Exiting Russian / Ukranian positions, possibility of invasion not priced in

I’ve decided to sell up on most of my Russian / Ukranian stocks.

HYDR, FXPO, SIBN, RSTI, GLTR.

I am holding on to FEES (Russian Electricity grid Yield 8.5%+, P/E <4 and P/B<0.3 (I can take the pain on this), and GAZP as 50% dividend payout news announced today implies *potentially* a very high yield.

I am increasingly concerned there will be an invasion/incursion in Ukraine. This build-up seems long/ sustained for a ‘training exercise’. If they go home without doing anything Putin will look weak.

I also note last year their western district held intensive training exercises as well.

He will be especially wary of talk of Ukraine joining Nato, in Russian terms this is equivalent to Canada joining the Warsaw pact – something that can’t be allowed to happen!

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Q1 Portfolio/Performance update (+11%) Coronavirus and thoughts on where to go from here

Lots going on in the portfolio so I thought I would give a quick update.

At the end of Q1 I was +4% ytd, now (14/4/2020) I am c+11%.  This should be compared to the index which is -c22% now, at the low I was down c5% for the year. I feel a little bad posting this as lots of this is from non-usual (for me) trades… Many of these, I put on Twitter, unfortunately, I can’t post everything as it may move prices against me, particularly where I only sell half.  I know many of you are not twitter followers.  If you would like an e-mail when I tweet there is a service for that here.

New Investment – Global trans

Just bought some Global Trans (GLTR.L) – 2.5% portfolio weight (I tweeted about it the other day) this is quite a nice little Russian investment.  They basically operate railway freight in Russia.  This is not without it’s risk.  But yield is very high – c16% in 2018, 2019 dividend of $1.45 (half paid already). PE is low – c5.4 for 2019.  It isn’t either that this is a company on the brink of bankruptcy either – net debt to EBITDA is c0.53 – RUB denominated, and the company has lots of railway freight assets – book value is c$4.7 per share vs a share price of c$8.7.