March 2018

UK INVESTOR MONEY // SHARES // INTERVIEWS

ISSUE 31 // MARCH 2018

Kicking sporting sexism into touch?

SIX INVESTMENT TIPS • FREE SPEECH JOKES • BREXIT THE UK INVESTOR SHOW UK Investor Magazine — 1 — March 2018

Intro

From The Editor INSIDE 3 Join Tom at the UK Investor Show

I cannot hide any more the fact that I really do not enjoy writing

5 Get off the couch for DFS

pointless waste of my time. I know many of you say that you

Chris Bailey 6 Three resource shares to buy for March Gary Newman 8 Bad jokes and Free Speech Tom Winnifrith 9 Company Profile: SpaceAnd People

Steve Moore

this magazine or putting it together. It strikes me as an utterly enjoy reading it but I ask myself would I rather be writing this today or spending time watching a Peppa Pig video with my 18 month old son for the 99th time. Okay that is a close call as I am getting to loathe Peppa with an almighty passion and find myself mumbling the word “bacon” as she appears on screen but you get my drift.

Anyhow this is the penultimate issue that I shall be involved with so I should stop grumbling. After the next edition (April) Lucy Wray and her team at MBN will take control and as they

10 Glax-out Chris Bailey 11 Employment contracts are really just guidelines when you are a cheerleader Tom Winnifrith 17 The House View: One more year of gloom until we’re free

contact us UK Investor Magazine 91 - 95 Clerkenwell Road London, EC1R 5BX

approach the task with fresh energy and the vitality of youth I am sure that the publication will be all the better for it.

In this issue you will find the usual mix of buy and sell ideas and other articles which I hope attract your interest. If the edition is a bit thinner than usual it is because all of my energies are devoted to just one event which takes place in 21 days time, that is to say the Global Group UK Investor Show at the QE 2 Centre in Westminster on April 21.

As you may know I sold my share of this event to the Wray family some months ago but for this year I remain massively involved. Next year I shall be less involved and I can already feel a weight lifting from my shoulders as I plan a new chapter of my life which I very much hope involves a bit of goat farming

E: info@ukinvestorshow.com

and self-sufficient living. Of course I will be involved in the

W: www.UKInvestorShow.com

2019 event in a real way but 2018 feels like a bit of a last hurrah

EDITORIAL Tom Winnifrith Editor

anyway. On page 3, I explain what I will be doing on the day and have some free tickets to hand out if you’d care to join me in London. I hope that you will.

On that note I hope you enjoy this edition of the magazine Best wishes Tom Winnifrith Editor www.ShareProphets.com www.UKInvestorShow.com www.TomWinnifrith.com UK Investor Magazine — 2 — March 2018

Tom Winnifrith: My day on April 21 — I hope to see you then

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his will be my 17th annual investor show. As you may know, I sold my half of the event to Nigel Wray’s family in the Autumn so in a sense I feel this is a final hurrah. Go out with a bang and all that. Of course that is not really the case. God willing and health permitting, I shall be there in 2019 in some capacity but still there is a determination to really hit new highs this one last time.

As it happens, my UK Investor Show starts not early on the morning of 21st April but on the evening of the 18th at Saracens Rugby Club. The CEOs of those companies attending the show plus those who have purchased Golden tickets get to enjoy a great supper up at the club and a cabaret evening hosted by the comedian and bitcoin geek Dominic Frisby. And I am part of the act.

co-founded, Private Eye. The title “Is Private Eye meant to be funny?”.As Uncle Chris noted last year, he does the jokes. You can still buy a golden ticket to the main show which also gets you a Saracens evening pass at www.UKInvestorshow. com/tickets So on the day itself I will be there from 6.30 AM, two hours before the doors open so that I can write a few articles in peace and make final tweaks to my scripts. My first talk is just after 9 AM on the main stage with Nick Leslau, the man once dubbed the enfant terrible of UK property.

We will talk residential prices and volumes, real estate, retail trends, the macro outlook for the UK and much more. I have known Nick for twenty years and his knowledge of what is happening and will happen in the real economy is second to none.

In one slot I am the middle man in the battle of the pizza men: Luke Johnson who floated Pizza Express and Nigel Wray who was Domino’s big early backer. We will talk pizza, investing, the economy and entrepreneurialism.

Then there is another slot with Uncle Chris Booker about the magazine he UK Investor Magazine — 3 — March 2018

Six times during the day I will be on the main stage for a seven minute Dragon’s Den session where five CEOs pitch their companies in one minute and three dragons each invest £1,000 of my cash in one company per session. So that is £18,000 of my cash being staked.

Other Dragons include Steve Moore, the editor of City AM, Nigel Wray, Nigel Somerville,

to say outspoken blogger Paul Scott. Session two is a 20 minute run down on the various scandals at AIM listed Pathfinder Minerals. I know that it likes to issue lawyers letters to gag its critics but it will not silence me. Then there is a 40 minute bears session with Lucian Miers & Matt Earl where we will take apart 3 big name AIM stocks which we reckon are zeros.

But I am pondering a fourth 20 minute session on what appears to me to be the most blatant fraud on AIM, that is to say MySquar. I shall chat to Lucy Wray about that on Tuesday, why not go out with a mega bang?

Gary Newman and the Pizza Hardman Darren Atwater. Don’t laugh, the Pizza Hardman had the top performing pick in 2017.

I am also doing a ten minute slot with Nigel Wray where he donates £7,000 and I donate £3,000 to Woodlarks and we invest that cash in one stock each that is attending the show, hopefully increasing the size of our donations to our favoured charity..

If you want to attend the show only then an investor class seat giving access to everything on April 21 costs £12 including VAT. But you can get a free ticket to join more than 3,000 other folks interested in making more money from shares by using the promotional code WINNIFRITH when ordering at www.Ukinvestorshow.com/ tickets I look forward to seeing you in time.

three weeks

My only other main stage appearance is in the mid afternoon when I will be debunking the Neil Woodford Myth and exposing some of the shocking things which Britain’s highest profile fund manager has been up to. I fully expect Woodford’s lawyers to attend but that will not alter what I say. It is no holds barred.

Away from the main stage, on the third floor where 130 companies also have stands, I am involved in three sessions but that may soon become four. Session one is at lunchtime when I shall record a live bearcast and - something I do only annually - I shall do so with a guest, that is

Hot Stock

ROCKETS Stocks Ready to take off hotstockrockets.com UK Investor Magazine — 4 — March 2018

DFS—how much cash flow is down the back of its corporate sofa?

Asks Customer from Hell Chris Bailey

O

ver fifteen years ago I think to remember going to my local DFS (DFS) and really irking the salespeople by paying for my sofa upfront and in full. Clearly I am financial illiterate as I should have taken up the four years free finance and whatever other inducements were thrown at me at the time...but regular readers will know I am no fan of debt at any level.

So I am DFS’ customer from hell. I buy sofas about as frequently as England win the World Cup in Association Football and additionally I dislike finance. Among more mainstream consumers of course sofa purchasing is just like other big consumer discretionary spends: when you tighten your belt, either you don’t bother or you take up the finance and keep your fingers crossed. That’s why the company in its full year results today talks about ‘a challenging furniture market’ and why the shares have lost 100p over the last year.

Still, the shares are off their post 2015 lows. Why is this? Well despite the eponymous brand seeing more than 5% like-for-like sales declines and dodgy comments and backdrop to the sofa/furniture market the company sings about ‘performance is on track: we have made good progress against our strategic priorities and expect strong cash generation and modest growth in EBITDA in FY18’.

Well bully for that. Of course it is ‘EBITDA’ and when you swing it down to my preferred profit before tax line the last year’s £45 million generation is clearly not going to get anywhere near £50 million...which means you are paying a double digit earnings multiple aka the share price on this measure is still discounting hope for the future even if web sales are going up and the Sofology ownership is going well.

The key remains cash and specifically cash flow.

The Sofology deal and loss-making international divisions have helped push the debt line up to £172 million, which is pushing x2.5 that comedy EBITDA number. Getting tighter especially as the company appears still committed to that 6%+ dividend yield.

So back to cash flow. Last year it was a cool £55 million but my interpretation of the unquantified ‘strong cash generation’ with harder comps on

working capital and related means this is going down. The company will cover the dividend no problem but chivving down that debt is going to take much longer than even the free finance offers you get on a sofa. God help it if these latter deals start going wrong too.

I can’t get excited not when I can buy other retail stocks with no industrial debt (Kingfisher - see here) or less debt and more attractive retail business models (Dunelm - see here). However I will do a deal with you...if England do prevail in Russia over the summer in the football then I will go and order a new sofa at my local DFS emporium. I am not clearing a space in my lounge in anticipation...

Chris Bailey puiblishes Financial Orbit. This article first appeared on ShareProphets.com

UK Investor Magazine — 5 — March 2018

Three resource shares to buy for March

By Gary Newman

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here is a lot of uncertainty and volatility in the markets at the moment and it is very hard to read which direction many natural resources are going to head in next.

Quite a few of these commodities are now getting to a level where I can see some sort of pullback, even if only temporarily – with oil being one of the more obvious ones around the $70 area for Brent – and with uncertainty in the equity markets and a fair bit of disruption in the world in general, such as potential fallout from any sort of US trade war, even those which I see going higher long term, such as copper, could stumble temporarily.

There also seems to be reducing liquidity in the markets – especially at the lower end where we have seen the Beaufort Securities scandal tying up funds, plus I suspect that some are now nursing heavy losses after entering cryptocurrency at the wrong time (I certainly noticed that many AIM investors/gamblers were showing an interest at the start of the year).

I would actually be quite cautious at the moment about putting larger amounts into resource stocks and would be looking for companies with potentially major news flow, so that at least if you do decide to get out, you can do. That doesn’t of course mean though that I would advocate punting on any old ‘fashionable’ play where the actual chance of success is low!

One company which I do fancy to do well is Amerisur Resources (AMER), and after looking into it in detail I’ve just taken a position there myself.

There are risks involved, as many are still wary of the fact that this oil producer operates in Colombia, plus there is growing opposition there to onshore operations in the natural resources sector.

A lot of the upside potential here also comes from future drilling, and regardless of the successes so far, there is always a chance that could all go wrong.

On top of that there seems to have been a persistent background seller(s) for some time now, but you could also argue that is why the shares look cheap at the current price of 15.5p, and with oil prices soaring it probably wouldn’t have got down to this level otherwise, and thus has presented a buying opportunity.

Production from its Platanillo field has now pretty much reached the targeted level of 7,000bopd, and thanks to the pipeline operation that the company also has, operating costs are down to around $15/barrel. The 30% owned CPO-5 field has also recently come online and although currently producing at a controlled test rate of 3,100bopd, that is expected to increase.

This production underpins the current market cap of around £190 million to some extent, but there should also be plenty of interest in upcoming drilling at Platanillo – to add to the 24 million of 2P and 15.1 million barrels of 1P reserves – plus Putumayo blocks 9 and 12, and Indico-1 on the CPO-5 block. Total unrisked P50 resources stand at around 1.1 billion barrels, so it shows the potential upside even if only some of the drills are successful.

Another company where I see newsflow causing interest this year, and one which has seen some share price weakness recently, is Serica Energy (SQZ).

This North Sea producer is an outfit which I tipped here last year when it was trading in the low 20p range, and although it has pretty much tripled to the current price of 66p to buy, it had traded up in the low 90s at the start of 2018.

The share price rocketed on news that the company had done a deal to purchase BP’s interest in the Bruce (36%), Keith (34.83%) and Rhum (50%) fields, with completion expected later this year.

That would add a huge amount to its current 2P reserves, taking them to in excess of 50 million boe, as well taking production to as high as 21,000boepd (including its existing Erskine field).

As often happens, after the initial euphoria a fair bit of profit taking occurred, and alongside that we saw a blockage in the Erskine export pipeline which is yet to be cleared after several months of trying. But a permanent solution to this reoccurring problem is being looked into, which would hopefully prevent these problems in the future.

The main interest from the new assets is the

UK Investor Magazine — 6 — March 2018

Rhum field, as Keith is at the end of its lifespan and Bruce acts as the production hub and is still contributing a decent amount of production, despite also being at a latter stage of its life. Some production from BKR was lost at the start of the year due to a temporary shutdown of the Forties pipeline, but that is now back up and running.

Additionally, there is still upside from the Columbus gas condensate field reaching production at some point. So I can see long term value here from the current price as long as oil prices remain reasonably strong.

Given that I’m expecting a fair bit of turmoil during the coming year, it would seem prudent to include a gold producer, and preferably one with plenty of upside potential aside from leverage based on gold prices, and Avesoro Resources (ASO) would seem to fit the bill.

The performance of the company has hardly been great in recent times and it was losing money, but a lot has gone on in recent months, including a consolidation of shares, resulting in the current price of around 230p, and a market cap of £185 million.

The biggest news though was the acquisition of the Youga and Balogo gold mines in Burkina Faso,

with production for this year forecast to be in the 110,000 to 120,000 ounce range.

There has also been a turnaround at its struggling New Liberty mine in Liberia, and that is also now targeting production of 110,000 to 120,000 for 2018, and with all-in sustaining costs of $749/ oz that should be very profitable at current gold prices of above $1330. This compares favourably with the 192,000 ounces produced during 2017.

The problem for the company with its current operations is that the remaining mine life is quite short, taking it to around the middle of the next decade. But on the flipside to that it has a large number of exploration targets and has an aggressive drilling programme in place at Youga, where it has already achieved some good results but drilling deeper at previously mined pits.

It is a similar story at Balogo, also with plenty of drilling planned for 2018, and at exploration licences in Burkina Faso. Even at New Liberty there is upside potential deeper down – with potentially 275,000oz from the current pit operation in inferred resources, based on a $1,300/oz floor for gold, plus nearly 300,000 ounces that is being tested below that operation.

So I can certainly see potential value here at the current share price, given both the increases in production and the possibility of increasing reserves/resources via its drilling programmes.

Tom Winnifrith’s

5 model portfolios: Growth Income Gold Recovery Penny Shares

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newsletters.advfn.com/tomwinnifrith UK Investor Magazine — 7 — March 2018

That dog with the Nazi salute, the death of free speech and the stupidity of the whining Police

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Writes Tom Winnifrith

heard yet another whining Policewoman on the radio today saying that the Old Bill were not able to contact victims of sexual assaults for several days, in some cases, because they were overstretched. Whatever. The Boys in blue have time to paint their nails blue in protest against slavery, to arrest someone for tweeting a picture of a burning poppy, to investigate Katie Hopkins for hate crimes every time she opens her mouth. I am sure we could all add in numerous other examples of things the Old Blue do have plenty of time for.

I put it to you that the problem is not that the Police are overstretched but that they fail to prioritize what really matters because the senior management of the Force is not dominated by a cadre of very stupid people who think their remit is to assist in social change rather than ensuring the safety of the general public.

And this week saw that Police stupidity on display again with the story of the dog and the Nazi salute.

This tale actually begins in 1941. A Finnish dog which gave Nazi salutes so annoyed Germany’s World War II government that it launched a campaign against its owner, Tor Borg.

His wife had given the dog ( Jackie) the nickname Hitler saying that the dog’s strange way of raising its paw and barking reminded her of the Fuhrer.

The Germans interrogate Tor Borg and its Foreign Office spent three months investigating ways of bringing Mr Borg to trial for insulting Hitler, but no witnesses would come forward, the newspaper reports. And so in the end the Chancellory stated “considering that the circumstances could not be solved completely, it is not necessary to press charges.”

Lucky old Ta Borg for only having to deal with Nazi Germany. Pussies. If he had to deal with the Law in 2018 Scotland he’d have been in real trouble.

If we wind forward to 2018 and we discover how Scot Mark Meechan taught his girlfriend’s dog to do a Nazi salute, filmed it and it went viral on YouTube.

The prompt for the salutes were phrases including Sieg Heil and “gas the Jews” but it is the salute itself on the video which caused such offence that the Old Bill had to kick his door down at 5 AM as it once again prioritized serious crime as opposed

to matters such as sexual assaults or dealing with scandals like Telford.

Despite support from folks like Jewish comedian David Baddiel, Meechan, who is apparently also a comedian though it strikes me as not a very funny or tasteful one, has been tried and convicted of a hate crime and could now go to jail. Jeepers, if only the Nazis had enshrined British laws designed to restrict free speech into German law and had the Scottish Police at their disposal think how they too could have clamped down on Nazi saluting dogs.

Meechan sounds like a total creep to me and his jokes are not funny and are utterly tasteless. He sounds a lot like Russell Brand and Jeremy Hardy just Scottish and right wing. But if you believe in free speech you have to overlook such matters and support the rights of even those you despise to speak out. Yes, even Jeremy Hardy should be allowed to spew out a stream of offensive and libellous comments about conservatives and capitalists across the globe.

Sadly in 2018 Britain there are too many in the Police and Judicial World who seem to regard the works of Orwell not as a warning but as a blueprint for a very selective tyranny.

This article first appeared on TomWinnifrith.com.

UK Investor Magazine — 8 — March 2018

company profile SpaceandPeople Does recent news flow sell a spot in a value portfolio?

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By Steve Moore

hares in promotional and retail merchandising space seller SpaceandPeople (SAL) haven’t recovered to previous highs since an April 2014 profit warning, lurching lower again in September 2016 on a further warning. They have though now recovered from sub 20p early last year to a current circa 35p – and March has seen contract extension, results and dividend announcements…

The company is headquartered in Glasgow, with other offices in London and Hamburg, Germany, and reports UK and Germany ‘Promotion’ and ‘Retail’ segments.

In terms of UK Promotions, the results statement for the 2017 calendar year emphasised increased “experiential campaigns… driven by an increase in locations such as Broadgate Estates in The City and the development of the Network Rail portfolio. Over 270 brands utilised our network of national locations” and that “one of our key aims has been to increase the volume of business we transact in non-shopping centre, high footfall venues… for the first time, 2017 saw more revenue generated from these locations than traditional shopping centres”.

There was also a positive UK Retail performance – including some increases in occupancy and pricing of mobile units.

There have been struggles in Germany, with both segments loss-making there in 2016 – and revenue lower in both in 2017. However, Retail was returned to segment profitability as operations were restructured and Promotion was brought close to breakeven as “overheads have been reduced by moving to smaller accommodation and reducing headcount”.

The noted contract extension is an agreement to January 2019 for the provision of retail merchandising units in ECE-managed shopping centres in Germany – this based on a smaller number of units, though SpaceandPeople emphasising this “enables profitable trading without large minimum guarantees” and that “we are optimistic that we could increase ‘Justin-Time’ units into ECE and expand our services to other property groups”. Overall for Germany

it notes “a strong new venues pipeline developing for both divisions”.

For the company in 2017, this all meant a swing to a £1.2 million pre-tax profit on revenue 3.5% higher, at £10 million, generating earnings per share of 4.8p and helping cash (net) up to £2.7 million (13.6p per share). Current assets against total liabilities saw a £1.3 million swing to +£0.9 million and dividends are resumed (1.5p per share proposed to be paid on 25th April, with an ex-dividend date of 12th April).

For 2018, it is noted that much of the business is “performing ahead of this time last year and in line with management expectations” but that “the UK experiential campaign team has had a slightly slower than expected start to in 2018, due to timing differences on repeat bookings, however, these delayed bookings are currently being worked on”.

That deters me for now, but there looks strong value credentials here on it getting back on track and, looking out for that, I suggest this certainly worthy of watchlists.

Management CEO Matthew Bending is a founder of the company and 10.8% shareholder. Having worked as an international money broker in the City, he moved to Scotland to take up the post of Marketing Manager for Standard Life Investments Scottish Shopping Centres, which kick-started the SpaceandPeople concept.

COO Nancy Cullen has experience including 7 years as Marketing Manager at Brent Cross in North London. She is a 6.8% shareholder.

Chief Financial Officer Gregor Dunlay joined from Industrious Asset Management and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland. He has 10,000 shares (0.1%).

UK Investor Magazine — 9 — March 2018

Bonkers Glaxo buys expensively let alone splits-up

By Chris Bailey

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he other day I hoped that GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) backing away from a mega deal which would have seen it splurge US$20 billion odd on the consumer unit of American pharma name Pfizer was an early sign of a new commitment to not building an empire and maybe even considering splitting the company up into its constituent parts.

Well that slammed that door closed with news that it is buying out the shares in a consumer healthcare jv it has with the Swiss pharma giant Novartis for a cool US$13 billion.

Alright so this is a little bit of relative capital discipline versus what it could have splurged but I am afraid it is a step in the wrong direction. Now I know brands like Voltaren, Sensodyne, Tums Chewy Bites and Polident Max Seal turn some people on as more individuals self-medicate and get older but in my view Glaxo has paid much more than a pretty penny. It is kind of fascinating to see even in the Glaxo press release that ‘At 31 December 2017, the value of the Joint Venture’s gross assets represented by Novartis’ stake was £5,859 billion’.

Um...so let’s call it £6 billion is equal to around US$8.5 billion meaning that Glaxo has splurged over US$4 billion for ‘control’. But hey it is talking about it being accretive to earnings growth in the year after completion. However at the current level of ultra-low interest rates almost anything is near-term accretive. For more interesting is that it paid a multiple of x18 last year’s operating profits for the stake. That’s a bit firm in anyone’s book.

I know what it hopes though. The business plan is centred on pushing margins up from a current 18% to 20%+ over the next few years with all the usual M&A rationale talk of improvements in the supply chain, ‘power brand mix’ and cost discipline. It might do it...but don’t hold your breath. There’s no room to bog up and I really can’t help but feel that Novartis got the better deal here. Mr Market on a bullish day pushed both shares up as investor’s salivate over company comments that it has ‘Increased confidence in delivering outlooks for 2020 Group sales and adjusted EPS...Continue to expect to pay a dividend of 80p in 2018’. Just a confirmation of medium-term numbers...you would have thought US$13 billion would have bought a bit more oomph than that. Still yield munchers will like that their 5.9% yield keeps on churning out for the time being. The Pfizer deal of course may have negatively impacted dividend capability.

Glaxo remains today a real yield muncher share... and of course those that have been gobbling it up have a less pleasant 20% share price fall to also digest over the last 18 months. That’s well over double the equivalent dividend in this period.

That doesn’t sound like total return fun to me. I still think the company should split up but frankly with this deal now taking centre stage this is off the agenda until next decade at the absolute earliest. If I held it - and I don’t - I would be taking the share price bounce and saying ‘thank you very much’ and exiting to pastures new.

Chris Bailey puiblishes Financial Orbit. This article first appeared on ShareProphets.com

UK Investor Magazine — 10 — March 2018

The Cheerleader fired for breaking her employment contract —oh it must be sexism Writes Tom Winnifrith

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reat I get to run a photo of an NFL cheerleader and of the same bird wearing lingerie in an article and it is all because I am so supportive of the feminist cause. Sometimes I really like my job. Meet Bailey Davies formerly, for three years, a cheerleader with the NFL team the New Orleans Saints.

Bailey has been fired and her lawyer says it is down to sexism. So she is taking up the case, I kid you not, so that Bailey can help other women “break the glass ceiling.” So what happened. The contract Bailey signed says that inter alia, cheerleaders must not pose in “nude, semi nude or lingerie shots.”

Bailey, as you can see below, posed in lingerie and then posted on Instagram. And so having broken a well paying contract she had signed she was

fired to be replaced by someone who was actually prepared to honour a contract that pays out loads of wonga.

Bailey thinks this is sexism. After all she is an athlete as are there the 25 stone hulks who play football for the saints and there is nothing in their contract to stop them posing nude, semi nude or in lingerie so this is discrimination against athletes who happen to be female.

Quite right darling. And have you noticed that the chaps on the field also get paid multiples of what you earn. Hell you are both “athletes” playing for the same team is this not sexual discrimination too. Go for it girl.. Take them to the cleaners.

This article first appeared on TomWinnifrith.com.

UK Investor Magazine — 11 — March 2018

the house view Less than a year to Independence day: Don’t be panicked

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hatever certain diehard remoaners say, the die is cast. In just under one year Britain will be leaving the Evil Empire. Brexit will be real.

We do not know its form but we can be sure that it will happen.

Opinion polls now show that the British people overwhelmingly do not want a second vote and if there was one they would vote to leave. It is a done deal.

Our house view was that we should leave and that we should do so for all sorts of reasons. Those who took an opposing view spent far more than we Brexiteers did in the referendum and told the most monstrous lies as part of Project Fear. If we voted out we were told that the economy and stockmarket would crash and unemployment would soar. In fact the reverse has happened, indeed UK employment is now at all time highs.

Brexit was blamed for the weakness of sterling but, as we have noted here before, that weakness started six months before the referendum at a time when everyone assumed/feared that the UK would vote against Brexit. The fall of sterling and its rally in recent months is nothing to do with Brexit and everything to do with movements in interest rates here and overseas. With the UK economy still growing, inflation still well over stated targets, a UK interest rate rise in May will not be the last this year. That will see Sterling gain more ground against the Euro which, no doubt, the BBC and others will report as happening “despite Brexit.”

For those who opposed Brexit, the BBC and their sister papers at the Guardian and Observer as well as the paper that was so desperate that we join the Euro , the FT, will keep predicting gloom because of Brexit. They do so with no evidence at all and do so despite all their previous predictions of Brexit gloom being so far wide of the mark.

As it happens, regular readers will know , that we are bearish about the stockmarket and our caution has been vindicated since Christmas. But that has nothing to do with Brexit. We are cautious on US equities too and for pretty similar reasons and even the FT does not think that Brexit will damage the Land of the Free.

So whatever the media tell you, do not panic for, to quote FDR, when it comes to Brexit, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And that fear has been so greatly exaggerated by certain parties than even it is now almost powerless.

UK Investor Magazine — 12 — March 2018

Saturday 21st April 2018 | London Save the date!

UK Investor Magazine — 13 — March 2018