SIF January Review: Improved Performance Despite Ocean Wilsons Lag

28th Jan '20 by Roland Head

4 comments 2246 reads

We’re approaching the end of the first month of 2020. The market uncertainty resulting from the UK’s political situation has been replaced by a very different kind of anxiety, relating to the Coronavirus outbreak in China.

It seems insensitive to discuss money in the face of an unfolding human tragedy. But as investors we have to decide whether to do something - or nothing - in such situations. In general, my policy is to make no changes to my existing portfolio or to my trading plans. That’s certainly true for the rules-based SIF folio I run here at Stockopedia.

Portfolio performance has improved

It’s the end of the month, which means that it’s time to review any holdings that have been in the SIF fund (this link will only work on the old Stockopedia site) for at least nine months.

This month, only one company qualifies - oddball Brazilian investment firm Ocean Wilsons Holdings. After a slump during the middle part of last year, the shares have recovered somewhat. But under my rules, I can’t hold the stock for longer than nine months if it no longer passes all of my screening tests. In this piece I’ll take a closer look at the newsflow and financials from this group over the last nine months, and re-test it against the SIF screen.

Before I do that, here’s a screenshot showing the current holdings in the SIF fund:

Over the last six months, I’m pleased to see that SIF has started to pull ahead of the market again after a period of underperformance:

I’ve decided to include these portfolio performance updates in my monthly review articles from now on. This will provide a visible track record of the portfolio’s performance, which might otherwise be hard for subscribers to follow. I hope this will be of some use - if there’s any other kind of reporting you’d like to see, please let me know in the comments.

Moving on, let’s take a look at Ocean Wilsons Holdings.

Ocean Wilsons Holdings (LON: OCN)

(Original coverage: 02/Apr/2019)

Ocean Wilsons is a Bermuda-based investment company which owns a majority stake in Wilson Sons Ltd, a Brazilian business which operates port terminals and a wide range of maritime and logistics…

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aflash

28th Jan '20

Tks Roland,

Very useful link to OCN's investment portfolio. It shows more duplication with Hansa trust than I had realized.

Let me explain for those that do not know. Hansa trust runs the fortune of the Salomon family who were closely linked to the Hanseatic league and between them started all these trading houses centuries ago.

Old economy and Old money..........., lots of it.

Hansa trust holds 25% of OCN (Ocean Wilson) and also a lot of interlinked investments. I have held both in the past and looked again before an ex-dividend date but held off.

To add to the maze there are two classes of Hansa share: HAN with voting rights and HANA without. The word is that HANA is more liquid with more shares (x2) in issue. Stocko does not show that however.

Today the trust discount to the investment basket is 33% on HAN with more sellers than buyers and 32% on HANA. The recommended holding period is 5 years.

Any investment in any of these is a bet on the world economy and general stock market levels. So although a lot more depth than new economy story stocks, be prepared for retrenchment. They do use Long/Short strategies but five more years of positive stock returns for the long only part is a lot to ask.

There are a bunch of port terminal operators on other exchanges, particularly in Asia but I have not been able to make a significant comparison with OCN.

Roland Head

Hi aflash,

Many thanks for your comment, it's really useful to have this extra insight.

Regards,
Roland

FREng

29th Jan '20

Thanks aflash. Your comments prompted me to look at Hansa Investment (LON:HAN) and Hansa Investment (LON:HANA) and to try to understand why the Stockrank of HANA dived in December. It looks to have been a Stcko glitch following the share split and the move of the domicile to Bermuda - is that right?

I found the interim report useful and interesting both for the analysis of HAN/HANA and for the insights into Ocean Wilsons Holdings (LON:OCN) .The director buying looks very positive and the discount to NAV a bargain!

SIF January review: Improved performance despite Ocean Wilsons lag

Portfolio performance has improved

Ocean Wilsons Holdings (LON: OCN)

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Roland Head

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