Make A Date With A Naked Trader
Owain Bennallack talks to Robbie Burns -- aka The Naked Trader -- about his latest book for investors, The Naked Traders' Trading Diary 2013. This slim and delightful tome is packed full of stock market history and statistics, but is it basically a fun diversion best suited for the smallest room in the house, or does Robbie think its dates, tips and trivia will help you make more money from shares this year?
You can listen to or download the full podcast here.
Owain:
Hello, and welcome to Money Talk, the regular investing podcast from The Motley Fool. I'm Owain Bennallack, and my guest today is Robbie Burns, aka the Naked Trader. Robbie's best-selling book about his adventures in active investing in shares have made him a popular figure among many private investors, although he's less popular among the city tailors, who prefer their traders to do their stuff wearing suits and red braces. Isn't that true, Robbie?
Robbie:
That's very true. In fact, when you look at the TV on Bloomberg and CNBC, they're all kind of still wearing... I saw a guy with red braces the other day on, Bloomberg I think it was.
Owain:
Yeah, one of them still wears them almost as an affectation, Urquhart-Stewart, or someone like that.
Robbie:
That's right - I think yeah, it's probably affectation, but he doesn't look bad in them, I have to say. Obviously for you and me, I thought I was quite badly dressed, but you trumped me on, like, a kind of, Mr Pound Shop pullover.
Owain:
My crazy jumper - this is my Christmas jumper.
Robbie:
Do you know what? - I can now tell you love that jumper, and I've upset you. I'm sorry about that.
Owain:
What you should be able to tell is that my girlfriend bought it for me, so I have to be careful.
Robbie:
Okay ... have you been together long?
Owain:
Well, I just got the jumper. So you've worn clothes into the office today - that's good to see.
Robbie:
Probably handy. I find men get rather jealous if I take them off, so I keep them on.
Owain:
I could become the Naked Podcaster, because no-one would even know.
Robbie:
You could ... that's true. There is a camera in this room though, so I'd be slightly worried.
Owain:
Is there a real camera?
Robbie:
There is one, yes.
Owain:
Well, we got all the cameras removed when we saw that you were coming in.
Robbie:
Good idea, yes.
Owain:
We weren't quite sure how you would turn up. Just on the subject of the Naked Trader name, I'm sure you have written about this at some point, but to me it seems quite poetic. Obviously there's you on the cover of the book, naked. I'm not saying that's particularly deep, but I like the idea, particularly when you go back to when you started share trading, that there were these big institutions out there, and you were almost this one man with the shirt on your back, or not on your back, as the case may be. Was that kind of part of the implication was that you're out there in the markets, and you don't have the protection of the institutions and their systems?
Robbie:
Yes, it's partly that - it's sort of 50:50. The other point really was that I have a website and the trades go up there, and the reason I'm naked is you see the losses as well as the gains, and every trade is followed through, even if it's five years later, to its conclusion. Well, I don't think anybody else does that. I'm not a tipster, but you'll often find tipsters will sort of spout about their fantastic wins. The losses are kind of shoved under the carpet, or hidden somehow. With me, everything is there, so if I make a loss, you'll hear me moaning about it.
Owain:
So metaphorically, if you were going to hide something and you're naked, you'd have to go a bit medical?
Robbie:
Yes, or something like that.
Owain:
I should have said welcome back, because as has obviously been alluded to, you have been here before with Mr Kuo a couple of times, but we have you in today because I think we had a quiet slot in the calendar, to be honest, Robbie.
Robbie:
I know, and I'm standing in for someone who did know what they're talking about.
Owain:
Also, of course, you've written this book, which is a better reason for you being in, which is called "The Naked Trader's Trading Diary for 2013". Listeners may not be aware, like you and I, that the Tokyo Stock Exchange will be closed on 11 February this year for National Foundation Day in Japan, but the FTSE 100 has gone down on average 43% of the time in the first week of September, or that Sage Group, the software company, will be reporting its final results in the last week of November. I mean, I know that - you know that.
Robbie:
Well, we both find that fascinating, obviously.
Owain:
I have to admit, I do know, because I made some notes reading your diary on the way in. It's not just a qualification of sitting in here. It's completely riveting - it's like one of those books, I don't know if you're about to take this the wrong way (we are recording live), but it is like one of those books you find when you visit someone, and you pop to the bathroom or the loo, and it's a sort of book of facts, and you just spend hours in there, and they start thinking that maybe something's wrong with the food or whatever, because you've been in there hours. I could easily imagine sitting somewhere away, if I came across this book, for just hours reading your various thoughts, and also just seeing the next results, interim results are in September. It's something, if you're obsessed about shares, there's something quite magical about just seeing it all laid out in the year ahead. Is this something that you were just creating for yourself, and then you decided to turn it into a book?
Robbie:
I've just got this awful image of you sitting on the toilet for hours after a curry, reading the Trading Diary.
Owain:
I am wondering if this podcast is going to make it past the censors.
Robbie:
I will take "completely riveting" as a quote for me, thanks Owain - I'll just ignore the rest. It was actually just a diary that I wanted, because I'm not a tech person. I don't even have a mobile phone, I'm not interested in all that, so I don't want an online diary. Diaries are coming back, actually desk diaries are coming back.
Owain:
Is that a prediction or an observation?
Robbie:
I keep reading that people are thinking that, I think there was a feature in The Times, was it The Sunday Times this weekend? I've gone back to a normal diary, and I can plan my life. I just write it in pen on the day, and it's much easier than actually doing it on the computer. So I personally love it - it's what I wanted, and I hope people enjoy it. Actually, it is sold out at the minute, but there is a waiting list, so if you want one, you can contact me via my website, and maybe we can get you one.
Owain:
The thing I like about the diary, which, returning to the subject of the podcast, is, I might decide to write something, as you say, into Thursday 18 April, but then I'll see these other, I could put Peter Lynch down here saying, "Never invest in anything you can't illustrate with a crayon" - that would pretty much mean I couldn't invest in anything.
Robbie:
Pretty much!
Owain:
Perhaps he's good with a crayon. But there's an element of synchronicity about it - with a computer, you would just go to that date, put it in, like you said; but with this, it's going to continually, I think, make your mind think in different directions. Do you like that kind of...?
Robbie:
Yes, I hope people would just, it's something you' d pick up every so often and have a read through, and you might find something that would just give you a spark of an idea maybe, but actually also, things like ex-dividend dates people forget, and what amazes me is the amount of selling of a share that goes on the ex-dividend date, because people think their share is tanking, but it's actually only gone down by the dividend. I find that crazy, so I think that's probably one of the most useful things in the book - is your share going ex-dividend? I had some emails from people who had a share, the dividend was 40 pence, or the stop losses got hit. It was just because it was going ex-dividend - they hadn't noticed, and hopefully the diary would help. Also, when's your company reporting? - people don't even look and check, so it at least gives you an idea of the dates to look for.
Owain:
It is worrying that people would be setting stop losses and not understand what happened when the share went ex-dividend. We see exactly the same thing at The Fool, with our members - someone will turn up on the boards and go, invariably on a Wednesday, because it's when they all go ex-dividend - what's happened to blah blah blah, and I can't see any news anywhere, which makes you wonder where they're looking.
Robbie:
Exactly. I think if you've bought a company, you ought to keep abreast of what's going on with it, and it always amazes me when I get helpless emails about a company which you could have Googled in three seconds, and found the answer to.
Owain:
Maybe there's a reason that some of us are able to profit from shares.
Robbie:
Well, to be fair, if you're making a profit, somebody's going to make a loss.
Owain:
It's a zero sum gain.
Robbie:
So in the end, you have to make money from the losers.
Owain:
Yeah, let's hope more of them start investing - not you listeners, you're the educated few.
Robbie:
We need some losers.
Owain:
How much attention do you pay to the months and the seasons in your own trading? I mean obviously, there's the little facts, but like do you tend to believe that summer's a bad time, and that there's a Santa rally, and these sorts of things?
Robbie:
Well, a Santa rally is almost a definite - we had it again, if you ignore the couple of fiscal cliff nervousness days, but actually this Santa rally went on through January, so it became the New Year rally, and we're still in it now. So I did my usual - I tend to buy the FTSE just before Christmas. This year I bought the FTSE 250 as well, which did even better, which is the sort of companies just outside the FTSE 100 - the more British companies as well. I also bought a basket of banks, and those did very well, but actually I cashed them all in way too quickly, because I'm out of them all now. I took my profits and ran. The Santa rally works an amazing number of years - it's probably the biggest and best one.
Owain:
Yeah - they're strange because my gut feeling is similar, and yet I have seen statistics that say that there is a slight seasonal effect, but it's almost something that the human eye couldn't actually observe, if you actually went over the decades. Obviously, there are those out there in the world who would say that such things are impossible, because some multi-trillion hedge fund would have noticed, would have read your book. Presumably you think there might be some reason why these seasonal effects sort of persist?
Robbie:
There probably is - I'm just not clever enough to put my finger on what it is. I wish I could tell you, and sound very intellectual, but I'm afraid not - it's just one of those things. As to, there's this old cliché - go away in May, and come back on St Leger's Day. The last couple of years, that's probably worked, because the last couple of, obviously the summer before last, when we had the August riots, was the worst. I think it was a week where everybody panicked and sold everything, but slightly off topic what we were talking about, the best time to buy is always at the top of the panic. If you pick up, literally if you just go through life and pick up shares on the really bad days and the panicky days, and then hold them for a couple of years, you'll normally come up smiling, but it's very hard to do. It's easier to say, what you do, obviously.
Owain:
It always feels like there's a reason that particular time, doesn't there? - particularly that summer, the whole country was in flames; Greece was rioting. It did look like something you'd see in a movie, almost.
Robbie:
Wasn't it a weird time? - that was very strange. But if you held onto your hat and you bought during that time, you'd be sitting on some very nice profits now.
Owain:
You also go down, as I mentioned earlier, you go down into the weekly performance figures. With the best will in the world, and with the caveat that I do think it's a nice bit of fun, the second week of March, I see that the FTSE 100's gone down 43% of the time. I guess actually the one I managed - well, it isn't even, that was, I did say 43% before for the first week of September, so that one was proved, the point that these are, they're kind of hard numbers to get your head around. I won't say you're not - I'll let you answer. Do you expect someone to get to 1 April, and see your thoughts for the week, thus says Peter Lynch again, and then to say, OK, this is the week I should put on a few more trades, because it tends to go up?
Robbie:
No, not really. I think the diary is entertainment more than anything else, and I would hope people wouldn't look at 1 April and go, ooh - shares have gone up 93% of the time, except in 2004 and '05 and '07, and I should buy. You should look at the current market and decide for yourself. It's just a nice little helpful aid more than anything else - I wouldn't take it as gospel.
Owain:
Yeah, I mean, I think that's, going back to the ex-dividend angle, you and I absolutely would see it like that, but I do wonder if some people would ... there do seem to be people out there who just want some secret formula, and they believe that some people have it and some people don't, and if only they had it, they'd have the winning trades.
Robbie:
It's true. Everybody looks for - humans always do that, you're looking for a system or a guru, or better, someone to do all the work for you, which is what all the ads are aimed at, when you see ads on any website. It goes, "Make your money on the stock market, make £75,000 in three months, and we'll do all the work for you - it'll take three minute a day." The usual thing is, if it sounds too good to be true, it's going to be too good to be true. The best way to make money is go your own way, and do your own work and do your research, and the main reason people lose is the inability to cut the losing trade quickly enough, and let it go down. I've met hundreds and thousands of people who are sitting on trades that are down between 30 and 80%. I always get this quote, which is, "I am trapped in this share. I can't sell this share - what am I going to do?" But if I say sell to them, they won't, because they can't.
Owain:
But do you think that that's - I've noticed exactly the same phenomenon as well, people just get locked into some price that they bought at, which was arbitrary on a particular day, and then they cling stubbornly to it as if they market cares that their particular screen is red or green - but do you think it's partly because they confuse a couple of different methods, like they hear Warren Buffett saying, "You've got to be able to sit through the bad times", but they're not even really sitting through them as value investors - they're more sitting through them as just rabbit in the headlight, I must get my money back, investors. Do you think they're mixing up some of their trading metaphors?
Robbie:
Oh dear or dear - I thought you were intellectual. You should be cutting that trade, by the time it's down 10%, it should be out of your portfolio, my friend. Come back again when it's down 50% if you want. You also mentioned the other thing that investors do wrongly, and that's buy oil companies, because most of them just have a bit of swampland in the middle of some horrible political area. People buy these oil shares, and they wonder why overnight they haven't found any oil, and suddenly they're down 50%. I don't like being in any share where I might get woken up overnight by some horrible news event, and my money is down 50%. I want to be in something that's making a profit.
Owain:
I think that's a noble aspiration, but hasn't the lesson of the last few years been that, even the biggest banks in the country can be knocked down 20%?
Robbie:
Did I say invest in banks?
Owain:
Yeah, you said you bought them just before Christmas.
Robbie:
Oh, well that was just a little basket, for the Santa Claus rally. I wouldn't touch anything in the FTSE 100, no. I agree with you - I think FTSE shares can be equally hit. I guess what I'm talking about is shares in companies that actually sell stuff that people buy. Dividends are going up every year. There's no sign of a question mark, and they're going to go up, and I stick with those, and my major money has been made out of probably seven or eight companies over the last eight years that have grown from a pound to £10, £12, and I'm still holding them.
Owain:
But you actively trade around, you add and reduce your positions?
Robbie:
Oh yeah absolutely, yes - obviously top slice from time to time, because if you're holding a massive position in something, then you want to cut it a little bit. My only exception to that is, Telecom Plus, where I hold about 400 grand's worth of that now, because I don't see any problem with it, and I think in five or six years' time it'll be a FTSE 100 company, and the money will keep going.
Owain:
Do you have that outside of a tax wrapper as well?
Robbie:
It's the only one, funnily enough - it's the only share I have, so actually it's the only one I will have to pay sadly, but then it's not a great problem to have.
Owain:
I do find that makes me suddenly into a long-term investor.
Robbie:
Yes. I do have some in my ISA as well, and I have top sliced a bit in that, but talking about that, you don't have to pay tax. You can just, ISA and spread bets - those are my two things, that if you make those two, there's no tax to pay. You don't have to fill out any tax form - fantastic.
Owain:
Yeah, it's well worth it. So if you were to be reading your diary, and you got to summer, you're not one of these people, because I think sometimes people do think of you as a fairly active trader. You're not someone who'd sort of clear your books for the summer holidays, so you don't have to worry when you're at the beach about your positions?
Robbie:
Do you know what? - it's really funny you should say that, but yes, I'm thinking about that this year. I'm at a probably different point than other people. I'm very lucky - maybe it sounds smug, but I've made the money I've wanted to make in the market. I don't really need any more - I could pack up now quite happily. But the reason I don't is, I really enjoy it. I think it's a great - talking intellectual again, which I wouldn't address myself, but it's a great business to be in, and I love dissecting a company and wondering whether there's more upside, and then figuring out the best time to buy and sell - I find that all fascinating. I can imagine myself on my deathbed, trying to make that one last buck - press the button on the laptop, and just failing.
Owain:
There probably would be voice recognition by then, won't it?
Robbie:
Oh, that's true - yes, probably.
Owain:
Your last death rasp will be, "Sell, sell! - it's gone down 50%!"
Robbie:
Unfortunately I'm getting on now, so probably not, but it could be. Sorry - I was drifting off again. What were we talking about? It's not fair - you've got all these notes. I haven't got anything in front of me. I wish I'd bought some notes now.
Owain:
Don't reveal I have the notes! - you're revealing the magic.
Robbie:
They're even lovely - they're lovely, typed out and everything.
Owain:
Yeah, it's all urban myth.
Robbie:
Not like Gordon Brown, sort of a mad, big handful.
Owain:
Well, he wrote the notes for my last podcast. It was all very dour.
Robbie:
Did he tell you to sell gold?
Owain:
He said, "No more boom and bust" - that's another one he added.
Robbie:
There's lots of interesting quotes that he's made.
Owain:
Well, that's why Gordon is now back in Scotland, I suppose. Let's talk a little bit about specific investment ideas, or even just the market in general. If you're thinking perhaps of taking a breather in the summer, does that suggest that you think the market's possibly getting a little bit carried away?
Robbie:
Not really, no. I never prejudge it. In fact, interestingly you should say that, but if you look at IG Index, the spread betting firm, since about four or five weeks ago, nearly 80% of their spread betters have been short of the Dow, and they've all been burnt, as you can imagine, because they all think, because the market's going to go down, but the market always overshoots either way, and it might well go up a lot more this year. I have no idea - I'm just happy to follow it. There's always time to follow it up and down. The other thing I would say is, I'm not in shares that are that volatile. My shares tend to be BT shares that don't get affected so much by the main market. So if the FTSE's down 80 today, I'm not going to be that bothered about it, but I will play a little bit, just for a bit of fun sometimes, a little bit of volatile shares with a spread bet, but I wouldn't have it open for that long, and it's just peripheral money to me - it's not my main money.
Owain:
We were chatting a bit earlier, because obviously we're good chums.
Robbie:
Oh yes - well, we go back a long way, of course.
Owain:
At least twenty minutes, or so. And you mentioned that you weren't seeing quite as many bargain-priced ideas around, even in your smaller reaches.
Robbie:
I think it's getting harder at the moment. As the market goes up, it's harder to spot new opportunities.
Owain:
Have you ever had a time in the markets where you've thought there's actually almost nothing here that I can buy?
Robbie:
No, there's always something interesting and new, I find. But I don't force it, I don't force the trades, if I can't find anything. I've not bought anything for a couple of weeks now.
Owain:
Do you tend to be fully invested, so if you had less ideas, you'd have 100% of your portfolio across fewer ideas? - or do you have a big cash reserve, when the ideas run low?
Robbie:
Well, right now, for example, I've got for about - say, for example, an ISA's got £700,000 in it, and only £30,000 of cash. It's probably quite fully invested at the minute, but there's something I have £50,000 in that I think I'm probably going to start selling, so I might, in a week's time, I might have £100,000 in cash sitting in there. So generally, I try and be reasonably fully invested, because that's what I do. But also, when you say invested, if the market turns sour, then I might have a short open in the ISA to make money out of the downside as well, so I do look at the downside as well as the upside, and a lot of people don't do that, which I think is a mistake.
Owain:
So I'm assuming that a fair few of your fans are going to discover we've done this podcast, and be listening in, as well as our regular listeners, and I think that they would lynch me if we don't get at least a couple of names out of you of things that you're looking at at the moment, or investing in and you think are interesting.
Robbie:
What I tend to do is, I tend to top up in things that are going well, so I'm an average up not an average down. A lot of people, what they do is, they buy a share, it goes down 40%, and then they buy some more in the hope of eventually breaking even, and all the rest of it, which I just think, it's a silly thing to do. I like to buy shares that go up and then keep topping up, so one is a company called Vislink, which I bought at 18p at 22, 26 - about 29p I think, today.
Owain:
What's Vislink's business?
Robbie:
It's got three or four different businesses, but the main thrust of it is surveillance - I suppose you know governments are obviously spending more money, keeping an eye on what we are up to, us bad people.
Owain:
This is the Big Brother path.
Robbie:
Yes. What I really like about it, it's unusual for a company, but the CEO said in the report, we're on target to make £800 million within the next couple of years. The market cap's still under 50 million, so it's trading on a low multiple. He said it had eight million in cash, but it's actually only got four million.
Owain:
Well, we don't come out for two weeks as well.
Robbie:
Oh, okay - so this is probably old, old hat, and there'll probably be a profits warning by the time this comes out, so edit it out obviously, if the share price goes ...
Owain:
Does it pay a dividend?
Robbie:
It does, yeah - I'm not quite sure, it's probably three or four percent.
Owain:
That's not bad, for a tech share.
Robbie:
That's right. One other one I bought is Oxford Catalysts, something like that - the code is OCG anyway, which is what I refer to with that. I picked that up because I know there's a story with it, it won a big contract from British Airways. It's alternative energy. I can actually hear people listening to this broadcast now going, oh, energy, oil - because all investors are obsessed with energy, oil. If you say energy and oil, they love that. If you say anything like phone calls, utilities - they get a bit bored, they don't buy shares like that, so that's the one I really like.
Owain:
Are they the ones, that they add something to the fuel?
Robbie:
Yeah, this is terrible, because you would have expected it to be researched in full, but I think the BA contract win will be followed up by other airlines, and also it was big money - it was a big money contract they won from British Airways, and I think that ...
Owain:
It's meaningful, for a company of that size.
Robbie:
Exactly, and I love getting into companies which are at the beginning of their .... and winning a big contract with BA was, I think, a fantastic start for them. I had to do it on a spread bet, because it's an AIM share, which you can't put in an ISA, so I've done it with, I think a September expiry. If it keeps going up, I'm going to probably keep adding to that one this year.
Owain:
Do you think that we'll see this change in April, with AIM shares being allowed into ISAs?
Robbie:
Well, I really hope so.
Owain:
It is a crazy rule, isn't it?
Robbie:
I think it's completely mad, and I don't know ... maybe originally I think the idea was to stop us poor investors buying risky companies in our ISA - oh my goodness!
Owain:
They say that, but there's plenty of those. We've just said, the banks have lost plenty of people money.
Robbie:
I agree - I think they should be allowed. The trouble is, it's on the periphery - they don't really care, do they, one way or another? So - I think that's somebody drilling.
Owain:
I just thought, is that some feedback?
Robbie:
It could be for the next few weeks here, you're going to have drilling.
Owain:
It's David Kuo, trying to get back into the studio.
Robbie:
Yeah, he's going, "Come on - I want to talk to Robbie Burns. Let me at him!"
Owain:
I think there was the other thing with the AIM shares was that they already have some inheritance tax picks and people are worried about them.
Robbie:
Well, that's right. I have a friend who, she had a big pot, and she deliberately bought AIM shares to shield them from inheritance tax. There's a few people that wouldn't want AIM shares to be in ISAs, but obviously I do, and most investors, I think you'd be crazy. The crazy thing about it is that there a lot of big companies that are doing well that are in AIM. You think, I can't put this is in an ISA - that is mad. However, you obviously can put dual-listed shares in ISAs, so it's amazing what you can put in.
Owain:
You can put strange little Canadian miners in.
Robbie:
Funnily enough, one of my big wins is a company called Coastal Energy, which is a Canadian company which I bought from about £4. It's now about £13. That's one I think will go higher, and I've got quite a lot, I think I've got about £100,000-worth in my ISA at the moment, and that's an AIM share, but it's listed in Canada, so it's an add in my ... so I would say to people, if you've got an ISA, and you think it's an AIM share, try putting it in, and if they say you can't have it, you can't have it, but it's always worth trying to see if you could have it in. One thing to say, if it is dual-listed, the share price just tends to run with whatever the main listing does, so the Coastal Energy AIM will run with whatever the Canadian share price is doing.
Owain:
And with the spread bets, I'm presuming that - you've done a podcast on this before, so we won't go into all the detail - but I'm presuming that you don't particularly use the leverage there, except to get the sort of size you would have liked?
Robbie:
That's a very good point. I think people overuse leverage on spread bets. It can be disastrous, because you can lose more than you can put in. If you can't afford to cover it, they can come and knock on your door and demand the money back in the early hours of the morning. So some people would say, and I tend to agree with them - perhaps don't use the leverage at all, or only use a very small amount of it. I think that's very good advice, unless you've got a very big bank, obviously.
Owain:
OK. I'm a bit worried about that drilling - I don't know if listeners can hear that, or indeed if you can hear me talking about it, because they can't and this has been it.
Robbie:
I can only hear it very - it's stopped actually, hasn't it?
Owain:
It has stopped.
Robbie:
Do you think your listeners mind? - I'm just worried about you saying, we're going to have to start the podcast all over again.
Owain:
I think the listeners have nodded off now, with my Radio 4 voice.
Robbie:
Well, what they can do is, they can let us know on the comments bit - you know where they put in the comments going, David Kuo was great, but Robbie Burns was rubbish. Robbie Burns sucks - he should never do podcasts.
Owain:
I think we'll probably bring it to an end there, Robbie.
Robbie:
I was just starting to enjoy it, but there we go.
Owain:
As you know, we do like to end each podcast with a quote, and I was pleased to see that you've made my research much easier by including a quote about investing in your diary for every week of the year - thanks for that.
Robbie:
You're very welcome.
Owain:
So my quote of the day this week comes from Mark Twain, and the entry, for those of you who have the book, is on the first week of October - I think it's page 102. Mark Twain said: "October is one of the peculiarly dangerous month to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February apparently." Yeah - that's obviously all the months of the year. I think that quote is so good, that we've actually used it before. Do you have a worst month? Do you have a superstitious month?
Robbie:
Not really, but actually, I always remember November is always horrible, and I don't know why, but shares always seem to go down in November.
Owain:
Yeah, I read once that it was something to do with the harvests. It's one of these ridiculous theories that people have, it's something to do with harvest time - that was when you would discover how much grain you were going to have to get you through winter, and so built into our psychology, and social psychology almost, is this idea that that's when you'd have a crash, in October or November.
Robbie:
Do you know what I think it is? - by the time you get to the back of November, you're thinking, oh God, I've got to go and buy Christmas cards. I hate Christmas - it's so much hard work. I'm just going to sell some shares - I'm fed up with everything.
Owain:
I like that theory, because as soon as you realise that it's summer in Australia when it's winter here, the kind of seasonal theory goes out the window a bit.
Robbie:
Yeah, that's a good point - yeah.
Owain:
OK, so it just remains for me to thank you, Robbie Burns, for coming into the studio today, and to remind listeners that there's still eleven months of the year to fill in their Naked Trader's Diary for 2013, if you can get hold of it. So they can go to your website, which is:
Robbie:
Owain:
You've obviously got that one bookmarked. They can go onto a waiting list, and then as people - you said returns, I'm assuming that's not like returned, half filled in diaries!
Robbie:
Sorry - the publisher just said, sometimes they get some back.
Owain:
They might be in a shop somewhere.
Robbie:
Probably in a shop, right at the back of the bargain cabinet and nobody spotted them.
Owain:
An unsuccessful part of the country.
Robbie:
Something like that, so I think, if you just email me, and I'll put you on the list, and then you'll get one. I think they'll give it to you for, I think it says £12 on the back - I'll probably let you have it for £8.
Owain:
Will there be a Naked Trader's Trading Diary 2014?
Robbie:
I think so, yeah - well, I hope so, because I enjoy it myself, so I would have thought so, and maybe another Naked Trader book coming up in 2014, which will be the full edition. I try and do one every three or four years, to keep it up-to-date.
Owain:
You've got to fill your days somehow, when you're not in here.
Robbie:
You've got to do something, haven't you?
Owain:
OK, that's been a lot of fun, Robbie - thanks very much for coming in, and to everyone else out there, happy investing!
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