UK Investor Show, 18th April 2015

On Saturday I made it over to the UK Investor Show at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre opposite the Houses of Parliament. ((I went with a friend, but he doesn’t have an online presence so there’s no need for a name check on this occasion))

I’ve been to conferences there before, but never to UKIS. But as regular readers will know, I’ve become quite hooked on Twitter over the past six months, and the escapades of the show’s organiser and front man, Tom Winnifrith – particularly his shorting of Quindell and forecast that it would go to zero – have featured heavily.

Tom runs a site called ShareProphets which covers breaking company news, with a special focus on scandal, misreporting and possible fraud or market abuse. ((Tom might well have been right about that apart from an unexpected offer from Slater and Gordon of Australia – the bears and shorters have now replaced Quindell with S and G as their quarry))

The Morning

I arrived promptly for me at 9.25, in time to catch the tail end of MP Sajid Javid’s introduction. At this point you would have struggled to go along with the idea that this is the UK ‘s biggest private investor show, as the auditorium was less than half-full.

The pre-publicity suggested that several thousand tickets had been handed out, and as people trickled in through the morning, that began to seem reasonable. Indeed, some of the side presentations away from the main room (see below) were massively over-subscribed, with standing-room only and people (including myself) being turned away.

The crowd was the typical finance show mob – lots of men around 50, lots of grey hair. I wonder what the rest of the country does with its money?

The first presentation was on stock-picking – screens, charts or balance sheets. Presenting were Ed Croft from Stockopedia representing the quants, technical analyst Thierry Laduguie and fundamental analyst Chris Bailey. For me, all three have their place, but it was an interesting chat, only slightly hampered by technical difficulties. ((The slides could only be advanced from the lectern, which was at the opposite side of the stage from the club seating))

There doesn’t seem to be a video for this session up on YouTube yet – I’ll add a link here when it appears. If anyone spots it anywhere else, please let me know.

Next up was fund manager Mark Slater on growth stock investing. Ben Hobson has a write-up of this over on Stockopedia. Another good session.

The third presentation of the morning was on value investing, and featured Tom plus Paul Scott and Paul Jourdan. Paul Scott writes a daily report on Small Cap Value stocks for Stockopedia which I find very useful. Paul Jourdan is a fund manager for Amati.

This was another useful session and it had been a rewarding morning. The next two sessions were on oil and mining respectively, and as these are not areas I’m interested in, we decided to push off for lunch.

The Afternoon

After a couple of horrendously expensive but fairly tasty sandwiches, we tried to go along to some of the smaller side gatherings. This led to two observations:

1. the side rooms were not big enough
2. the standard of presentations away from the main auditorium was much lower

First we tried to get  into the presentation by Ronald Duncan of CloudBuy on how he makes money in his SIPP from following director dealings. Packed. We waited and tried to get into the presentation on valuing healthcare and biotech stocks. Just as packed.

Eventually we got into the session purportedly on how to value tech stocks,  but this was just a series of ten minute presentations from companies, with no Q&A, and no critical analysis of their offering. We stayed on for a session about Level 2 data from ADVFN, but the presenter had the wrong slides and we left no wiser then when we came in.

That was four bad experiences in a row, and we headed back down to the main hall in search of re-assurance. We arrived in time to catch Luke Johnson’s presentation on research and regulation, which was very interesting, as was the Q&A afterwards.

Next up was the Bear Pit with Tom, Evel Knievel, Lucian Miers, Clem Chambers and Matt Earl. ((I couldn’t find a picture of Matt)) The five of them chatted about what they look for in a stock to short, and discussed some recent and current favourites.

This was another entertaining session and meant that I left the show on a high – it was time for me to head across town for the football. ((Chelsea 1 Man Utd 0 since you ask – another step towards the Premier League title))

Conclusions

This is a fun show, not really aimed at the beginner, but with a lower proportion of speakers trying to sell you the magic bullet of their training course / tipping service. It’s in a good central location at a sensible time of the year. I plan to pop along next year too.

The lesson from this year was that the main room is both accessible (ie. large) and has a schedule of entertaining speakers. The side meetings were less comfortable and of a lower standard. Whether this might change if say only the main room’s talks were taped and posted to the web, we’ll have to see.

If any videos do become available, I’ll add the links to this page and send out a tweet to say that it’s been updated.

Until next time.