ICR189: Paul Mumford, The Stock Picker

My guest on the podcast today is Paul Mumford, one of the longest-serving fund managers in the UK.

Paul has 50 years’ experience in the markets as a stockbroker and fund manager.

He runs the Cavendish Opportunities Fund, AIM Fund and Select Fund, having launched the first in 1988 as the Glenfriars Opportunities Fund.

He is a stock picker who aims to find shares in undervalued companies and often ends up swimming against the tide and buying unloved shares.

Paul's new book is The Stock Picker: A financial history from the sharp end. The book is not an investing how-to: instead it is a financial history straight from the horse’s mouth.

It contains much from which investors can learn, and is also an evocative window into a vanished City of stock jobbers, messenger boys, luncheon vouchers and ledger-keepers - not to mention financial crises, booms and busts, and the life and death of companies great and small.

In the book, Mumford also covers how his own personal life has influenced his stock-picking approach: from running his own bookmaking business as a schoolboy to an ill-fated attempt at oil painting at night school.

In this episode of Informed Choice Radio, I speak to Paul about what first attracted him to fund management, what's changed in the world of investing since the 1960s, Paul's secret to finding undervalued companies, any uncertainties he feels when swimming against the investment tide, the signs Paul looks for which suggests investor sentiment will change, some of his less impressive stock pick during his career, what the future might hold for active fund management, and much more.

Welcome to The Stock Picker with Paul Mumford, in episode 189 of Informed Choice Radio.

 

Some questions I ask:

-Were you always attracted to investments and was that always a field you wanted to work in from day one?

-You mentioned the Big Bang, the deregulation of the stock market. What else has changed in the world of investing since 1963 when you started out in that business?

-What's your secret to finding under valued companies?

-When you're buying undervalued companies, what are some of the signs you look out for which indicate that sentiments going to improve and there's going to be a good opportunity to sell in the future?

-Your approach is very much active fund management, I know the FCA and others have been quite critical recently about the cost and value of active fund management. What do you think the future holds for that approach?

 

Thank you for listening!

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