Grant Williams on UK stocks and the return of active investing

There are some phenomenal companies in the UK, no doubt about it.  And as you said, it's an equity market that's been there forever.  So given the fact that it's fallen so far behind, there is definitely opportunity in the UK.  But I think the important thing to understand here is - this comes back to another trend that I've been looking at - the idea of having to do less to be more successful, i.e. we talked about the bitcoin ETF.  It would be easy from this part of our conversation to say that "oh, the UK's cheap, I'm going to buy the UK."  And that is kind of where we've come to.  We buy these abstract ideas.  We buy countries.  

We used to buy companies.  We used to buy a share in a business.  And now we buy stocks.  And the difference in mindset for that is extraordinary because if you're buying a stock, you just own a number and you're buying it because it's going to go up.  You haven't done the work to understand the business, you haven't gone into it feeling like an owner of a series of cash flows, which is what this used to be all about.  And it changes your mindset.  You're not a long-term holder; we've seen that the average holding time data and how that's cratered in the last 20 years.  

Again, I believe this is a change in mindset that I suspect is going to start to come back the other way, i.e. if you do want to make money in UK stocks, you will be able to make some terrific money in UK stocks, but the tradeoff is you're going to have to go back to work again.  You're going to have to sit there and start to find individual companies instead of buying the UK ETF if you want to outperform.  And I think that's a great thing, to be honest with you.  It will bring back the talents of these extraordinary managers who've been marginalized by ETFs and the Vanguards and BlackRocks of the world.  And the idea that you make money by working hard, I mean what a great idea that is.  What a great idea.  And to Peter [Atwater's] point about luxury, it's the antithesis of that.  It's not "we deserve to make money in the stock market," it's "we're going to have to work to earn money in the stock market."  And that to me is where this will always come back to over time when the froth of the entitlement dissipates.

~ Grant Williams, interview with Meb Faber, The Meb Faber Show, 28:10 mark, March 15, 2024

Dr. Malcolm Kendrick on Covid-19 death certification in the UK

[D]eath certification is certainly not an exact science. Never was, never will be. It’s true that things are somewhat more accurate in hospitals, where there are more tests and scans, and suchlike.

Then, along comes Covid-19, and many of the rules – such as they were – went straight out the window. At one point, it was even suggested that relatives could fill in death certificates, if no-one else was available. Though I am not sure this ever happened.

What were we now supposed to do? If an elderly person died in a care home, or at home, did they die of Covid-19? Well, frankly, who knows? Especially if they didn’t have a test for Covid-19 – which for several weeks was not even allowed. Only patients entering hospital were deemed worthy of a test. No-one else.

What advice was given? It varied throughout the country, and from coroner to coroner – and from day to day. Was every person in a care home now to be diagnosed as dying of the coronavirus ? Well, that was certainly the advice given in several parts of the UK.

~ Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, "I’ve Signed Death Certificates During COVID-19. Here’s Why You Can’t Trust Any of the Statistics on the Number of Victims," RT Opinion, May 28, 2020

Matthew Lynn on Keynesian stimulus and the U.K. economy

The U.K. has been in Keynes overdrive for the past 18 months. The budget deficit is already more than 12 percent of gross domestic product, on a par with Greece. And while the Greeks are cutting spending, the British deficit is widening. Figures for January showed another fiscal blowout. At the same time, interest rates have been slashed to 0.5 percent. And the pound has slumped in value, which is supposed to boost demand for British goods, and help close the trade gap.

Just about everything possible has been done to encourage consumption. The results have been miserable.

Retail sales excluding gasoline in January fell 1.2 percent from the previous month, twice as much as economists forecast. The number of people receiving unemployment benefits jumped to 1.64 million in January, the highest level since April 1997. The yield on U.K. government debt is now higher than on Spanish or Italian bonds, a sure sign that investors are losing faith in the country’s ability to pay its debts. The inflation rate has also accelerated to 3.5 percent.

In reality, Britain has the worst of all possible worlds: a stagnant economy, a crippling budget deficit and rising prices.

~ Matthew Lynn, "Deathbed of Keynesian Economics Will Be in U.K.," Bloomberg.com, February 23, 2010