Some ideas from the professionals

What could be more timely than a collection of investment tips for 2021? No need to answer.

Reviving an old feature favourite, I have asked a variety of stock market professionals, writers and bloggers for their top investment ideas for the year ahead (and beyond).

It is also a competition of sorts, pitting this bunch against each other to see whose will do best over the coming 12 months.

Be warned, when I ran this feature at the sadly departed Bullbearings website my tips generally came last. (All prices as of midday 24 December 2020).

Neil Wilson, chief market analyst for Markets.com, points his index finger at the FTSE 100: “There’s a big recovery coming.

“Assuming vaccines mean a return to almost normal and with global macroeconomic numbers looking very strong through 2021, combined with the Fed anchoring rates and the general liquidity sloshing about, I think the UK is very cheap and liable for a strong bounce.

“The FTSE 100 also has an expected 2021 dividend yield of 4%, making it the most attractive among developed market stock indices for income.

“On top of that, while UK domestic stocks have re-rated, they still trade at about a 10-15% p/e discount to the broad European market and against the US,

“British equities trade at a 35% discount based on a two-year earnings outlook, further boosted for the Footsie by its strong bias to cyclical and value stocks.”

(FTSE 100: 6,502)

Peter Sleep, Senior Investment Manager, Seven Investment Management, settles his binoculars across the pond at Inc ().

“This is a large US conglomerate, run by the legendary investor Warren Buffett, made up a mixed group of companies such as the railways, pipeline, insurance, banking and a major shareholding in Apple.

“It has underperformed in recent years as investors have sought out higher growth stocks like Tesla or Amazon. is not a simple business, but it seems to be trading at a discount of about 30% to the sum of its parts – an abnormally large discount.”

(BRK.B: US$224.24)

Andrew Hore, editor of the AIM Journal, plucks a smallcap life sciences company focused on skin health, ().

“This microbiome-based skin treatments developer has developed a self-managed human study with its partner Winclove Probiotics for psoriasis treatment AxisBiotix.

“This will commence in the first quarter of 2021.

“If this is successful, AxisBiotix could become a commercial food supplement by early-2022.

“There is potential in other areas. Croda, the company’s partner in the cosmetics market, is on course to scale up manufacturing using SkinBiotix technology ahead of a launch of ingredients that can be added to existing skin treatments.

“Earlier this year, a placing and open offer at 16p a share raised £4.45m. According to broker Cenkos, there should still be cash in the bank at the end of June 2022, even if there are no revenues.

“That means that there should not be any need for share issues in the medium-term.”

(SBTX; 15.5p)

John Kingham, of the UK Value Investor blog picks PLC ().

“I chose this car insurance giant as my pick for last year and it produced a total return of about 35% in 2020, which is not too shabby.

“The fundamental attractions remain in place, so I’m going to stick with Admiral again.

“Those attractions include: Management focused on the long-term; low cost operations; rational insurance pricing; multiple European businesses just turning profitable after a decade of building scale; a proven ability to move into adjacent markets such as home insurance and loans and a potential cash return to shareholders if it sells its comparison website business.

“And as if that wasn’t enough, a double-digit historic growth rate and a dividend yield of 5% are the icing on the Admiral cake.”

(ADM: 2,293p)

Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG, opts for a safety-first pick of Halma Group PLC ().

“Halma is not one that trips off the…