Thu 10 Apr 2025 - Paul Scott's Small/Mid Cap Value Report

Market boom! Alun's snapshot up at 07:46. Starters: Mains: TTG, BBSN, MER, HVO

Perhaps foolishly, Alun has taught me how to use AI :-)

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Weekly roundup with Paul Hill is live, today at 2pm - now a recording -

#TET #CHH #JD. #RFX #GHH #EVPL #THG #OXB #HVO #GMS #CAV #IGP #FLO #CLX #CML #XAR #QTX #EPWN #OMG #XPP #ITV

• 00:00 Key learnings from Trump’s trade tariff volatility

• 07:25 Treatt

• 18:15 Churchill China

• 23:00 JD Sports

• 27:40 Ramsdens

• 30:40 Gooch & Housego

• 34:55 Everplay (formerly Team17)

• 37:25 THG (ie TheHutGroup)

• 41:05 Oxford Biomedica

• 44:25 hVivo

• 47:35 Gulf Marine Servies

• 51:30 Cavendish

• 54:0 Intercede

• 54:45 Flowtech Fluidpower

• 57:25 Calnex Solutions

• 61:45 CML Microsystems

• 65:45 Xaar

• 66:45 Quartix Tech

• 68:05 Epwin

• 71:30 Oxford Metrics

• 73:45 XPP

• 75:55 ITV

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Good morning from the full team again today - Paul, Dave, Jon, and Alun!

Tariffs latest - as I’m sure you’re already aware, Trump blinked yesterday, and announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs (not China though), and a reduction in some. Commentators are saying this was caused more by rumblings in the Govt bond market, which of course the US relies on to fund its substantial spending deficit. Was a Liz Truss type moment building up? Quite possibly.

The upshot is that we saw a gigantic rally in US equity markets yesterday, after the UK had closed. So today will be a catch up day in UK & European markets - eg UK Futures are indicating >5% up (over 400 points on the FTSE 100), Germany, France, Netherlands and Switzerland markets are indicating c.8% up, Spain c.6% up - these are staggering numbers.

So I would suggest this is a day to get cash to work on the opening bell, and enjoy what is looking likely to be one of the best days on record for our portfolios! Unless something new goes wrong of course.

If you’re genuinely still worried about macro factors, then the huge rally days are obviously the best time to be selling - into strength, and a higher price. It’s so important to suppress that urge to panic sell on the big down days.

Anyway, enjoy today, but who knows where we go in future.

My view remains unchanged - we are awash with small cap bargains, selectively, and many have now become even more compellingly cheap during this crisis. Why wouldn’t people want to buy good companies at cheap valuations?

At least we now know there are limits to what Trump can do, before more powerful forces rein him in.

Which stocks to buy? The obvious ones would be things where the biggest worries about tariffs have hit the hardest - so I’m thinking in my portfolio/watchlist maybe JD Sports, Zotefoams, Intercede, there are too many to list.

Actually, a friend asked for a list of my top 20 bargains ideas in this Tuesday’s podcast, so here they are again. This might be a useful list of potential bargains that I identified a couple of days ago for you to research in more detail -

• Zotefoams (ZTF) [I hold]

• 4Imprint (FOUR)

• Filtronic (FTC)

• Aberdeen (ABDN)

• HSBC

• NatWest

• Warpaint (W7L)

• ITV [I hold]

• SThree (STEM)

• VP

• LadsBible Group (LBG)

• Premier Miton (PMI)

• Tracsis (TRCS)

• Cavendish (CAV)

• CakeBox (CBOX)

• Crest Nicholson (CRST)

• Pinewood (PINE)

• Beeks Financial Cloud (BKS) [I hold]

• Somero Enterprises (SOM)

• Norcros (NXR)

• H&T (HAT)

• Ramsdens (RFX)

• Gooch & Housego (GHH)

There are many more small/mid caps that I think are too cheap now too, but those were the ones I mentioned in a podcast earlier this week. As always, it’s essential you do your own more detailed research, and take responsibility for your own buy & sell decisions.

Happy hunting!

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