Small Company Sharewatch and other paid for sources of information.

16th Sep '21 by GloucesterBob

10 comments 2390 reads

I am about 7 months through a years subscription of SCSW and thinking of not renewing.

It appears the shares they mention (quite a few) go up on the day of the tip, and you can rarely get the price they mention they bought them out in future releases. Is it purely a follow the herd type tipsheet, the author must be making a mint as he is in first.

They have some very good returns, but the only time I bought one John Menzies (LON:MNZS) I am still in the red a few months later.

The write ups are not bad, but nowhere near as forensic to what you can find on Stocko.

Does anyone else subscribe and if so, how do you find it?

Are there other subscription sites you have found worth investing time and money in. John Rosier for instance?

I am looking at additions to Stocko, certainly not a replacement.

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epo001

16th Sep '21

My view has always been that tipsheets are a way of talking up your own book. If you were that astute an investor why wouldn't you just make your money through investing?

gus 1065

Hi GloucesterBob.

It’s not a tip sheet as such (he’d shoot you if you said it was!) but Robbie Burns/the Naked Trader puts out a bi-weekly newsletter in which, inter alia, he gives his thoughts on the state of the markets in general and specific thoughts on his recent buys and sells (as well as a string of consciousness on politics, the state of the world in general and the latest offerings from Sky and Netflix). The letter is free on his website but for a nominal fee (about £40 or so I think) you can be put on a mailing list and receive it by email slightly earlier than it is more widely published. The email also includes a few additional higher risk stocks that he thinks might be worth a look but is wary of triggering a PI stampede for. Link to his website below:-

https://www.nakedtrader.co.uk/

It’s not highbrow analysis (and is not intended to be) but Robbie is a shrewd investor (and publishes a live, running P&L of his successful long term trading performance) and I’ve used some of his ideas as prompts for further research into what have become decent investments.

Gus.

Rusty2

I do keep looking at buying the SCSW tip sheet as it seems to perform very well, especially the portfolios. I have/had many of the stocks they tipped but often at a later date than they were tipped. Reach (LON:RCH) is one that's done very well, Mpac (LON:MPAC) also, £CDM.

Some tipsters are banned from holding shares in stocks they tip, I don't know about SCSW though. Performance is much better than many other sheets/mags. I used to use IC but found the tips very mixed and biased towards the positives, negatives got hardly mentioned.

I do look at Robbie Burns site but it not always updated on a fortnightly basis so can be quite out of date, he is very good at stock picking, quite a high success rate, when I checked it was over 70%.

17th Sep '21

Banned? By who? How is this verified? In newspapers perhaps, not in the self published sheets. At best it may be "I don't hold this share (as I've sold out now I've ramped it)". There are many ways to do your homework; paying for tipsheets is an expensive way to do it, read RNSs and/or SCVR instead.

Well writers on Investors Chronicle are not allowed to own shares they write about. I had a look at SCSW policy and they state writers must declare their interest, they have a conflict of interest policy.

Their portfolios have performed well, the Growth Portfolio 3 is up over 400% (19/4/21) since 2015. Yes you can find these shares yourself but as I said I'm finding them later than when they were tipped.

Hello GloucesterBob,

Picking one share is not enough to go on, I could say the same about Cmc Markets (LON:CMCX) which was one of the top ranked stocks on Stockopedia in the first half of 2021. SCSW 2020 tips were up 62%, according to their figures, in April 2021, this is considerably better than NAPS 2020 has done.

Frank123

18th Sep '21

https://www.techinvest.co.uk/a...

another tip sheet call techinvest .. link above . it performance has slip a bit over the last few years .

KevinS1

19th Sep '21

I have/have had paid subscriptions to a number of things, including SCSW.

It's great to get reinforcement of holdings I already have, but in all honesty you also need to be careful that you aren't chasing everything that gets recommended.

I have a pretty large PF and am at the absolute top of the number of holdings I want - and in all honesty I probably need to trim a few. As I've also become more experienced I have recognised that having too many holdings means I may as well just have a tracker/fund.

I am also learning that I don't really want to hold many small-cap shares that are illiquid and also likely to take a big drop in any market correction. I am currently making sure that the vast, vast bulk of my holdings are in Co's with Mkt Caps above £100m - and many of them much bigger than this.

SCSW in my view has a few interesting companies and gives some good commentary, but I probably won't renew when my subscription comes around again.

I am only just beggining to start using the screens process within Stockopedia and I am hoping that this may allow me to start to identify my own interesting shares for further research & investment. I will of course also be an avid reader of the SCVR which again throws up many ideas. You can have too many sources of info and I have definitely suffered from this. I appreciate all of the authors views and sometimes this in itself is of interest, but you can get swamped.

I am also getting thoughts/views on IT's and to be honest a lot of this can be found dotted around the many free sites and again in the many write-ups on this site. Most of the platforms also have decent stuff on these so it is easy to understand the IT's approach, performance and top holdings.

I don't use IC for generating ideas, but I like some of their commentary although I find them quite expensive and may reconsider my position here once my sub is up for renewal.

Also don't forget many of the free sources out there.

In summary, I have found many of these sources to be useful in expanding my thoughts and challenging my knowledge, but in all honesty I would stick with Stockopedia and maybe one other and try to generate your own ideas, but it is horses for courses and may depend on your current stage of the investing journey.

HHR

20th Sep '21

I am a very long term subscriber to SCSW and Techinvest.

I would definitely recommend SCSW and can not praise it too highly! The main points I would make are :-

- If you crunch the CAGR's of the SCSW portfolios they are all in the 20s. Performance like that over 27 years is astonishing

- And if you look at the caps of the companies he 'invests' in they tend to be small or mid-caps (not microcaps). This means he can't really move the market with his tips and that he isn't just pumping up microcaps and then selling them down like some other tipsters do

- I would only make three negative points about SCSW and they are all minor, i) my gut feel is that the shares he either owns personally or puts in the portfolio do a lot better than the tips that don't get bought. I haven't studied this but I'm pretty sure I'm right, ii) Some of his tech tips don't work out and I think maybe sometimes he get's drawn in by a tech story, iii) his macro views, whilst strong are sometimes off beam so I ignore the editorial at the front

- Overall I think SCSW is fantastic value for money and I would recommend it to anyone. My sister follows the portfolio and although she doesn't get the prices he get's (due to timing and small 'spike' effects) she is still hammering cash, trusts and the market. All for an hours work per month

- As for Techinvest, it's MUCH more expensive than SCSW and nowhere near as good. I still think it's interesting as an ideas source but I don't think the tips are of much value

Terry Dickens

Trendwatch. I have been subscribing for over 15 years and I can recommend it. But I do have a small vested interest in the company.

There are 12 issues a year each with 13 pages.

1. Six recommendations with each issue and a good write-up on each. I do not buy each recommendation but use it for further research.

2, Stop loss recommendation with email update and sell recommendation.

3. And a lot more

Over the last 10 years, their portfolio is up about 150%

I believe you can get a free copy ( 3mouth old ) newsletter to check out. I think it is well worth a look at the free issue (nothing to lose)

Email: www.Trendwatch.com

Small Company Sharewatch and other paid for sources of information.

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GloucesterBob

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