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Its Sunday and a day for relaxing. With that in mind, who's up for a game of Spot the Difference ??

Here's an article in Wednesday's Investors Chronicle :-

https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/news/2021/04/21/itv-non-exec-buys-shares-worth-99k/

And some nice trades went through late this afternoon including 2m @ 115p. Not sure what to make of the last couple sessions, volume picking up, the stock drifting lower again and for the fourth day in a row and Marshall Wace 'reducing' their short allegedly ??

But what we can be sure of is, something's going on !!!

This confirms my suspicions, a story that is nearly two weeks old and is only published today in the Investors Chronicle !!!

https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/news/2021/04/21/itv-non-exec-buys-shares-worth-99k/

GS cut ITV to 'neutral' with a target price of 135p on the 6th April, the first trading day of the new financial year and after the long Easter holiday weekend.

Since then the stock has been down on 7 out of 11 trading days until this morning and has gone from 123.25p down to 118p as of this morning and has just gone red again.

I'm just looking at their previous recommendations from Jan 2020 when GS re-confirmed a 'neutral' rating on the stock at 171p no less from a previous 140p target price and we all know what happened to the shares after that !!!!

Nige has already mentioned on the other board that £1.00 looks as though where the stock is heading and whilst it pains me to say so, I think he could be right. Take a look at the charts and also the activity in ITV shares on Monday Jan 25th earlier this year.

This could well be the tactics of GS ahead of next week and the week after to get in more cheap stock and flush out some weak holders ahead of the AGM and trading statement, which we all know both will be extremely positive and the stock will get marked down as per usual !

I also notice the 20p movement to the downside of the ITV share price ahead of Liberty's announcements back in July 2014 and July 2015.

Could history be about to repeat itself ??

And once Gerviase Heddle finishes his 'gardening leave' term from Greatland Gold in the next month or two and heads over to Thor, expect things to ramp up considerably before the Gold bull market run starts in earnest this Summer !!

It was back in January I posted this link detailing the Institutional holdings in ITV, okay we all know that most of these stock market commentary websites are not exactly forthcoming when issuing correct data but on further examination I noticed that quite a few institutions have completely sold out of ITV.

According to the website Morning Star, just over 38% of ITV shares are now held just by 20 institutions (mostly American), so that leaves 62% or roughly 2.5bn ITV shares in someone's pocket !!!

Click on the tabs at the top of the link for both funds and institutions buying and selling as of 31st March 2021 :-

https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xlon/itv/ownership

And for those whom missed it, yet another tie-up with a US company for the advertising behemoth that is Love Island :-

https://www.itvmedia.co.uk/making-an-impact/tinder-couples-up-with-love-island-for-summer-2021

Looks like the other chatroom has barred anyone from posting on the ITV forum over there.

Interesting !

And yet more just announced :-

https://advanced-television.com/2021/04/16/telestream-supports-itv-britbox-cloud-migration/

So what I hear you ask ??

Well cast your mind back to the final week of the Summer holidays last year, the last day of August and the first week of September, lockdown was eased, schools finally went back and GS finished their last leg of their ITV shorting operation at around 57p.

We subsequently saw those huge uncrossing trades for that week, 286m shares, 101m, 31m, 48m and then 75m shares and that's 'officially'. Goodness knows what the unofficial total was ??

Could it be the case of history repeating itself today, the shares have been held at 123p on average for the last two weeks and that spoof sell order on the order book at 126p is not fooling anyone !

Lets see how we go this afternoon.

And announced this morning, the ITV team are not hanging around that's for sure :-

https://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-releases/moritz-polter-launch-new-premium-international-scripted-label-within-itv-studios

Davielad, the reason why the share price seems to be stuck around these levels is that GS have for the last week or so have stuck a spoof sale order at 126 on the order book to give the impression that there is a 'seller' out there. We all know that no-one is selling ITV shares and there are a raft of buyers at anything under 120p as we saw earlier in the week.

Also look at the volumes, for the last month or so around 50% of the total volume has been in the uncrossing trade of the day with the exception of 16th March when over 50m was traded !

GS are up to their antics again, watch this space !

Searching around this afternoon and read the news about Love Island expanding into further territories (see the ITV website) and came across this. More money in the coffers, ching ching !!!

https://www.todotvnews.com/en/?s=itv

'(Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc surged past Wall Street expectations for first-quarter profit on Wednesday, as the U.S. investment banking giant capitalized on record levels of global deal making and a coronavirus-driven boom in equity trading.

An unprecedented boom in private firms merging with listed shell companies to go public helped Goldman earn handsome fees from such deals, resulting in a 73% jump in revenue from investment banking to $3.77 billion.

Revenue from equities trading jumped 68% to $3.69 billion as heightened trading by ordinary investors fed stock market volatility.

"Overall, it's quite stunning," said Oppenheimer analyst Chris Kotowski.

Total revenue more than doubled to $17.7 billion in the quarter, while financial advisory revenue came in at $1.1 billion.

Its Easter school holidays until Monday and also our friends at GS have loaded the offer side of the order book at 126 all week this week so that in theory should stop it in its tracks.

I'm not expecting any further upside until next week but looking to top up if the market wants to do a tree shake or two in the meantime !

https://www.thormining.com/sites/thormining/media/pdf/asx-announcements/20210413-ragged-range-gold-project-sampling-program.pdf

Could this be the start of things to come :-

https://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-releases/itv-and-virgin-media-television-co-commission-taut-compelling-crime-drama-redemption

I'm expecting a record viewing figure for the race today and will also be keeping an eye on the adverts in between coverage.

Good luck if you're having abet !

Here are the highlights of the note from GS yesterday and once again highlights the potential for M&A in the sector but at the same time they have a dig at ITV, obviously trying to force the hand of the last of the remining weak holders of the stock !

Just remind me again, you lot shorted ITV from £2.80 back in July 2016 with Marshalls and after five years are now on the long side of ITV from around 57p in August 2020 with around 2billion shares !!!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

– European media: GS ups advertising's estimates on earnings potential
06-04-2021 08:30

* Goldman Sachs raises its 2021 EPS estimates by 4% on its advertising coverage for European media, citing further outperformance from earning upgrades and M&A catalysts

* Structural pressures remain, according to GS, which sees more limited room for multiple expansion

* The brokerage, however, sees a near-term relief potential from industry consolidation, portfolio optimisation and faster growth digital transformation

* "Our estimates increase the most for broadcasters," GS adds

* GS raises French broadcaster TF1 from "neutral" to "buy", saying the stock has lagged its TV peers by 16% since early November despite the outlook for a strong earnings recovery

* The stock is up more than 4%, touched its highest price since Oct, 2019, and is among top performers on France's SBF 120

* The brokerage downgrades British broadcaster ITV to "neutral" from "buy" citing recent outperformance

* EPS for French outdoor advertising company JCDecaux "falls significantly in 2021 to reflect prolonged lockdown restrictions, but increase in 2022-23", it says

* The shares in JCDecaux are up 4% whilst ITV's are up 1.1% as of 0727 GMT
(kate.entringer@thomsonreuters.com)

© Thomson Reuters Limited. Click for restrictions

Its on the Directors Talk website, which I can't copy and paste here all of a sudden, but here's the text :-

ITV plc 53% Potential Upside Indicated by Goldman Sachs
Broker Ratings
Amilia Stone

April 1, 2020
12:29 pm
ITV plc using EPIC/TICKER code (LON:ITV) has had its stock rating noted as ‘Reiterates’ with the recommendation being set at ‘NEUTRAL’ today by analysts at Goldman Sachs. ITV plc are listed in the Consumer Services sector within UK Main Market. Goldman Sachs have set a target price of 98 GBX on its stock. This indicates the analyst now believes there is a potential upside of 53.0% from the opening price of 64.06 GBX.

Over the last 30 and 90 trading days the company share price has decreased 50.74 points and decreased 87.84 points respectively. The 1 year high for the stock price is 165.9 GBX while the year low stock price is currently 50.06 GBX.

ITV plc has a 50 day moving average of 113.86 GBX and the 200 Day Moving Average price is recorded at 125.49. There are currently 4,025,409,194 shares in issue with the average daily volume traded being 30,650,036. Market capitalisation for LON:ITV is £2,449,864,060 GBP.