Member Info for bald_eagle

Unfortunately BARC management have a habit of rewarding other people before they think about shareholders. Part of the problem is that profits have been held back by compensation for past misselling mistakes & regulatory fines. IF they can kick the habit of paying their lawyers more than they pay their investors then I will be happy....but for the last 10+ years BARC has NOT been a good investment...unless you shorted them of course!!

""Oil likely to hit $100 a barrel, say top commodity traders""
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Which inevitably means it will never happen.

I remember the first time it reached $100 pb....a trader in USA put in an order for 1 barrel at $100 so that he could hang a certificate on his office wall that he had bought the first $100 barrel...pathetic!! But it shows the mentailty of the people who we 'trust' to run the commodity markets.

"Except there's only ten cows left, and they are appearing as extras in Emmerdale."
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And some of those 'cows' are probably humans in cow suits!!

Silly question(s). A year or so ago butter suddenly shot up because there was a shortage in the market but it has never come down....surely that isn't how a competitive market works?

Now we have a 'marvellous' free trade deal with Australia....that adds a fraction of 1% to GDP (apparently) but risks bankrupting large sections of our farming community.

Perhaps butter will now go down!!!...but at what cost to the British countryside.

PS Who needs cows anyway...farty animals. The future of milk is squashed flies...or lactating almonds (apparently).

"Not sure what the message means - has Boris had a gay moment?"
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Getting in touch with his feminine side. He does have the boobs for it!!

Boris is all things to all men (& women). He will say whatever he needs to make people feel warm & happy inside....the reality dawns later that it was a smokescreen of fancy wordplay with very little substance. The Northern Irish have only just realised that.

"JP Morgan raises target price to 59p"
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Does that normally herald an increase in the SP?

There seems to be a bit of a strange feel about things....are we unlocking or not?!
That seems to be reflected in SP's. At the moment we don't know how the UK economy will exit the pandemic or how the BoE will manage the huge debt we have amassed nor the massive investment that has been promised by a government who seem to be signing blank cheques faster than they can be printed. The crunch will come when Rishi tells us how he is going to balance the books. The 'investment' in kids education was possibly just a taster...the pots of gold the government has promised may turn out to be relatively empty. It is hard to see where he is going to get any extra money.

"... the consumer Healthcare will be loaded with 4 x the debt it makes in yearly profit ??"
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Does that mean in 4 years they could be debt free??...if they wanted to.
I wish I had a mortgage like that.

"But I work on the balance of probabilities or the law of averages. "
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Mr A, yes I agree. To have a 'menu' of 5 positives to chose from is encouraging. But the negative voice within me is tagging at my lapel....can things really be that good?!
The uncertainty is huge...people are seriously talking about another 'roaring twenties'....which 'apparently' wasn't that rip roaring originally (apart from the USA).
We are IMO facing momentous points in history.

"Finally, the advantages of incumbency (those that have been around the longest compared to new competitors) are enormous.”"
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To some extent such articles in 'Money Week' may or may not come to pass (in part or in whole). Such pieces are written by people who have views and those pre-conceptions are included....for investors it is nice to read things that support our investment decision. Whether is is ALL going to happen is another thing.

I always assumed that the financial hurdle to starting a bank was high -and would have got higher post 2008 financial crisis - but organisations like Metrobank surprised me. But I think they ran into trouble a while back....perhaps the 'time' of the big banks is returning.

"Should be interesting to see what happens over the pond this afternoon now that the G7 have agreed to a minimum 15% Corporation Tax for the Tech Giants"
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I can understand smaller countries (e.g. Ireland) preferring tax over jobs, I can understand the lawyers working hard to avoid taxes (it is their job) but I cannot really understand the attitude of te American government for all these years protecting their Big Tech from reasonable & fair taxes. Perhaps things will change for the better...but I expect it will take longer than expected.

PS Didn't US want 21% minimum taxation....that was odd. But Biden seems to be a man on a mission.

Oops!!...John McFarlane

"New chairman’s aggressive, expansionist vision contrasts sharply with departed chief executive Antony Jenkins’s period of consolidation"
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/09/barclays-john-mcfarlane-board-double-share-price-three-years]....9th July 2015

"The new chairman of Barclays has told top staff he intends to double the bank’s share price in three years.....The bank’s share price, at around 260p,"

I wonder if he was ever held to account....what is the opposite of under promise, over deliver? Like he would care anyway.

The article dated 9th Jul 2015....just what investors wanted to hear from a new chairperson. Looking at the chart is also seems to coincide with a peak of 288p on 21/07/2015 followed by a downhill rollercoaster until we are where we is.

Things can only get better I suppose.

"the incoming CEO even has hair."
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Isn't it a woman?!

"The PRA has stated that those funds should be returned in due course"
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Do the PRA really want the dividend monies that were retained by banks to be 'returned'?

According to the BBC:
"The Prudential Regulation Authority [PRA] judges that an extension of the exceptional and precautionary action taken in March is not necessary and that there is scope for banks to recommence some distributions should their boards choose to do so,....The PRA will expect to be satisfied that any distributions would not create excess vulnerabilities to stress for a given bank or impede its ability or willingness to support households and businesses"

I expect Banks will want to retain quite large amounts of capital to weather them through the post pandemic uncertainty...IF profits bounce bank they would pay dividends out of profit whilst keeping the reserves for a rainy day. This virus has a tendancy to come back unexpectably....one mutation that escapes the vaccine then we could be sliding down the snake to an earlier point in 'the game'.
But I expect something like 2p wouldn't break the bank....with some buy-back and the hint of a 'special'.

"I'm expecting my Barclays holdings to be my best performer this year, for a change."
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Freeposter, what do you mean?

That you expect;
- Barclays SP to perform strongly for the rest of the year
-That since Barclays have already risen stongly from this years low to 'almost' guarantee they will be your best performer
- you expect the rest of your investments to have weaker growth that Banks for 2021

Barclays SP hasn't been above 250p I see since end 2015, a good target to aim for or a bridge too far?

"On a different note. Bought some compost yesterday. £ 5.99 a bag....been that price for years. The big dif is, use to be 75ltrs - now 50ltrs."
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No, it has not been 'that price for years'.

That bar of chocolate has however stayed the same price for years....although when I was a child the bars seemed so much bigger!! As I get older things seem to shrink...or perhaps that is just me.

Mr A, thank you for your response. Mr Strang seems a bit of a character,....'top-secret software projects' really is very intriguing.

I do hope I wasn't being negative. I knew Mr Strang uses TA to assess SP and as such fundamentals were not on the table. But his thoughts on CryptoCurrencies seemed 'off topic' and just odd (IMO). It doesn't demean the value of his TA of course.
I have discovered - through various forums - that nobody talks sense on every subject (or perhaps that is just me). It has sometimes come as a shock when someone who makes perfect sense on say TA goes off-topic and talks less sense on say the Pandemic. Perhaps I need to keep more of an open mind, understand that people are complicated and have a variety of views that won't always agree with my own.
So IMO Mr Strang seems good on TA but possibly less so on other subjects.

PS I really like your contributions. I like to read positive & negative views and make my own mind up. Much appreciated.

Sometimes when two companies in the same sector have differing SP performance it can mean there is an investment opportunity...sometimes!!
Is this because Shell are running their business poorly?....or perhaps just that the market is taking time to see how SHell emerges from the pandemic.
With high oil prices and the amount of traffic on the roads - not all of them electric - it is difficult to see how Shell isn't making sizeable profits (at the moment).

For too many years Stt1 was unfortunately correct in his assessment of TRMR (formerly RTHM)....for too long they were a 'jam tomorrow' company. That has now changed. They are delivering strong growth and the SP has risen on that fact.
Obviously Stt1 is struggling to come to terms with that and 'probably' that he has missed the boat on a terrific investment opportunity...if only his blind negativity had allowed him to see the potential.
That is 'probably' what irks him most....he has invested so much time researching TRMR but he couldn't see the wood for the trees.
Not a good investment strategy IMO.

"Lloyds to start Thursday on the front foot
IG Markets sees the FTSE 100 added around 16 points ahead of the open"
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That worked out well...not!!
Must be nervouse times for traders....'expectations' of a good start & even a 'break out'. But back to the same cycle.....although if there is a pattern I presume money can be made (in small amounts).