I attended both days at Mello in Chiswick, West London week before last. Below are my notes, may be of interest to others.
General observation: lowest turnout of people ever. Audiences were much lighter than previous years. Maybe people have gotten used to video conferencing and don't want to attend in person ? Maybe others have suffered bad losses in this bear market and decided not to attend ? Wonder if those same people will attend again after a couple of years of the next bull market ? See John Lee's comment below :-)
The people that did attend definitely had a few more grey hairs. Very few young people which is a shame. No interest ? Or more interest in crypto ? Or worse still, is modern day UK so expensive (taxes, housing costs, food + energy inflation) that young people have no money to invest in ISAs or SIPPs ?
Graham Neary presented on behalf of Stockopedia and Richard Stone presented on behalf of the AIC. Maybe the latter is a reflection of how the London market has changed as small & medium caps have been gobbled up by foreign investors and private equity whilst investment trusts have flourished ?
Anyway, here are my notes, apologies if I have one or two details wrong, it's difficult to catch everything 100%.
The following link gives the two-day line up: https://tinyurl.com/5xyek7pe
Tuesday
Blue Whale Growth Fund
I looked up the size later: approx £765m.
Small team who ignore sell side analysts.25 stocks so fairly concentrated.
Like Terry Smith, they focus on free cash flow yield.
High quality businesses only eg: switching costs of Netflix (very low) v Microsoft (very high) and so the latter is the more high quality business.
Largest position is Nvidia because of the strong competitive position. But Chat GPT competition has impacted Nvidia's competitiveness.
Key themes: AI (Nvidia, ChatGPT), software (Microsoft), Silicon Valley preferred to geopolitical risk in Asia, re-shoring/ de-globalisation, energy (Canadian Natural Resources), nominal consumer spending ie: inflation beneficiaries (Visa / Mastercard), higher interest rates for longer (Charles Schwab), medical equipment especially for conditions like diabetes (Sartorious / Dexcom).Last 6 months of performance is good.
Factsheet is interesting: https://tinyurl.com/mrx86ayh
Lord John Lee
Described by David Stredder as the “David Attenborough of the investment world” :-)
JL told a joke at the start about an accountant walking through…
