In July 2023, there have been 1,900 companies listed on the London inventory market. The 100 largest by market worth are members of the elite FTSE 100 (‘Footsie‘) index, often known as blue-chip shares. The following 250 firms by dimension represent the mid-cap FTSE 250 index.

Collectively, these two indexes make up the FTSE 350 index. And these FTSE 350 companies plus a number of hundred smaller firms comprise the FTSE All-Share Index. There we’ve it — the London inventory market in a nutshell.

What listed London seems like

Proper now, the Footsie’s complete market cap is £1.84bn, which is about 6.5 instances the £284bn the mid-cap index is value. In the meantime, the FTSE All-Share weighs in at round £2.17bn, including an additional £47bn of market worth from small firms to the FTSE 350.

In different phrases, blue-chip shares account for round 84.8% of all the London market’s valuation. That’s why these huge gamers usually appeal to a lot of the media’s protection of the UK market and its actions.

As for me, I’ve usually discovered that in terms of shopping for firm shares, huge is gorgeous. Thus, that’s why my household portfolio consists of 15 Footsie shares and 7 US mega-cap shares, however solely 5 FTSE 250 holdings.

UK shares are filth low-cost

Writing in Bloomberg at the moment (Tuesday, 5 December), John Stepek units out some compelling arguments for why British shares are remarkably low-cost — and mid-cap shares particularly so.

That is one thing I’ve mentioned since late 2021, but little has modified. FTSE shares began this yr low-cost and finish it even cheaper. That’s regardless of the British financial system avoiding a recession, one thing that economists and pundits extensively predicted 12 months in the past.

Quoting Simon French of UK funding financial institution Panmure Gordon, Stepek explains that London shares have suffered from a structural ‘fairness low cost’ because the Brexit vote in mid-2016. Because of this, in relative, absolute, and historic phrases, UK shares look low-cost.

Certainly, the London market “at the moment trades close to the underside of its 30-year vary based mostly on worth/earnings, enterprise worth/EBITDA, and worth/guide ratios”, as Stepek and French clarify.

Additionally, London’s earnings a number of is 10.7, in opposition to 15.4 for the remainder of the world — a 30.5% low cost. On one other earnings ranking often known as EV/EBITDA, the UK’s 7.3 versus 10.2 produces a 28.4% low cost. And London’s price-to-book-value of 0.8 is lower than a 3rd of the two.5 ratio for the remainder of the world.

I maintain overlooking the FTSE 250

One motive that some international traders shun the Footsie is that it’s full of ‘boring, old-world, old-school’ companies in sectors together with mining, oil & fuel, banking and insurance coverage, client items, and telecoms.

Even so, I can’t assist feeling that I’ve missed out by overlooking the deep worth hidden contained in the mid-cap index. For worth traders like me, the FTSE 250 seems a cut price bin of undervalued, ignored, and unloved shares.

Lastly, Stepek provides that the median large-cap UK share is at the moment valued within the fortieth percentile — beneath the 50 common of the final 20 years. In the meantime, the median mid-cap share is on the twenty first percentile, which is insanely low-cost.

Summing up, as a hardcore worth investor, the mid-cap index seems to be an impressive cut price to me. Due to this fact, I goal to put money into an inexpensive, easy FTSE 250 tracker fund in 2024!