, not that we're going to talk about Bitcoin primarily. um Coffee is also up 74% year to date, which obviously makes it incredibly difficult for millennials to afford houses. um So looking at the years, lots of things have gone up.
00:07:44
Speaker
yeah Yeah, absolutely. I think um yeah the price of gold gold is um has a lot of investors know that it's an asset that investors ah flock to when they're looking for a safe haven. It's a so-called safe haven asset. It's funny that Bitcoin is enjoying a similar um surge. Potentially, we are seeing new entrants to the market this year. and We're seeing more and more investors of a younger demographic. I think the continued evolution of platforms, brokers, digital or fintech, which is allowing more and more entrants to the market, which is allowing more and more people to access um assets like Bitcoin in an easy way. um I think yeah i think that that's an interesting factor at play. um
00:08:34
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, Bitcoin, I don't understand it. I don't touch it because I don't understand how it keeps going to these driving to these new heights. ah Gold, I understand a bit more. um I get that there is ah a strong market for gold when people don't really know what's going on. um how long it will last in 2025, I'm not sure. um yeah the the the price The soaring price of coffee is to do with is to do with farming conditions um and we've seen that in a few of the agricultural commodities. they um yeah A weak season um
00:09:10
Speaker
makes the price go up and that that has happened for for coffee beans. um And as I referred to in my week ahead last week, if you want to understand that more, I highly suggest watching Trading Places over Christmas because that is a fantastic film for understanding the price of commodities.
00:09:28
Speaker
um I've not seen it. Have you not seen Trading Places? No, no. You're in for a treat. I will have to watch it. i When you said it was your favourite investing film, I was like, what so was mine? I do like The Big Short. Yeah. There was a comment on that article which said, um you're wrong, it's The Big Short. In terms of individual companies that have done well badly this year,
00:09:51
Speaker
um it's hard to look past the US tech sector as a starting point for that. Yeah, yeah it is. And I think, um I mean, when you're looking at markets as a whole and the performance this year, it is very, very hard to look past the US tech sector. Obviously, people talk about the performance of the US in 2024, and they talk about how wonderful it's been. It has, the S and&P 500 is up 28% this year. um But drilling down into why it's performed so well, I think is very interesting. And I think it actually
00:10:23
Speaker
presents a bit more of a negative story. um Yeah. So, S&P 500 up 28%. S&P 500 tech index up 44%. Magnificent seven. So, that's the seven biggest stocks in the U.S. includes Apple, Amazon, Google, and crucially, Nvidia. So, Magnificent seven as a whole up 71%. Nvidia up 171% in the last year. So, I
00:10:54
Speaker
US tech, specifically artificial and but artificial intelligence, has been a major, major driver of the strength in the S and&P 500 in the US tech space. um ah The fact that ah this the US markets are driven higher and higher by passive fund inflows, the seven magnificent seven, um currently account for about 40% of the S and&P 500, which is a ah it's a market cap weighted index. So, it feeds a virtuous circle of well demand and growth. So, more investment, more passive funding flows, the bigger these biggest stocks get.
00:11:37
Speaker
And that's great if you're holding the S and&P 500. So I do. I i track the S and&P 500. And it's far and away my best investment this year, um and ah which is which I'm pleased with because, yes, but some of my individual holdings have not done so well. But it is interesting that that has largely come from a handful of stocks. It is not the S and&P 500 as a whole, um which is interesting, which is potentially a little bit worrying. And it's something that I wrote about quite ah quite a while ago. It was just before the pandemic.
00:12:18
Speaker
um that obviously this trend can reverse. If passive fund fund outflows start to happen, then the biggest sector the biggest stocks within those passive funds will be the worst hit. The money will come out and the bubble might well maybe not burst, maybe that's a little bit too drastic, but certainly deflate. um And I think that is something to be wary of.
00:12:46
Speaker
The reason I am not currently wary of it is because I don't think the AI market has got anywhere near the point of maximum, the point of no more growth. We saw Broadcom um at the start of December release its financial results for 2024.
00:13:05
Speaker
and Broadcom is a is a semiconductor company. um it It isn't actually a direct competitor to Nvidia. It operates in the AI market as well, but it operates more in the software space and Nvidia is more in the hardware space. ah But Broadcom said that their current addressable market is worth about $20 billion. dollars And they're expecting that by 2027, it's going to be between 60 and $90 billion. dollars So, that's within three years and it's already a market that's worth a huge amount more than it was at the start of this year. So, I do think it's hardly surprising that the US tech sector or the tech sector, the AI sector and in general has has been driving markets to new highs and I think it's likely to continue.
00:13:52
Speaker
And I think we only have to look at some of the valuations in the US to, I think, possibly see how how full the keg has been stuffed. Yeah. So the current average price to earnings ratio for stocks on the S and&P is 23. The NASDAQ, apparently, has averaged a PE of 25 since 2006. That was from a pension craft video I watched. The Magnificent 7, I think you've done some numbers on that. And they're at 53 average.
00:14:22
Speaker
Tesla's forward PE e is currently, according to our stock reports, 135. yep
00:14:31
Speaker
Tesla and CrowdStrike are not even in the Magnificent Seven. Tesla is. Oh, Tesla is, is it? My bad. Okay. CrowdStrike, people may remember from earlier this year, ah deciding to take every single Microsoft device offline for a period of time. and They've recovered from that mishap. They're now trading on a 4P of 81 again. These are ludicrous numbers, aren't they? Yeah, they are. and I think this is this is my current problem with um with investing in the US. It's so difficult to make a rational, fundamental investment case. um I think
00:15:12
Speaker
ah tesla ah Tesla is an interesting one. Tesla very much a um ah company which is which benefits from the voice, that the celebrity of its chief executive um of the fact that it it has it's a car company, but it's not being pitched as one. It's not being valued as one. it's not being it's not The markets don't see it as ah as a car company. It's worth, I can't remember what the exact status, but it's something like it's worth more than four times the value of the next biggest 10 car companies in the world put together. um ah Not a car company, really. um But um I think the general point about
00:16:00
Speaker
big US tech valuations is there's just no point in even looking at them. I i made a sell case for Apple probably about three years ago when it crossed the $1 trillion dollar barrier. I just said there there were a few little things. It was when it was going through a um it was when it was going through a bit of a a legal problem with the company that makes um the Fortnite gaming world.
00:16:29
Speaker
um And I thought like any little flip up like that, any little legal wrangling would knock it off its perch, knock it off, knock that, make people really question the PE ratio. But it's now worth three times that. um And we see it the same with with Alphabet. Alphabet has had a very high profile legal case this year, which concluded you need to split out Chrome. Its share price is up in the year. like That's just extraordinary that it can be going through such a a really, yeah, high profile.
00:17:04
Speaker
risk to its ongoing operations. And people are still wanting to buy. um it's ah yeah it It's interesting. I also found it very, very interesting that when we spoke to our subscribers, we we said um we asked them what kind of analysis they'd be most interested in. We gave them a list. um And they put under the radar US stocks ahead of high-profile US stocks.
00:17:32
Speaker
And i think that is I think that's really interesting. I think there is so much coverage of high profile US stocks. And I think there is enough fundamental value in in the US, in the companies in the US, although it's very hard to make an investment case as a private investor on those stocks. um That means that they are going to keep driving higher. I think um with Donald Trump now as the president and with his very much US big business focus, the regulation that is required to stop these companies completely dominating the world isn't going to happen. And until that happens, until someone really changes the regulation and says, no, I bet you can't own Google Chrome and
00:18:29
Speaker
the search engine that is ah it it it that is on everyone's devices um and you need to spin it out right now. I i can't see how these companies will be stopped um from getting bigger and bigger. I also can't necessarily see a situation in which, even if what Alphabet were told that, that they would I can't see a situation in which anyone will be able to force them to comply with that because they are so big. yeah yeah and so yeah i think yeah I think it's an interesting time to be an investor. I think it's different. people People have often made comparisons with the dot-com bubble, but a lot of the stocks that were
00:19:16
Speaker
um training on ridiculous valuations that were just complete speculations. These big stocks are not speculations. These are dominant forces in everyone's lives, and we can't avoid using them anymore. like I've had an argument with someone recently because they were refusing to use Amazon for their Christmas presents.
00:19:36
Speaker
And I was a little bit frustrated because this person also admitted that they were among the top 10%, I think it was, of spenders on Amazon, because they use Kindle, they use Audible, because it's very practical to use Kindle and Audible. yeah They also can't avoid using Amazon Web Service. We use it at work. um like that's that Those are the servers that we that we use.
00:20:02
Speaker
so All you're doing by shirking Amazon at Christmas is annoying yourself and people who then have to listen to you moan about the fact that you've got to drudge into London to go and do your shopping or delivery times are rubbish because you're using Amazon. You're using Amazon every day even um even if you don't want to be. um I'm sure Jeff Bezos is really annoyed in his spaceship.
00:20:29
Speaker
yeah Should we move on to the UK? Yes. Which is safe to say, not had such a good year. Certainly not relative to the US. No.
00:20:45
Speaker
No, definitely not. So, FTSE all share up 6%. I mean, at least it's up. AIM yeah down by the same amount. um It's been a very bad year to be an AIM investor. So, it's not just that it's down 6%. It's actually down 11% from its highs, so that it hit highs in May. um And since then, it's been it's been a rough second half of the year for AIM investors. um But i having drilled into this a little bit more,
00:21:14
Speaker
I feel like there are reasons for optimism because there are lots of sectors that have performed very well um in within the FTSE this year. um Aerospace and defence, driven by Rolls-Royce, BAE, the tech index, i mean nowhere near as strong, obviously, as the US. Even the retail index um done better outperformed the FTSE all share.
00:21:42
Speaker
um so i think There are reasons to be cautiously optimistic about being an investor in the UK because there are opportunities and I think it's particularly good for stock pickers because there are opportunities for good companies um and the market is still rewarding good companies which perform well, which beat expectations again and and again. um So,
00:22:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think while it hasn't been a particularly happy year to be or particularly easy year to be a UK-focused investor, and there is a lot of rubbish in the UK, I also think there's a lot of good and um hopefully some opportunities. so yeah obviously I think a lot of AIM stocks took a real battering in the lead up to the budget this year because they were expecting a big shift in inheritance tax and business rates relief.
00:22:43
Speaker
um Do we expect that to continue, sort of the the the consequences of that to continue unwinding in the first few months of 2025? Probably not in the first few months because so the changes to business rate relief um don't come into play until the next tax year tax year. So not the one that starts in April 25, it's the one that starts in April 26. So AIM has still got another whole tax year oh um of the 100% relief from um inheritance tax.
00:23:14
Speaker
um I think that AIM as a whole does need some looking at. I think there was there's so much junk on on the market. And it's shrinking. It's shrinking quite drastically. And we're seeing, because the quality is diminishing, fearing fewer companies are looking to list on AIM, looking to list on the UK. I was annoyed a few weeks ago when we were all talking about Sheen or Xi'an or whatever it's called, the Chinese fashion company. And oh, yes, finally, a company wants to list in the UK. We don't want that listing in the UK. It's rubbish. It's a horrible company.
00:23:52
Speaker
um ah There are so many brilliant companies in the UK. There is so much innovation coming out of our universities. um Let's look at finding some appetite for for that sort of company to list list here rather than a ah questionable retailer from China. Yes, i I agree. I went and looked back at a couple of articles that our CEO Ed wrote over the last month or so about ah
00:24:28
Speaker
the top trending stocks over the last year. He was looking at stocks that have really been on the move. And I thought it was interesting because he he rounded each of those articles off. I will link them in the episode description with ah some of the themes that he pulled out because we he analyzed the sectors that were they were behind those stocks. um For the UK small caps, he said the big build is coming. So he's talking about house builders and he said in a gold rush sell picks and shovels. ah Gold is back and ah this also, ah this effect was also seen in UK mid-caps. There were lots of gold miners ah rallying around, defense spending, and particularly cybersecurity as well. You mentioned tech earlier. um In the mid-cap space, there was also there was more construction and infrastructure, but then also um I think going looping back to what we said near the start about
00:25:25
Speaker
ah Bitcoin and new investors coming into the market, there was apparently a big rise in certain trading and investment platform stocks, so CMC markets, plus 500. Interesting stuff.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah, so companies like that benefit when markets are volatile because there's more trading that happens. CMC Markets, IG, plus 500, they all um make most of their money um yeah from from from volatility, from from um investors and coming in and out of the market. IG in particular makes it on um makes a lot of money on yeah investors buying and selling on leverage. um and And yeah, volatile markets tend to support outperformance in those kind of
00:26:16
Speaker
in those kind of companies. um We've seen St James's Place has recently gone back into the FTSE 100 as well. I don't don't love St James's Place, but it is the kind of company that benefits when people are worried about their financial situation. um More people seeking advice, more people wanting to do more with their money. So um so yeah, companies like that.
00:26:38
Speaker
tend to do quite well. um and um And on the point about the the momentum, I think the the best performing stock in the FTSE 100 this year is Rolls-Royce, um which has very much been a momentum play um in 2024.
00:26:55
Speaker
it um It has benefited from people being wary about defense and the increase in defense spending. But it's also just going up and up and up because people are worried about missing out. There is, for the last few months, there hasn't really been and a value argument to be made at all about Rolls-Royce. ah This used to be, this is a big lumbering, I mean, it's a massive company. um And it's not a ah fast mover at all.
00:27:29
Speaker
but its share price just continues to rise up 98% this year. And that is a real testament to the fact that winning stocks keep winning. And I think that for me is one of my biggest takeaways from 2024. I've never really fully understood the momentum factor. It is one of the three factors that we use in our in our stock ranks, in our QVM method. And i've I've always struggled to get my head around momentum. But 2024, it's been a real case study in the power of that factor. Even in markets that aren't doing particularly well, like the FTSE 100 hasn't been a spectacular market.
00:28:08
Speaker
but the the companies, the individual companies with the wind in their sails have just continued to rise even when earnings maybe haven't kept pace with thee ah with the pace of growth of the shares. One of our colleagues, Dan, has also been doing some analysis and bringing up some insights from from our platform and from our users on the platform. Megan, do you want to speak to some of those?
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah, I found these really, really interesting. so i'm yeah There's more detail about this in the in the article that I published last week. um But some of the some of the key highlights, some of the things that we were really looking at here is um where our users have been searching for stocks. and i was I went to Dan because I was interested. I thought, with all the strength in the US this year, have our users been searching for US stocks more than they had done in the past? We tend to see UK stocks among our most viewed almost every single day, occasionally in video shows up.
00:29:09
Speaker
um but ah But yeah, as as expected, in the UK stocks continue to be the most searched for. But there are some sectors, the US in particular, where our users have looked to the US s sorry for their for most of their searching, so software and IT services.
00:29:30
Speaker
in particular, um semiconductors. um that is where 20% of people who were looking for stocks in the US were looking for semiconductors or software and IT companies. Surprisingly, ah just under 10% of people who were searching the UK markets on Stockopedia were also searching for software and semiconductor companies. um Obviously, a lot lower than ah than the number of people searching in the US. But I thought that was really interesting. The other other thing I thought was quite interesting about this was the comparison
00:30:06
Speaker
of the most search for stocks within those sectors, which I think this is a slightly less positive thing for the UK. So, in the UK, the top three search for stocks in software, the software sector, were InterSeed, Cohort, which I would argue is a defence company, and Beek's Financial Cloud.
00:30:26
Speaker
um In the US it was Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta platforms. They're just not really comparable as as companies and I ah feel like we could be doing better in the UK. But then there are also sectors where I think there are some brilliant companies which are being well-searched for among are ah among our users. And I think um one of these um is the biotech and medical research sector. um Again, US, more popular than in the UK. But the three most searchful stocks were HVivo, Bioventix, and Genus, which are all really brilliant stocks. And it compares to Moderna, which was known for its COVID vaccine, but hasn't done an awful lot of good since then. And and two others, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and and Medpace Holdings, which again, not particularly magnificent companies. um So I think there is some price to be taken in the fact that we have got um we've got some great small companies in a very innovative, very exciting area of the market.
00:31:41
Speaker
I guess the question is, at what point do people sit up and finally take notice of them? We also had some other colleagues doing some some research this year, haven't we? They've got some interesting insights. Yeah, we've we've done a lot of a lot of research into various different topics, um which I encourage anyone to who hasn't read some of the some of the topics to to check them out. um Alex has looked into um but all sorts of things, but most recently he's looked into the difference in individual value ratios um and and out how they can hint at potential app performance for for companies. and The companies which tend to do the best, the value plays which tend to do the best, score highly on multiple value ratios. so
00:32:32
Speaker
we've spent a fair amount of time today talking about the PE ratio. But actually, if you're looking for value investments, ah looking beyond the PE ratio at the stocks which score well on three or more um value ratios can be a good way of identifying winners. And there's some research that we're going to continue into the new year. We'll look at it for quality and momentum as well. Ed has started looking at it with momentum, and he's found a similar similar sort of of insight. So that's a bit of a ah breaking breaking news a headline for you because that's not research that we've published yet. But he has found a a similar thing. So companies that are doing well, their momentum score or their share price momentum is high across both 50-day and 200-day moving averages.
00:33:20
Speaker
is ah ah more likely to continue to outperform than those that only um ah scoring highly on one of those. So um so yeah, lots of lots of interesting insights. Interesting to the extent that we've decided to b split out our blogs. um So weve we any users will have seen a new blog structure. um Last month um in in November, we yeah we changed up our blog structure, which will allow us hopefully to ah keep providing these data insights because I think they're i think they're really interesting. and it's It's certainly making me think more about my investing and how to use maybe more um maybe what I have previously previously considered as quite unusual um investment techniques um
00:34:06
Speaker
are really momentum-driven, like some some elements of value in there, um some deep value. I think I've never really looked at deep value before, but I think ah there are there are certainly some some deep value opportunities in the UK at the moment and money to be made on earth on a short-term basis. And yeah, and hopefully some of these data insights will will help more of our users benefit from benefit from the kind of knowledge that we have within Stockipedia.
00:34:36
Speaker
What's been your favorite bit of content on the site this year? I have to say that today I read a bit of a spoof article that Mark wrote um about ah translating the market lingo. And it honestly made me laugh out loud, which is potentially a bit of a nerdy thing to um to admit. I was thinking about like showing, I was thinking about showing my sister and being like, this is a really funny article. And then I was like, actually, she's not going to care ah But yeah, it really it really made me laugh. And I think the other thing about it is it's very true. um I hate companies which use ridiculous jargon and lingo to pretend that they're not doing as badly as they are. And yeah, mark Mark's written it all out um in ah in slightly cynical, um but but amusing.
00:35:25
Speaker
um Yeah, ah an amusing way. So I i recommend i recommend that. i I feel like that is doing a slight disservice to some of the research that both Mark and Alex in particular have done this year, because there has been some really, really interesting research. um Another article that I found really, really interesting um and opened my eyes a lot, as I say, to momentum is an article that Roland wrote about the impact that momentum has had in his his investing. He runs our SIF folio. um And that has he he said that he's been really surprised at the ah the impact that momentum the momentum factor has had in that portfolio. um And I think that's a really useful insight, especially in a year like the year we've had. Nice. My favourite one, I think, was a webinar that you and Ed did recently on When to Sell.
00:36:19
Speaker
I thought that was really eye-opening. We had some but some really good feedback on that one as well. It was a hotly requested topic from from people who've attended our webinars. We asked people what they wanted to see and that was that came through loud and clear as people wanted to understand when to sell.
00:36:36
Speaker
Yeah. I think that will what was really interesting about that is that we've always said it's a really hard question to answer. There's no right there's no right answer. And it's true, there isn't. But I was actually surprised at how clear an answer we could provide to that question, because it's not about there is no one rule. But there are rules and there are very clear rules that can be followed with when to sell. And I think a lot of it comes down to the kind of investor that you are. um i yeah I tell myself that I'm a buy and hold forever um investor, which means I never have to address that question, but it's partly a bit of an excuse so I can be a little bit lazy. But um i I do think that
00:37:20
Speaker
yeah depending on the type of investor you are and your holding periods, um what you want the money for, what you are investing for. I think there are answers to that when to sell question and a lot of data, a lot of research that backs it up. So um yeah, i found that I found that very interesting. I agree. I will use this to shamelessly plug the fact that we have a calendar of events planned for the beginning of 2025.
00:37:49
Speaker
We do. We do. I will provide a link in the description of this episode where you can go and check those out and sign up for them if you would like to come along. um Yeah. My other favorite development of this year was the fact that we started this. Yes. Finally, a good, a good development and looking forward to seeing more of them in the new year. Absolutely. And on that note, I think we're going to wrap it up there. Thank you very much, Megan. Thank you.
00:38:13
Speaker
And thank you very much for listening. If you haven't done so already, we would appreciate, really, really appreciate you rating us on wherever, whichever platform you're listening on. I think all of them offer some ability to give a star rating. ah You can leave comments, you can leave reviews. I go and read all of them and because I want to make sure that this is as good as possible. And if you have, if you know of anyone who you think would benefit from hearing about our podcast and listening to it,
00:38:41
Speaker
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