The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
London South East prides itself on its community spirit, and in order to keep the chat section problem free, we ask all members to follow these simple rules. In these rules, we refer to ourselves as "we", "us", "our". The user of the website is referred to as "you" and "your".
By posting on our share chat boards you are agreeing to the following:
The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. As a user you agree to any information you have entered being stored in a database. You agree that we have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic or board at any time should we see fit. You agree that we have the right to remove any post without notice. You agree that we have the right to suspend your account without notice.
Please note some users may not behave properly and may post content that is misleading, untrue or offensive.
It is not possible for us to fully monitor all content all of the time but where we have actually received notice of any content that is potentially misleading, untrue, offensive, unlawful, infringes third party rights or is potentially in breach of these terms and conditions, then we will review such content, decide whether to remove it from this website and act accordingly.
Premium Members are members that have a premium subscription with London South East. You can subscribe here.
London South East does not endorse such members, and posts should not be construed as advice and represent the opinions of the authors, not those of London South East Ltd, or its affiliates.
I look at the range of Options ..whether they are more near term or more long dated ....that gives you a better understanding of long a time period Options will stay for and how serious the traders see a problem (for Puts ) or clear skies for Calls ..... look at the US Options for VOD and the European Options too ....
look at 9th and 15th November put/call ratio peaks .... traders placing the Puts for the monthly December expire of the 17th (close 16th) ??.. will some close depending on what the FED says next week ??
Poker, what do you see, statistically, that is not visible here? Your claim of the option market driving this doesn't seem to be supported based on this chart: https://www.alphaquery.com/stock/VOD/volatility-option-statistics/150-day/put-call-ratio-volume
Feel free to share other sources.
If you dont want to buy the data ....the next best thing is possibly to just follow their Option contracts directional lead ... :-)
small fish follow the shark to the food source :-)
" Pokerchips; do you think traders of calls and puts have access to info that we don't,"
yes I do...but that is mostly because you may not want to pay for it , whereas they do.....they are using data that has to be paid for , which gives them a decent idea of what to expect in say the next quarter ....
No one can be on top of things without buying into data .....available on Bloomberg for example
I don't think so, I have a number of other stocks that have also announced buy backs. Look at GNC and they have gone down, look at DS Smith and they have gone up.
I thought VOD would also be going up but no luck. What it mostly shows is the market / company find a way of holding down the SP so the company can buy back more shares at a lower price. Now things might change once the company has bought back all they need , but it looks like we will have to wait to find out.
Hat tip to pokerchips and compound for your recent posts below.
If somebody thinks otherwise, then please articulate, but my understand of all technical trading, including that of calls and puts, is that it drives price in the absence of news (the driver being a presumption of a shared understanding by those in the know, of where price will turn), whereas actionable news can change everything.
Pokerchips; do you think traders of calls and puts have access to info that we don't, or is it just a way to amplify hoped for gains, through margin?
You can often make the research very simple , just by looking at what other investors are doing ....one of the key places is in the Options market ....if the Option traders by Calls they think the price will go up ,if they buy Puts they think the price will go down ....now they have Put bets so you dont really need to know much else ....the market is following their directional pull .... and watch how they close ...because they then have to buy shares to balance the Option
VOD has traded a lot over the last 2-3 years based purely on the Option market bets
Hi Compound, thanks for those useful tips, best thing i did this year was sell off a lot of underperforming funds and bought more dividend paying shares when the prices were low, so far they are all still paying full dividends and providing income when the share prices are down, with hindsight had i sold off some of my shares when they were at there top price last year i could have bought some of them back at a lot lower price, will have to keep looking for good opportunity's and potential growth
cheers
'As outsiders we lack complete context of the real motives behind these initiatives'
Can only do our own research. Media articles are useful but their veracity often questionable and in whose interest is their market narrative in a bear market? Thus it was always so.
I was interested to read recently that there is €80 trillion of 'Off Balance Sheet Debt' in the financial system (where is it?). With that as a backdrop, VOD assets and the cash they generate look solid. Shame about the hedgefunds and the SP but EIA looks good long term and Niel shaking things up to move things along imo
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/80-trillion-off-balance-sheet-debt-blind-spot-financial-system-2022-12
I wouldn't copy Buffet's moves as he is a victim of his own success. Berkshire Hathaway is enormous and has severe market size/liquidity issues. They can't make any significant investments without it effecting the share price, so their investments are a mixture of significant investments in larger companies where they can build up a meaningful stake, but may not offer significant returns, or insignificant investments into smaller companies that offer significant growth.
The mind boggles at what that man could do with a £1m over a 5-10 year period though where he wouldn't be restrained by market size/liquidity concerns.....
Robleo - this year has been rough for most buy and hold strategies, but the years before that were awesome - you just need to be invested in the right places. The FTSE 100 may have out performed in local currency terms this year, but on the whole it's a pretty crap place for a long term buy and hold strategy and there's no sign of that of changing. It's full of cyclical, old world companies that don't offer much potential for growth. The UK does produce great companies, but as soon as any of them show any signs of delivering outstanding growth over the long term they get bought out, usually by US companies. Arm Holdings is a classic example. World leader in semi conductor software design that's used by all of the main players and got snaffled up by NVDIA a couple of years ago.
I don't see that trend reversing any time soon so you're not going to see massive growth in large UK companies. UK smaller companies is a different story, and if you have the stomach for it and the necessary time horizons to ride out the dips, I can see that sector continuing to produce strong results over the long term, but you really do need a well diversified approach.
The one advantage larger UK companies do have is that they pay good dividends and trend fairly predictably. A swing trade approach of buying the dips, maybe collecting a few dividends and selling out when they get to the top of the trading range can produce very good results, although it is hard work, and you can't afford to fall in love with a share. Don't obsess with picking the absolute bottom or top as you can only do that in hindsight, and be very, very careful about going too heavy on one share as you won't always get it right. Sometimes you have to take a hit, especially if the fundamentals change. I've had to take a couple of painful ones over the last couple of years, but it was worth doing and I more than made the money up elsewhere. Losses are bad, but so is having dead capital.
I can see things continuing to be choppy for a while so I will be taking profits and looking for opportunities with the money I use to trade with, meanwhile I've got a few tech/crypto long term buy and holds, and every week I'm ploughing money into a portfolio of funds in my pension. The last few months all new money has been going into UK Smaller Companies as GBP has been battered this year making UK companies attractive, and buying USD companies with GBP far less attractive. You can avoid the currency issue by using a spreadbetting account, but tbh the costs are so high now it's not really worth it, plus you get slaughtered on dividends with the with holding tax and currency conversion.
That's my plan and it's working, but like you said we are all very different. I'm still working and accumulating, and the plan would be different if I wasn't.
Android,
I would rather the leadership spend ample time to evaluate deals instead of jumping into anything just because a hedgefund manager is eager to make a fast return to the detriment of the company.
As outsiders we lack complete context of the real motives behind these initiatives. Vod should sit tight on strategic assets; Vodacom, Germany, Italy, NL and UK. Vantage part ownership benefits the company medium to long term, otherwise they will have to lease without the rights to share the profits.
'VOD just tendered $2.3Bn cash offer for its $3Bn 4.375% NOTES DUE MAY 2028. That should push the average maturity of debt out beyond 11 years and the service cost after 2030 is less than 2%.'
Return on Investment ROI is increasing. Its the slow pace of deal execution causing the negative sentiment and the media dogma. RNS anytime for another spike I guess.
I like Olaf Swantee for new CEO
"Sorry to ask as I know this has been discussed ad nauseum, but there are too many posts to wade through.... I take it this includes Goodwill?"
Yes
Someone posted in here recently that the likes of Buffett wouldn't look at telcos because of their fundamentals. Wrong, he was heavy in verizon until this summer where he sold out all berkshire holding.
He is the GOAT of investing - period. That doesn't mean one should copy his moves as one lacks the context etc. Do you recall he revealed his openness to UK markets by investing in tesco, only to reverse and sell out at a loss a couple of years later? His investment strategy is mainly tailored to the american market and style.
Only late last year he gambled, yes, gambled on Activision betting msft would acquire it. Last night proved him wrong. Things not 100% concluded but unlikely the deal will happen. Looked from his prism, the odds of his bet (it wasn't an investment!) have crashed significantly. The stake of his bet isn't huge by the total net worth of Berkshire, but 10 billion stake is still not a small change.
Vodafone sp is right now like the riddle about the $100 note on the ground and two professors arguing between themselves if it's real why hasn't anybody picked it up yet.
Android 'Isnt it more accurate to use c€30Bn debt'
Good point. VOD just tendered $2.3Bn cash offer for its $3Bn 4.375% NOTES DUE MAY 2028. That should push the average maturity of debt out beyond 11 years and the service cost after 2030 is less than 2%.
Sorry to ask as I know this has been discussed ad nauseum, but there are too many posts to wade through.... I take it this includes Goodwill?
Hi Fleccy, i always have to give you 10 out of 10 for your positive thinking, but of course everyone's circumstances are different and it depends on how long term you want to wait to get your return of capital
This has been a difficult few years for making profit from shares or funds and i expect it's been the same for most investors unless you were lucky enough to invest in something like the oilers at the right time, below is an article i have just been reading with hl
In September 2022, about three quarters of the FTSE 100 constituents failed to provide a positive return, with almost half generating negative returns of over 5%. It’s unlikely that even the most diverse UK share portfolio would avoid a drop in value in this scenario. We call this ‘market risk’, the risk that the entire stock market falls.
The second type of risk is stock specific. The individual company you own could run into problems. Perhaps because its competitive position has weakened or it’s particularly exposed to high inflation and interest rates
I have 4 shares i could name all paying good dividends and although they drop just like anything else, you can be pretty sure your capital with be returned at some time each year, then you have the more difficult shares like Vodafone and Lloyds , several years later and they are still in loss, it does make you wonder just how many years you have to wait to get your capital returned on some shares, even my best performing funds have lost around 40% of the profit they built up in previous years
thankful i I'm not in any rush to sell, but a bull market would be more than welcome
"for anyone who's owns these shares at a higher price it's pretty obvious this is not good as they will have lost more of their capital"
Robleo, a paper loss isn't a capital loss until you sell, just like a paper gain isn't a capital gain until you sell. Over my many years of investing I've sat on paper losses several times and sold when the the stocks went back into the black and made a capital gain.
I'm currently sitting on paper losses on all three stocks I own, but I'm confident that I'll make a gain when the prices recover and I eventually sell, however long it takes.
Now some will say, oh but Vodafone's, BT's, or whoever's price will never recover, blah, blah, blah, but the truth is an undervalued stock will always eventually recover to a value dictated by its fundamentals, in the meantime I'll keep topping up as I receive dividends.
Motly fool, doing their best deramping effort with about 3 click bait articles a day.
' Ironically the low share price is lowering the cost of buying back debt.'
Also, not mentioned much on the BB, the market value of debt (or its net present value) must be dropping as interest rates rise and with inflation. Isnt that whats happening in the Bond market?
Isnt it more accurate to use c€30Bn debt net present value if you were to pay it all off early?
theluckyguy, for anyone who's owns these shares at a higher price it's pretty obvious this is not good as they will have lost more of their capital than they have received in dividends, this is always the danger with investing in individual shares
as the saying goes it's not how much you can afford to invest it's how much you can afford to lose, unfortunately it's not a very nice experience when it happens, and most of us will end up in this situation at some time or other
everyone has their own opinion, but i don't think anyone knows if this is the bottom or not, the possibility of a dividend cut could be a game changer, but there will always be winners and losers, anyone who gets in here at the bottom will most likely make a good profit when things get better, and good luck to them that's what we all try to do
unfortunately though you do get a minority of posters who just want to mock others losses, a bit sad really
best of luck all
Capt Morgan likes to make buyers who want to enter at a lower price and shorters who want to close out at mega profit both very happy
Have a research for yourselves both "negative catalyst" announcements this year
soon this company will have twice as much dept as its nav
Ex EE Boss Swanee, and O2 boss Dunne frontrunners for CEO post.
Ex UK boss Jeffrey being mentioned.
An internal promotion would be a disaster. Think any of the first two chosen, and SP should rise.