Stocks To Buy Pre-Brexit

*Tomorrow's Barron's suggests buying not one but two of our existing holdings, both of which I have already partly exited, with profits on one and a loss on the other.

The profits were on Marine Harvest Group (MHG), the Norwegian supplier of cheap protein from salmon fish-farms to the world. It is gaining from an algae outbreak in Chilean waters where smaller rival fish-farms supplying the US market congregate, writes Jonathan Buck. He barely gives the ADR ticker symbol which makes his advice sound far more insightful than it actually is. If MHG pushe​s​ up US fish prices too high, it will reduce the already tough sell of farmed salmon, which frankly is not the taste champion at the fish-monger's.

Barron's also figured out that retail investors can join the high-net-worth crowd by buying the closed-end fund version of Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Holdings (PSHZF). We told you first over a year ago and last week I sold half of my stake in PSHZF which is listed in Amsterdam in US$ and trades mostly in London. Now you have an opportunity to sell even higher if the Barron's readership decide to “buy Ackman on the cheap”, following Andrew Barry. 

Actually if you want to play the possibly recovery of Valeant Pharma of Canada now that Ackman has joined its board, you can do so more safely and securely by buying into Canadian General, CGI in Toronto or CGRIF on the US pink sheets. The argument for buying with Vanessa Morgan, CFA, is CGI's​ huge 28.27% discount from net-asset value which her family controlled fund has had to contend with for ages (and we have owned it for ages.) It is a lot easier to buy from North America than the Ackman fund. I bought ​PSH with e-trade and then managed to move it over to my new account with Interactive Brokers, but with both moves I have to claim to be a qualified investor.

The data on closed-end funds is not complete this week because of Good Friday, but CGI provided its net-asset value a day early, something other large fund complexes could not achieve.

The big change in our portfolios this week is that I have put strong buys on a bunch of UK companies with a global business, not all of them big enough to count as multinational corporations. This is my way to play the mounting risk of Britain exiting the European Union. In the past weeks, the exchange rate of sterling (which old guard investors like me call “cable”) has lost altitude over concerns about Brexit as the Tory Party (which runs the government in Britain) tears itself apart over this issue. The horror in the Brussels EU capital last week added terrorism to the risks Britons fear they face from being in Europe.

The obvious strong buys include GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a global pharmaceutical, vaccine, and nostrum seller; Vodafone (VOD), a UK-based player in telecoms in Africa, India, and Europe; plus BP plc, the oil company. While all report in sterling they do not sell their products for sterling, but for a host of currencies, and the cable crash makes the stocks cheap and their dividends tempting.

I added some less obvious British global players, Renishaw (which warned of lower earnings this year before the pound collapsed), whose precision measuring equipment used to make i-phones; Reckitt Benckiser, seller of condoms, nostrums, and household goods worldwide, suffering the loss of founder shareholders, which should gain from Zika virus being spread by sexual intercourse; Indivior, the quickest exit from Glasgow or other centers of addiction, a maker of safe and controllable heroin and alcohol delivery systems for addicts; and Greencore Group,attempting to bring UK ready meals to US markets through a deal with Starbucks. GNC was begun in Ireland, but now is a UK share and Britain is its biggest market. It now has 7 US sites and an 8^th under construction to provide private label ready food.

The tickers are GSK; VOD; BP; RSW-London; RBGLY; INVVY or INDV-London; and GNC-London or GNCGY on the pinks.

Also I downrated Galapagos GLPG to hold from buy because it used an old Belgian trick I am wary of, reporting bad news on a non-market day, Good Friday. Details demain or morgen.

GLPG is HQ'd in Mechelen or Malines, where they speak Flemish, but I think the country would be better off if they stopped fighting over language and focused on fighting Islamic terrorists. Indeed today the Belgian police carried out anti-terror raids there.