Upside Blog

The job of a hedge fund manager is complex, and to those of us not in the hedge fund world, it can be a somewhat mystifying one.

Sometimes life can’t help but put you between a rock and a hard place. There's a trade off and you just don’t know what to do. In the latest in our series on ESG investing, we’ll be looking at when wrong feels right.

The world famous Knowledge of London - the process of becoming a black cab driver - is one of the toughest tests you can take.

Greenwashing isn’t when you use green soap, or when you water the garden grass on a hot summer's evening. Greenwashing is actually much more serious, and it’s the topic of this article, the next in our ESG series.

When you were young, your grandmother will likely have told you to eat all your vegetables so you can grow up big and strong. But what does eating all our vegetables have to do with investing you may ask? Well, your grandmothers’ hopes for you being big and strong aren’t too far off from Growth Investing. She was just investing in your growth, and not that of a company on the stock market.

The nice thing about learning something new is that you can research it. You can find the definitive parameters and definitions and read them a bunch of times before sitting back and saying, “yeah, ok. I get it”. Well… continuing our ESG series, we find out that this is not necessarily true of ESG investing.

From early days sat in front of the TV watching Trading Places at Christmas, we’ve grown up with the age old adage “buy-low, sell-high”. And that might work for some, but for others, Trading Places is too 80s. “It’s 2020!” they cry, “it’s time for Momentum Investing!”

In a recent article, we broke down what ESG investing is. It got you excited right? Well us too. But it raised some interesting questions, most notably, why since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, interest in ethical investing has increased. So we thought we’d delve a little deeper.

We all love value. A bargain is a bargain at the end of the day. So what’s value investing? Well, it’s a strategy involving picking stocks that appear to trade at a lower value than their intrinsic value.

Investing is open to everyone, with all sorts of opinions. Some investors don’t see the harm in buying stock from any type of company, but others may wish to invest in companies that fit their specific values. Some investors for example, may not wish to profit from companies that damage the planet, or companies that harm their customers or workers.

For many of us the generic term ‘finance’ conjures up images of hard and sharp graphs, complicated numbers and language or landscapes that us “normal people” just don’t get, or even care about.

At Upside, we are always going on about the importance of research when analysing a company... or analysing anything really.

When a book is made into a movie the age old argument will break out - which was better? Well in the case of Moneyball, we think it’s both. Have you read the book, or seen the movie? If not, stop what you’re doing and check it out.

When was the last time you felt left out? Sidelined in a conversation because you weren't really sure what everyone was talking about? The playground when you were a kid? In the pub when your pal who loves craft beer was talking about DDH IPAs? When your kids were explaining how servers work in Minecraft? In the office when the technical lead was talking about… wait, what was it? Read more...

Research, research, research. At the end of the day that’s what it’s all about. Any investor, portfolio manager or analyst will tell you the same.

One of the obstacles many people face when they start learning about investing is how to manage risk. Risk is a word with often negative connotations. It makes you think of the Bermuda Triangle, or quicksand - which, let’s face it, we all thought we’d face more as an adult.

We all interact with listed companies each day, from checking our phone in the morning, buying a coffee on the way into work, buying a new piece of clothing, logging into our computers, watching movies, or even that beer in the pub at the end of the day.

With September comes fresh beginnings. The dewey summer mornings give way to crisper ones. The world starts up again after the summer lull. The leaves start turning from greens into reds, then yellows, and browns.

We keep harping on about it here at Upside, but it’s true. We really do believe that anyone can have a great investment idea.

Behind the hidden door could be all manner of things. You’ve heard whispers about what’s there, and you’re curious to know, but maybe you won’t understand it.

When children are learning to ride a bike, we give them stabilisers; training wheels to avoid the inevitable, which still happens anyway.

It’s been 23 years since Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone was published in the UK, and it is now a right of passage for children to escape in the magical world of witchcraft and wizardry.

There you stand on the first tee, wind blowing in your hair. Club in hand, and golf ball ready, preparing to take your shot.

We live in a world of side hustles. Where you are both a sales manager and a make-up artist, a PR rep and a vintage clothes seller, a student, barista and learning to trade.

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

In the age of lockdown, many of us have got to grips with online shopping of all varieties, but it’s the grocery sector that has really boomed. Gone are the days where we push our trolleys down the aisles, and cave at the check-out when we see our favourite chocolate bar.

A curator is a manager, an overseer. Someone who tends to a collection of artifacts in a museum. Or someone who collects a selection of weird and wonderful oddities. Or indeed, someone who selects beautiful items to sell in a shop.

Our worlds are becoming more and more tech dependent, from our reliance on mobile phones with their myriad apps, to online maps to get you to that hot new restaurant you’ve never heard of but your friends have been banging on about for months.

In May of this year, two astronauts were propelled into space for the first time in over a decade from US soil.

“You’ll understand when you’re older” is one of those sayings that parents tell their children when they don’t have time, or aren’t ready to explain something.

With just a small number of folds, a square piece of origami paper can be used to create any number of hugely intricate designs. From stars, elephants, flowers and frogs, to the more common crane.

Dear Buy-Side,How have you been? It’s been a strange time for everyone, and we hope you are all keeping well.

At Upside, we understand the importance of failure as a learning tool, because it’s a path to getting it right.

No one has ever said being a research analyst is an easy job.

These days, being bombarded with information from all corners of our life leaves us open to accepting ‘fact’ as data.

No one will make a big decision without a bit of research - whether it’s buying a car, choosing a holiday or making an investment.

Some investment firms use the analogy of a ship navigating through the choppy seas into calmer waters, and others of an investment starting as a seed and growing into a strong oak.

As we move from childhood into adulthood, we tend to become increasingly scared of getting it wrong. Children see the world differently, without the constraints and rules of adulthood.

Over the last three months the whole world has become interested in predicting the future, and it is a hard task. We are living in an unprecedented and unpredictable time, a time that even the superforecasters didn’t predict.

Often, a lot of what we see is an illusion - the way that your brain perceives images is often faulty. Not only does your brain have to flip what you are seeing, but you naturally try to find reference points from your past to compare to, rather than actually seeing what is there. A lot of the time, what you are seeing, your brain is just estimating using a familiar backstory.

At the heart of the concept of Superforecasting is the idea that anyone, anywhere, can do something unexpected, even remarkable. Something that was perceived by others to be impossible.

Until December 2017, reams and reams of sell-side investment research was sent to the buy-side, with asset managers sending both trading business, and paying commission to the sell-side who created it.

For centuries, people have investigated and understood the world around us by measuring things. Heights, weights, depths, speeds, brightness, strength. Our findings have shaped how we think and interact with the world every day.

As with superheroes, so it is with companies: the origin story. Where did the idea come from, and where are we going with it?

If you go to the driving range and hit 200 hundred balls do you become a better golfer?

The debate has raged for decades, and will in all likelihood continue to decades to come.

You might imagine this is an easy question to answer, but it isn’t.

Dear Sell-side, Don’t leave us. In the new era of transparency, the pricing power of your research has never been greater.

Since the financial crisis, investing has become increasingly and notably more short term in its outlook. Factors and signals are the new investing elixir, identified and isolated at greater speeds by the advances in technology and trading tools.