Sharesify
Sharesify is an online resource for private investors and produced by several former employees of Shares magazine. It aims to help private individuals manage their own money and investment portfolios.
Launched in 2026, we publish daily news content, analysis and thought-provoking written content about stocks, investment trusts, funds, ETFs, ISAs, SIPPs, plus produce podcasts, webinars and more.
Our easy-to-read style and depth of analysis aims to make Sharesify essential reading for those investing today.
We write about all companies on the UK stock market, covering large, mid and small cap stocks on both London’s Main Market and AIM. We also provide extensive coverage of stocks listed in the US, Europe, Asia and other overseas stock markets, interview fund and investment trust managers about performance and the secrets of their investing technique, highlighting products that provide exposure to interesting companies, geographies and growth or income-generating assets.
We also write about ways in which to build a diversified investment portfolio as well as managing your investments once you have started to put money into an ISA (individual savings account), dealing account or SIPP (self-invested personal pension).
Our digital content will be full of ideas for filling your portfolio, whether you are saving for something like a new house or car, or if you are investing to fund your child’s university fees, your grandchild’s Junior ISA, or building a nest egg for retirement.
We show you how to make money and save money by giving you all the important information to help you make informed investment decisions.
Sharesify
Talking chips, AI, Apple, Intel and Micron plus Berkeley Gp, G4M, Halfords, Moonpig and ProCook
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
With US markets closed for Juneteenth, the team reflect on big moves for chip stocks and upcoming results from Micron next week.
They also cover UK consumer names such as Card Factory, Gear4Music, Halfords, Moonpig and ProCook, as well as investment trusts FGEN, JEDT and PNL.
Hello and welcome to the Friday edition of the Sherify Podcast. I'm joined as always by my friends and colleagues James and Steve. How are we, gents? Very well. Now, today, US markets are closed. Stock and bond markets for Juneteenth. Um, that celebrates emancipation in the US. On the 19th of June 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to declare the civil war was over and all slaves were now free. So that's your history lesson for today. Onto the markets. And uh chaps, we might actually get away without mentioning a certain space technology stock for the first time in God knows.
SPEAKER_00I thought I thought you was gonna I thought you were gonna make a slight slip up there. I thought you were gonna say welcome to the uh SpaceX podcast. I mean the shares if buy podcast. Yeah, it has felt SpaceX in the case.
SPEAKER_01You've mentioned it, you've mentioned the name anyway.
SPEAKER_00But it's worth saying, yeah, I've the last two trading sessions, of course, we've seen it collapsed. The shares have gone down about eight percent. What's going on? It's obviously rubbish, right? Um, yes, I mean just a little bit of of pressure being taken out of the ties, but um, it's it's still up uh 185 odd dollars, so you know, massively up on its IPO price, which was already on a very frothy rating. So, you know, make of that what you will, investors and uh and uh listeners.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but the AAR trade's still on alive and well, isn't it, Steve?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And and interesting. Um Tim Cook gave an exclusive interview to the um the Wall Street Journal um, I think on Wednesday nights, and um, and basically he lit a fire under uh memory stocks. So we've been talking about memory chips and pricing being very, very firm uh for a while now. And and and what he's basically saying is they're gonna have to Apple are gonna have to raise prices of their next generation iPhones, iPads, etc. etc., because they can no longer carry the additional cost of these high memory chip prices. So of course, Sam Dick went bananas, micron technology went bananas, um, Samsung, SK Heinex, they all made gains of of of five to ten percent. And and it's simply because investors are now perceiving this as this is this this memory chip uh cycle has got further legs to run um than we than we expected. So um it'd be really interesting to watch out for micros micro uh micron technologies results, which are due out next week as well, which we we flagged up in our in our piece. But um, yeah, so that so that that part of the uh that chip membership part of the market absolutely gang gangbusters.
SPEAKER_01It is. I mean, talking of AI, I've noticed a couple of interesting little um things along the way, little little signposts along the way. So you remember Allbirds, which made um fancy sneakers and trainers and so on, James. Uh then it called itself Allbirds AI. Well, it's now known as SmartBird, and it's actually hired a CEO from a Danish AI company. Um, there's another one called Thinking Machines. Now, this is great. This has raised two billion dollars from investors without telling them what it's going to do. It's just doing something to do with AI. Now, if you you know, if you've studied history and you go back to the South Sea bubble in 1720, there was a company which said that it was raising money for a project, the nature of which will be revealed in due time.
SPEAKER_00Um, the fact that the certainly it leans into the dot-com era. I mean, that that will be within the memory span of many of our listeners. And of course, there was this trend which was an awful trend, but you you tap on that a dot com to the end of your company name, and suddenly allegedly you're going to get an internet stock premium. Well, that didn't really work in the long run, certainly not in the long run. It's not going to work in the long run this time around either. So just be wary. Uh, companies attaching AI to their name. There's there's probably good reasons why they're doing that.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's it's the funniest stocks. I mean, I remember very clearly in the uh the tech bubble how um electric utilities were suddenly going to be internet stocks because they were going to put the internet over their transmission wires. Uh, now we've got Valio, French car parts maker. Um, the car parts sector's been horrible this year. Uh, the stock is up like 15-20% because apparently it's going to make chip cooling solutions to revolutionize data center efficiency. And the stock's been on this absolute tear. It, you know, we're getting these little signs along the way. Um, but actually, James, we've also had some really interesting developments in the investment trust world this week.
SPEAKER_02We have, which we've covered on the site. A couple that caught my eye with foresight environmental infrastructure. So that one, there's lots of headwind space in the sector, but the resilience of that portfolio has really shone through. They've kind of one-stop shop, it's got a bit of everything, a bit of solar, a bit of hydro, a bit of wind. Um, positive NAV performance and confirmed they're on track for a 12th consecutive year of dividend increase. Um, and another one out today, JP Morgan European Discovery. So that's the trust focused on the European small cap space, extended its winning run of outperformance to 10 years now. Um, and the managers think that you know there's lots of value in that patch, and the small caps are overdue a resurgence.
SPEAKER_00And of course, we of course we of course had an interview, didn't we, with with Jack Featherby, one of the trio managers that run that trust. So, I mean, if you want to tune into that, uh, Jack Featherby, um, really interesting take on on his his view on European markets, and of course, now you've got uh the the results as well to back up the story, so so definitely well worth researching.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, definitely. And personal assets as well, Ian, which is well very interesting in moving to the the Japanese yen for the first time. What's going on there?
SPEAKER_01Well, this is very interesting because they've um the they've their their job is to protect and grow investors' capital, and they're very clear about that. And they say it was a bit of an unexciting year for them versus the market, you know. They uh they beat the infl, they beat CPI as you would expect them to, but they lagged the market. But what I thought found much more interesting was the positioning. So the stock actually equity part of the portfolio is very small now, it's kind of around 20%. Most of it is in short-term instruments, uh, and the new uh the new development is they put 10% of the portfolio in Japanese government bonds, short-dated Japanese government bonds, because a the yen is always a safe haven currency, so if and when the whole you know momentum market kind of rolls over, they're they're in the right place. But also, they say that the yen is at something like a 40-year low, and I'm seeing more people making comments on this. It's very difficult to make currency calls, but I think the consensus is that the yen is a good place to be looking right now, and of course, next week we have our webinar with um AVI Japan Opportunities Trust. So I'm gonna be putting that to them. That's an interesting thing. Um, Steve, you also put a piece out on investment trust this week on the best five-year performers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it was it was really focused on uh those that are concentrated on the UK, so they might not be exclusively UK, but they're they're the large part of their portfolio is focused on the UK. And and I thought it was there were some interesting names thrown around. Temple Bar um uh had one of the best five-year records, and there was a few familiar names in there, some of which we've had on the on the podcast. So uh it that again that's that's well worth checking out. We we do these regular deep dive research pieces uh into investment trust, into funds, into stocks. Um, so there's lots of ideas uh been put out there with with justification of pros and cons. And go and have a look, go and read about it, go and do some your own research. You might find some really useful tidbits in these research pieces.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Now you've mentioned Micron, obviously coming next Wednesday. Shares up 300% year today. That is going to be a proper test of the AI uh enthusiasm. Um and James, you've got quite a few consumer companies coming.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, very busy week. So we've got Halford, so uh we'll have to deliver another upgrade. There was quite a surprise upgrade in April, actually. Um that that company's got quite a patchy history, uh certainly downgrades in the time I've covered it. Uh and also we've got results from Gear for Music, another one that's been on a very strong upgrade cycle. Uh, Moonpig and Card Factory as well. Um, another one that might be of interest is ProCook. So this is like a kitchenware brand that's been expanding under new management. And I'll be very keen to see you know if that light for light growth has stayed positive, if they're still taking market share, given that very tough backdrop.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we've got we've got other companies as well, like Nica reports next week, um uh FedEx reports next week, Walgreens Boots uh are reporting next week. So there's this there's there's a lot going on, it's already seemingly starting to accelerate into the next quarter of earnings. We're not quite starting to go quite yet, but um, it's gonna come around pretty soon.
SPEAKER_01I know absolutely. I'll be looking at Barclay Group. Um, they had uh the house builder, London-based house builder. They had a uh a strategy update in April that just went down really badly with stock it at a five-year low on the back of it, because they basically said we're not making any money on new land, so we're gonna stop buying new land, we're gonna ration the work in progress to uh basically better meet customer demand, which we know has been quite put it started off the year okay, and then of course, conflict in Iran, uh consumer confidence got hit, inflation starts to go up. So that'll be very interesting to see what they say because we're now in June, the financial year ended in April. Um, has have things improved, have they got worse? Um, that's all to play for, really.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I suppose it's it's a bit early days to expect to see a marked improvement from a sort of a strategic shift. So it's more a case of cementing that strategic shift and looking for other evidential signs that it's not going to cause too much damage before things improve, if they will improve. Um I can't really see that they're gonna have um instant successes to report.
SPEAKER_01No, as I say, I think a lot of it will be how's the market been? What's the market looking like for FY27? Um, can they speed up that work in progress and um hit their completion targets? Um, I think, chaps, that's about us for today, then, um, for this week. Um, it's been really listeners.
SPEAKER_00I mean, remember, so we mentioned it previously, um, there's still time you can register for free for this webinar. Um, two different trusts, you get a good view about Japan. So Ian's talked about the the yen factor. There's good uh talk about um uh uh uh Europe as well. So uh there's really good uh touch points, two uh presentations, and your chance to ask those managers direct questions. So anything that's on your mind, portfolio performance, uh positioning, whatever it might be, um you can email them in live in the webinar and we will pitch them to those managers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, excellent stuff. Well, chaps, have a great weekend and thanks to everyone for listening.
