Member Info for BIGBangs

Two companies to put on your watchlist - build a view before the ACA cash becomes available so you better understand the stock - you will then be better placed to make a buy/wait decision. VOD - cheap enough yet - great divi in the meantime - big debt issues. Reduce divi SP rise? GSK - recent drops improve opportunity- great co - good divi - Pfizer deal leading to spin off - solid performance. We are expecting progress report (at least) from MB on 11th (or is it 14th?) that is basically 10 working days and we might finally get to know where we stand. I am a little disappointed that we have not got closer to my pre news target of £2.40 - could still happen if shorter goes long or on any leak. As Super said before, I have everything crossed!

MP although we all agree that the prudent approach and a varied spread of assets must be the sensible approach for long term investing - surely as we have chosen to invest directly ourselves we have shown that we value our own research and judgement otherwise we would just buy a fund and they would ensure we had the required spread so that we didn’t have to bother? It must be that we enjoy doing it for ourselves and on occasion breaking the rules. Lets hope we are right.

40,000 certainly shows commitment P - don’t beat yourself up. As you know I have quite a few and under any principle I have worked to before, to many but circumstances where/are such that the fundamentals and prospects were right and the shorters kept pushing the price down making the opportunity too good to pass up -I even bought a few ooo more last week.I have missed some opportunities and dodged a few bullets along the way and now have basically ACA and cash - I’m happy with that. I remain convinced that we will do very well here, keep the faith opportunities like these do not come up very often.

Thank you Elly you are quick of the mark with another find, every news item gives us more confidence as to likely outcome. A lot of good mines will be coming onto the market - we should be thinking about who is going to buy them. ACA did well today but not as well as some of the other miners I am certainly not complaining but perhaps we will her our turn next week.

Each to their own of course P but I would have kept FRES or bought more ACA.

Touched $1300

Decided that I did not want to stay in NCC as they failed to bounce today. The exercise cost me £60 but out.

Oops NCC

Hi P - Happy with my profit on SNN and MTRO - we were lucky with those - I only bought 3000 CNN RNS reads ok to me, I quite like security business and their success in US but I only did minimal research - please keep a careful eye on it - £10k is quite a chunk - jump ship quickly if it goes the wrong way and don’t get greedy on a punt. ATB.

Seeing if my luck holds small trading position in NCC 1.30.

Out - Mtro 14.85 SNN 4.98

We should note that the fist peaceful transfer of power has taken place in DRC today - must be good news for Barrick. One week of January left and I feel we will have a positive update in early February - surely this time it must happen?

Glad you have done well Pat - I am going to sell both today done well with SNN - washing my face with MTRO but I don’t really have much confidence or knowledge about it so as the money has not even left my account yet I am taking a quick trading profit.

Super you are also of course correct and MW could be predicting that the £ will rise in relation to the dollar and/or that the value of gold will fall. Seems like a lot of risk to me for such a small speculative gain.

Guys, MW borrow from BlackRock and sell in the market hoping to drive the price down so that they can later buy the shares back from the market to return to BlackRock. I agree that the 37% of our shares not owned by Barrick are technically available but 34% are owned by institutions who have held throughout and are unlikely to sell now so in reality - as I have mentioned before - there are actually less than 3% (2.8%) held in private hands that are up for grabs. 2.8% equals 11 million shares of which declared shorts ie those at 0.5% and above (there may well be others below the threshold) so 2 million which is over 18% of the shares likely to be available to shorters. This is why getting hold of our shares is so important to them. I will not be giving them any of the 200 thousand odd that I own, if you believe that a deal will be agreed and/or that our shares will be bought up don’t give them yours.

Never short of the odd surprise MW have increased their position to 0.5% again which probably explains how the share has been held back.

We certainly have learnt to be aware of shorters and I for one am definitely reluctant to invest if they have a large position. I have brought a few of both shares I mentioned but to trade rather than as a long term hold - ATB.

Anyone looking at Metro Bank or Sanne - both fallen today but business looks strong?

To be honest Elly the only downside would be if they charged us more to process our concentrate than we would pay in the open market. If they are to make a lasting business then they will need to be competitive. If an independent investor or other mining company teamed up with GoT to build the smelter I would be all for it and would expect us to comit to using it - only seems fair. US market was closed today let’s hope, especially bearing this news in mind, for a better day tomorrow otherwise demi and I will probably end up buying some more.

Goodness SAS that was tough. I would imagine being shot 16 times and surviving is something of a record. TL makes his points concerning the pressure on press and political freedom - difficult to produce a popularity poll if you company is then attacked. It seems crass for me to comment sitting here safely that however bad Tanzania is becoming it is still, at least for now, better than many other places in Africa. What happens to these guys when they get into power? Hard Talk is one of my favourite programmes and they once again deliver here.