After Red October we have had something of a Black & Red November in so far as there was Black Friday & the Compound Income Scores Portfolio (CISP) ended in the black too. While the red came from the FTSE All Share which ended November in the red and the Monthly timing indicators which remain in negative territory too. Please see the Portfolio Menu at the top of the site or in the three bar menu if you are on a mobile device & want to see the full table of returns or other summary details about the portfolio.

In terms of this months screening for the CISP it was another mixed bag as three potential sale candidates came up as their scores had slipped below the 75 level that I use for reviewing holdings. I decided to retain two of these as their scores were only slightly below 75. One of these was again Alliance Pharma (APH) which I have already given one stay of execution to, but given the volatile markets I would expect it to be a bit more defensive from here. The other was Bloomsbury Publishing (BMY) which is a classic dividend growth stock & has the stronger second half trading period to come so here I was also reluctant to ditch it on limited news flow. The one I did choose sell was Ferrexpo (FXPO) which apart form appearing to be very cheap, I don't feel that strongly about. It could well suffer badly if we see an economic downturn (which may be what the rating is discounting) plus the portfolio retains a holding in Rio and therefore some exposure to the sector. Given the way economies are shaping up it doesn't seem like a bad time to be reducing this type of exposure.

To replace this I selected a different type of miner that scores highly, in this case a data miner as it were called D4T4 Solutions (D4T4). This £74m market cap. company seems to be a play on internet / big data type of thing and as such may be interesting after all the GDPR stuff earlier this year. Indeed their recent interim results were exceptionally strong, although this was to some extent offsetting a big drop off in business that they saw last year. So it may just be a lumpy type of business or perhaps this could be the start of a more rapid growth phase given the actions they have taken since last year.

If they can repeat the strong growth in h2 then I suspect there could be bigger upgrades down the line, but as ever time will tell on that. Nevertheless they look quite good value on around 15 to 16x predicated on a strong bounce back from last years fall in earnings. The yield is lower than I would normally look for at 1.5% or so, but otherwise it seemed like the most attractive addition to the portfolio which brings something different to the party.

It does also seem to have momentum as it is threatening to break above recent highs and maybe could even go onto hit all time highs around 280p that it set around the year 2000 if the second half proves as strong as the first half, or not as the case may be! Any way I guess it will not be every ones cup of tea and I'm not sure I can bring myself to buy it personally,  so we'll have to see how it goes for the CISP.

I've talked a bit recently about high yielding UK share that I'd avoid based on their Scores. So today as it's Black Friday I thought I'd flag up:

1. Stock that looks attractive on the Scores
2. High light again that you can get access to the Compound Income Scores & get a Free e-book explaining the background to them.
3. If you sign up in the next three days (by the end of Sunday) you'll get to try out the scores for three weeks for free by simply cancelling your plan by 16th December 2018.

So firstly the stock that looks attractive on the Scores is topically one that has reported a first half trading update today, namely Gateley (GTLY) the law led professional services group. They have suggested that their underlying business has grown well to provide 10% organic growth and their recent acquisitions have boosted growth in revenues by 20%.

This led them to forecast a minimum level of total revenue of £102m for the whole of their 2018-19 financial year with an EBITDA margin comparable with that achieved in 2017-2018.  This looks to be about 4% ahead of current revenue forecasts and given the margin comments this should, I would have thought, flow through to the bottom line too. Thus some upgrades here seem likely. I would also note that they have set this as a minimum expectation, so presumably they may under promise and over deliver.

The shares look good value on around 12x earnings and come with forecast yield of 5% based off of 8% forecast dividend growth, which is reasonably well covered, although that is the weakest thing in their score. They make a decent operating margin of around 17% and a huge return of capital, although that's probably not that relevant for a people / service business such as this. They have had upgrades already this year and as discussed I suspect we should see some more on the back of this update or when they actually report their first half numbers in January 2019. Putting it all together they come out with a Compound Income Score of 96 (where 100 is the best) and as such they will remain in the Compound Income Scores portfolio and in my own portfolios too, as I eat my own cooking as it were.

So there you go there's a buying idea for you sourced from the Scores and as mentioned at the start don't forget you can read more about and sign up for a free trial of the Scores by clicking here. Once you sign up you'll get your Free e-book explaining the research and rationale behind the Scores. You can then try them for free for the next three weeks if you then cancel by the 16th December 2018. If you like them you won't need to do anything as your payment will be taken on 21st December 2018 for you to then enjoy a whole year of Compound Income Scores at the equivalent of just £1 a week.

Cheers, mind how you go in all the Black Friday bargain hunting mayhem, but I don't think you'll find a better value offer than our 1-2-3 Free offer get it while it's hot this weekend.

We have had a few updates and results from some well known high yielding UK shares this week which may well be held by yield hungry investors. The Companies I'm thinking of are Centrica (CNA), Talk Talk (TALK) & Vodafone (VOD). Now I mentioned Vodafone last week in a post where I explained why I don't hold it, which you can read here if you missed it.

Now as it happens they had a reasonable update and the new CEO seemed to be indicating a commitment to maintaining the dividend, which led to a relief bounce in the share price, as I suspect the market was rightly worried about the possibility of a dividend cut here. As for the other two I'll not go into detail on their trading updates here, as if you're in them I'm sure you will have read them and as it stands, I wouldn't recommend buying them given their poor scores in the Compound Income Scores.

Which is the whole point of this post, to point out how the Scores have helped me to avoid these high yielding losers and have helped direct me towards better performing yield stocks with growing dividends which I believe is the way to go. Don't take my word for it, take a look at the performance of the Compound Income Scores portfolio in comparison to these three and the broader markets too in the charts above.

If you have been holding stocks like these and are getting fed up with losing capital and seeing your dividends cut in some cases, then do feel free to check out the Compound Income Scores to see how they can potentially point you in the right direction towards growing, winning income shares and away from non growing, losing income shares.

The latest Scores will be out tomorrow, so if you'd like to try them out free for a few weeks, then don't delay and sign up today, as you won't have to pay until the third week of December. If you find they are not for you and you cancel before the middle of December then you won't have to pay anything, now I can't say fairer than that can I? So what have you got to lose, apart from a few losing high yield shares from your portfolio?

Don't forget you can get access to the Scores via Dropbox, Google Drive or Microsoft One. See the links below if one of those takes your fancy. If not and you'd prefer to get them via e-mail do get in touch via the contact form on the site or via Twitter if you follow me & I'll see what I can sort out for you. Any way thanks for reading, take care with your investments & how you choose them, good luck and don't forget to always do your own research as shares can go down as well as up as demonstrated by the three I've feature today.

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Now I'm sure you are all bored with all the BREXIT chaos too, I know I am, but I can't stop thinking about it. As from the start, as soon as leave won the vote, I feared that we will either never leave or effectively not be allowed to leave - which is looking more likely by the day. Especially when Mrs May seems to be saying BREXIT means (back my bad deal or we'll make sure there isn't) BREIXT.

Like a lot of people I'm pretty hacked off about this especially given the history of how we got here in the first place. Amazingly this is the first time I've written a post actually about BREXIT, although I probably mentioned it in passing along the way.

See the following links to see how my parents generation were misled when we signed up for the EEC which was supposed to be a free trade area only.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/882881/Brexit-EU-secret-document-truth-British-public

https://eutruth.org.uk/fco30.html

Plus how John Major got us to sign up to the Maastricht treaty by threatening to hold a vote of confidence in his shaky small majority government - sounds familiar. 

So for what it's worth my guess is that they'll either force the unpopular deal through somehow or make sure that we don't actually leave as the majority of MP's are Pro EU and don't want a no deal scenario to play out, when they should have used it as their main negotiating tactic and been prepared for going down that route. I reckon they might even use it as an excuse to have another vote which will be worded in such a way as to make sure that remain wins this time - which the EU has had a history of with previous treaties etc.

This piece was also interesting background on this from the Market Oracle.

Finally as a bit of light relief here's a little ditty I re-wrote  - with apologies to Don McLean

Brexit Pie – (Sing to the Tune of American Pie).
A long, long time ago
I can still remember how politics used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance that I could make those people vote
And maybe they'd be happy for a while

But the BREXIT vote made me shiver
With every paper I'd get
Bad news on the internet
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about the Maastricht Treaty
But something touched me deep inside
The day that democracy died

So bye-bye, Democracy Pie
Drove my Rover to Dover, but BREXIT was over
And them good old boys were drinkin' Champagne and Schnapps
Singin' "This'll be the day that UK Democracy snaps
This'll be the day that I die"

Did you write the BREXIT withdrawal agreement, and do you have faith in May above
If the whips tells you to?
Now do you believe in free trade, can democracy save your mortal soul
And can you teach me how to BREXIT real slow?
Well, I know that you're in love with the EU
'Cause I saw you votin' in the commons
You all hacked off your voters
Man, I dig those referendums and blues

I was a lonely teenage Thatcher’s child
With a Tory Tree and a BREXIT vote
But I knew I was out of luck
The day that democracy died
I started singin' bye-bye, United Kingdom
Drove my Rover to Dover, but BREXIT was over.

On the face of it Vodafone is a large well known business with a decent position in the mobile phone market & has been building up an offering in broadband etc. too. On the back of this it pays a dividend of around 13p per share which at the current share price of 144p means it yields an amazing 9%.

Sounds great, what's not to like? Well quite a bit actually which is why I've not held it for a while now having sold out at prices over 200p between 2014 & 2017. The reasons for this were:

1. I'm more of an income growth investor and Vodafone wasn't really growing the dividend, plus the yield was not as high as it is today, which I take as a danger sign at these levels rather than an attraction.
2. I was moving towards following my own Compound Income Scores & this one did not Score well back then and there were more attractive alternatives.
   

So as the latest Scores are out today I thought I'd revisit this one and let you see why I still don't hold it and I'm not tempted to buy down here.

As I mentioned I think the big yield is more of a danger signal and this can be assessed by looking at the dividend cover by earnings and cashflow and on this measure Vodafone scroes in the bottom quartile i.e. the lowest 25% of the nearly 600 companies that are included in the Scores. To be fair it does have some positive attributes like the value it is offering thanks to the yield and an EBIT/EV yield of nearly 6% which puts it in the top quartile on that measure, as it is for financial security too, so it is not all bad.

Having said that though whatever you might think about mobile phones and telecoms as a business it does not score well in quality terms as they make low returns on all that capital they have to plough into buying mobile licences and investing in towers and fixed networks etc. While the margin they make is OK rather than spectacular as mobile is quite a competitive business these days rather than a licence to print money. So again it scores in the bottom quartile on that measure too. Added to that it has also been seeing downgrades to their earnings forecasts since the summer which are much worse than the average stock so it is also you guessed it bottom quartile on that measure too, in fact it is worse than that it is in the bottom decile or lowest 10%.

Now while the shares do look oversold and offer the high yield I'm still not tempted to buy back into this one given the above puts it on an overall Compound Income Score of 19, where 100 is the best, so once again it is bottom quartile overall despite the value and financial security. If that wasn't enough the other thing I monitor with the Scores, although it is not in the overall score, is the price momentum as winners tend to carry on perfroming and losers tend to carry on underperforming. Hence the investing axiom that you should run your winners and cut your losers. I suspect the risk here is that they will continue to drift and the risk is that at some point they may be forced to cut the dividend, given the cover and on going capital expenditure requirements, which doesn't usually go down well with investors who are mainly in it for the yield.

So there you go a quick example of how you could use the Compound Income Scores to quickly assess a company and see how it compares with hundreds of others and then potentially find more attractive candidates. I hope you might have found this post useful if you do hold Vodafone shares and if you would like to learn more about the Compound income Scores and see how you could see how your stock holdings measure up, then please see the link in the navigation menu on the site or click here if that's easier for you. mind how you go and safe investing.