I bought Watchstone (WTG) again last week, this time at 220p. The PR people, Tulchan, remark that WTG has always reported by end May. I continue to value WTG at 400p+.
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No doubt to increase its management fees earned AXA is recruiting luvvies by distancing itself from tobacco companies. But it is impossible to advise the market to advantage of a forthcoming £1.3bn selling programme in advance of its taking place. This shows that AXA should not be trusted with any money if what drives them is an urge to engage in luvvie guff.
Incidentally, it has never been shown that investing in an established tobacco company causes increased tobacco sales or that selling causes reduced tobacco sales. Put another way, this form of luvvie guff deliberately overrides the obligations of fund managers to maximise fundholders’ returns. This is another reason to have nothing whatsoever to do with AXA.
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I have here previously asserted that the appallingly low quality of administration that is the EU has the effect of destabilising common sense, a quality upon which all communities and countries rely.
With the Austrian presidency now swinging to the nationalists and with the same trend to be observed in Hungary, Germany and France and elsewhere on enquiry no doubt, one wonders how this destabilisation will manifest itself. I reckon it will be in the form of civil insurrection with the consequence of the committing of further crimes since people generally will have anaesthetised themselves from controlling themselves.
If we are in the EU can we stop this and simultaneously see the EU governing responsibly and timeously? And the answer to both these questions is a resounding no.
So the only hope is to withdraw and intervene as best we can.
There is a precedent to this current need to intervene effectively in that it is undeniable that had we intervened in Germany during the early ‘thirties we could have saved massive wholesale slaughter across the Continent. And here in 2016 we are talking about + or – 3% of GDP as being the business in hand.