Member Info for chris1308

£63 per person per annum? Get real ! Divide the billions we pay into the EU coffers annually and divide it NOT by the population but by the number of people actually working and paying taxes then the true figures works out at over £500 per person per annum.

Since when did the French and German and Italian governments stop state aiding their native businesses? None of these countries make any secret that they will do whatever it takes to help businesses stay afloat. They may call it something else but state aid is endemic in Euroland eg their central banks buying debt in native insolvent companies , subsiding wasteful local projects funded by UK taxpayers mainly, creating a culture of jobs first - try going into the government services or banks and watch how many employees sign and triple sign masses of paperwork for the most basic service.

Exactly right.
We shareholders were the victims when the top management at TSCO reported a timing issue over recognising profits and were fined millions , the share price more than halved and Warren Buffett decided thatthe plc was being run by a band of clowns. None of the directors suffered any loss , leahy left with millions and started up in competition and the criminal case run by the FSA against the plc failed . So we're back to the same incompetence... the Board trying to be seen as good citizens when it is having the opposite effect....shoppers will not change their habits and change loyalties to TSCO .

Instead all TSCO is doing is driving the share price down and cheating the shareholders. Plus ca change.. plus le meme chose,

'Ole Stelios maybe hoovering up?... but whoever they are, thanks.
Maybe he might consider investing in GSK ? The Board over there are useless that even a part-time agitator like Stelios would put a rocket under Emma and co..... how can a plc lose 20% in market value when it is in the highest sought after sector? Time for Emma and her team to cut their bonuses and pay increases and stop blaming the strengthening Dollar exchange rate for the lack of performance

Smith on CNBC this morning was very disparaging about trumps bleating of dows record & thinks reality will bite. But when, no one seems to know.
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Strip out the big 5 FAANGS from the US market and the index performance is pretty lousy. Financials and Oilers etc are down massively. But the reality is that these US giants can only go up since they are unassailable.

What is maddening is that the FTSE is still trading at levels seen 20 years ago - any quoted companies with good ideas in this country seem to be easily acquired by overseas companies. Why does the government not keep it simple and reduce corporation tax rates to encourage inward investment -LOW Taxes encourage investment and employment. Instead we seem to be hell bent on spending billions on unproven and wasteful green energy projects ( the evidence of empty pop-up bicycle lanes and static wind farms) and gifting billions in overseas aid. this probably sounds like the editorial from the Daily Mail, but all the annual faffing around with complicated changes to tax credits and Budgets while distracting from the real issues : why is it that there is still very dubious and questionable behaviour from the House of Lords down thru most of the public offices on expenses claiming? until the cabinet deal with the basics - tax less and stay out of large scale projects and ... get a PM that actually cares about business and means what they say. We are facing the great opportunity of our times - a chance to become a world leader in Commerce with no political shackles from the EU.
it cant be hard to start to encourage businesses to invest in our infrastructure and share our values by setting out our stall - an economy where effort is rewarded, honesty is paramount and new ideas welcome and incentivised.
If RDSB and Unilever have faith that the UK is key to their success, then it cant be that difficult to encourage new business to set up in the North East/West. without new businesses we will quickly become a nation of importers of foreign tat...

People brush off the crossing trades as ' an EOD exercise' not to be too concerned about. Well nothing could be further from the truth.... its where the dealing desks square off all the passing of profits between themselves so that they can extract gains from the 'market' without any risk to either of the two inside parties.

You may or may not know that dealers can hold or short positions without them having to disclose the details... so they can act as Principle and Agent on the same deal.
Secondly to give themselves a further slice of the cake, they do not have to declare nor pay any Stamp Duty when purchasing. Why HMRC allows this concession has been the case for ever,but now that the substance of the 'trading' is purely to manipulate and extract profits, surely making the dealers account for the 0.5% stamp duty would help shine a light on the unfairness of this exploitation and generate revenue for the Exchequer.
Overall though, the Market is full of these corrupt practices that solely exist for the traders to gouge and plunder the private investors. All perfectedly legal of course but why are all the say, pension fund institutions not clamoring for these risk free trades to be monitored , fully reported and stopped?

The security guy on duty was standing outside in the exit area looking away from the store . He was watching either the passing traffic or at the lad collecting trolleys. God knows what caught his attention. But he clearly was oblivious to anyone or anything going on back in the store.

I was shopping at Tsco at the weekend and two ladies in front of me had their huge trolleys stiffed to the gills. the bags were solidly packed and I just thought , that looks strange : why have they neatly folded all their groceries in the massive bags but yet have various selection boxes scattered over them untidily.
I thought I would be helpful and said ! ladies hi, I see you have the self shopping appliance - you should use the other queue. one of them stuttered oh, we want to pay cash. those machines are card only.
my gut thought that something was not right . As it happened they went to the bay and I was in the bay directly across from them. I noticed that they just scanned the chocolate boxes and paid and pushed the trolley off . On the way out the only security guard was out in the entrance foyer, looking at the traffic and empty trolleys.....

But afterwards I thought ' how easy it was for someone to make a full shop, pay for a couple of items and then walk off without any checks. if they can do it once and get away with it, whats to stop this theft being done wholesale over and over ?
Ive no idea what the shrinkage rate is for Tsco but no doubt we are all paying for this carry on in the prices we're charged. the German discounters would never allow that to happen so I guess that is how they can charge less -if everyone was paying for their shopping , then we would not have to subsidise this theiving

And as a shareholder how does one make a move to report this or stop this happening in its tracks without getting attacked. the security people are not going to bother and the one person in charge of 12 machines doesnt have the time especially when (s)he is rushing at rush times.

Just two weeks ago the FTSE was around 5600 and who would have predicted it would jump to 6300/6400 so quickly ?
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was the FTSE index not at 6000 some 20 years ago ?
Assuming one invested in tracker funds, will they be showing no gain and with all the dividends held by the fund managers. the sooner the Regulators start doing their vigilance with some pretence of working, then maybe all this manipulation by the so called short sellers will be stopped. Which investor or pension fund manager in their right mind is selling GSK for instance at these stoooopid prices ? - exactly none of them. Its an income stock and a value stock and a core holding , so why isnt the Regulator taking this as a stock to be investigated. A good place to start would be the brokers themselves who can run short positions in their own books without any detection - eg: put two desks in two different brokerages in collusion -
Manager A allows manager B to sell / dump stock to force the price down.
B takes the profit . the next day or a few hours later , the pair reverse the transactions on a different exchange to escape any detection. So Coy B will scoop the profits.

The outcome ? Coy A and Coy B have both reaped a fortune by manipulations. the poor sick punters allow this wholesale fiddling to occur.
NExt day: Rinse and repeat same process with another stock

The old chestnuts of collecting a dividend beats me .... what the point of worrying over a 5.5% yield when the capital is being eroded bythat amount each quarter.

Heres my thought to give the shorters a kick , reduce debt and still pay the dividend.
1. Announce a Deep Discounted Rights issue at £10 say
2. The amount to be raised is equivalent to the annual dividend
3. Monies raised go to reduce debt mountain
4. Company issues fresh B shares that can be converted to cash . Most shareholders will take up the B shares
5. In time, the B shares will be convertible to ordinary shares
6. Shorters get burned as the share price rises
7. Repeat the process for say 3 years .

The only problem is that the GSK advisers would recommend a Share Placing scheme whereby only the institutions get to take up the fresh issue as its quicker and ignores the interests of the riff raff ie the private investors who know their place !

If only that were the case! ....The US techs are hugely overvalued and I reckon their collapse back to earth, will impact all stocks ...even though the Ftse constituents didn't share in that exuberance.

As a value investor, I'm so disgusted at the ramping and unethical carry on from the arbs and day traders with their insider 3 card trickery and chicanery.
Now its just a matter of waiting it out to recoup losses and then thats it.
No more funding these faug hers their trips to the Bahamas

That would be a welcome surprise. The whole market has just become a manipulated playground for the big hitters - short term funds that buy and sell even stable stocks with no news flow . Cant be hard with sophisticated software to drive the prices up and down a couple of percentage points in the direction you want and then take the profits . The sooner they introduce regulation that says a purchaser has to hold the purchase for a minimum term of say ,1 month before retrading, then you will have these dramatic swings continuing.
Another simple measure is to stop these big swinging Mic keys from fleeching value is to have them disclose on their corporate website, the volume of individual trades in any plc that in aggregate amounts to more than say, 1% of the plc's shares in issue.
My point is that we the PIs are being spun

Some weeks ago I tried to complete a motor insurance quote online on AV. Systems. The system crashed several times . I tried again the following day and much the same experience. I called customer service both times and made a complaint as the excuses given were different. The lady clearly was disinterested and said they were changing over to a new system so obviously it would take a couple of months to get the issues sorted.

I placed my motor insurance elsewhere..... much though I hate buying from a competitor company,

So this weekend when it came to renewing our buildings and contents policy, I had many of the same issues....screens freezing and the cog spinning around waiting to make a connection. I called and eventually spoke to Customer Services to ask them to go online with me as this was plain incompetence.
The CS man was nonplussed and said that it being the weekend, they were probably doing maintenance. I said it doesnt say that anywhere on the website and in the meantime , could I get them to send me my home insurance renewal papers.
The reply was thats not something we can do because of GDPR and theor own access was also down in any event.
Does any of this give you confidence in the professionalism or mgt'ment of Aviva? The BoD need to know how badly they are running the business and letting customers drift off to the competitors. Barclays SMART platform cost them millions and they've lost millions of clients.... I suspect that Aviva is treading that same furrow and management are too cosy in their roles and incapable of restoring service to an acceptable level.
I guess my question is 'When did it become acceptable to allow IT systems to take over and wreck businesses? ' why are senior management not addressing the fact that their systems are actually preventing and sabotaging sales being completed?

Fully agree its massively undervalued . Wish it would start to climb into the 1700+ soon though as my portfolio is swamped with undervalued stocks .
Dont know what the markets want from a stock any more... if its not tech or making profits and paying divv ies then its ignored.
Ahh well here goes, I'll pump a further chunk into this but promise you based on past performance, it'll mean another 2% will be shaved off the quote.

I've come to the firm conviction that the Stock Market is nothing other than an out and out unregulated casino. the perpetrators are there in full view and seem to be outside the regulation becasue they operate from some foreign domicile.

All these massive swings and so called ARBS trading and short sellers jumping in and out , creaming a fraction of a cent here and there and very quickly creating serious volatility. this impoverishes us all other. it makes it impossible for Pension Funds and Private Investors to operate in long term.
I wish that the toothless regulators would investigate and report publicly on their findings what value do they operators bring apart from creating panic selling and frustrating the will of the investors who are seeking a home for their capital .

Actually having suffered massive losses over the years because of my belief that this was a platform for LT investment; so Im taking full responsibility for my stupidity.
Now we're in a whole new paradigm with the government creating hundreds of billions of debt keeping companies from collapsing and at the same time allowing bars t ewards to come in and rake off billions for their own good.

what's the point ? of having Private shareholders losing their say x% dividends only to see the price get hammered by a multiple of the x% dividend . Any recovery in share price is then slowly rebuilt if the company is lucky . meanwhile the regulators stand back and allow the bar stews to wreck havoc and often take the plc company down using invidious short selling tools.

By not acting in the interests of the investors, the Regulators are complicit in this activity. they are going to be paid regardless of any action and if they rock the boat , then they are putting at risk their nice little sinecure of a NED job that awaits them post retirement. AIMHOOC.

I've come to the firm conviction that the Stock Market is nothing other than an out and out unregulated casino. the perpetrators are there in full view and seem to be outside the regulation becasue they operate from some foreign domicile.

All these massive swings and so called ARBS trading and short sellers jumping in and out , creaming a fraction of a cent here and there and very quickly creating serious volatility. this impoverishes us all other. it makes it impossible for Pension Funds and Private Investors to operate in long term.
I wish that the toothless regulators would investigate and report publicly on their findings what value do they operators bring apart from creating panic selling and frustrating the will of the investors who are seeking a home for their capital .

Actually having suffered massive losses over the years because of my belief that this was a platform for LT investment; so Im taking full responsibility for my stupidity.
Now we're in a whole new paradigm with the government creating hundreds of billions of debt keeping companies from collapsing and at the same time allowing bars t ewards to come in and rake off billions for their own good.

what's the point ? of having Private shareholders losing their say x% dividends only to see the price get hammered by a multiple of the x% dividend . Any recovery in share price is then slowly rebuilt if the company is lucky . meanwhile the regulators stand back and allow the bar stews to wreck havoc and often take the plc company down using invidious short selling tools.

By not acting in the interests of the investors, the Regulators are complicit in this activity. they are going to be paid regardless of any action and if they rock the boat , then they are putting at risk their nice little sinecure of a NED job that awaits them post retirement. AIMHOOC.

I've come to the firm conviction that the Stock Market is nothing other than an out and out unregulated casino. the perpetrators are there in full view and seem to be outside the regulation becasue they operate from some foreign domicile.

All these massive swings and so called ARBS trading and short sellers jumping in and out , creaming a fraction of a cent here and there and very quickly creating serious volatility. this impoverishes us all other. it makes it impossible for Pension Funds and Private Investors to operate in long term.
I wish that the toothless regulators would investigate and report publicly on their findings what value do they operators bring apart from creating panic selling and frustrating the will of the investors who are seeking a home for their capital .

Actually having suffered massive losses over the years because of my belief that this was a platform for LT investment; so Im taking full responsibility for my stupidity.
Now we're in a whole new paradigm with the government creating hundreds of billions of debt keeping companies from collapsing and at the same time allowing bars t ewards to come in and rake off billions for their own good.

what's the point ? of having Private shareholders losing their say x% dividends only to see the price get hammered by a multiple of the x% dividend . Any recovery in share price is then slowly rebuilt if the company is lucky . meanwhile the regulators stand back and allow the bar stews to wreck havoc and often take the plc company down using invidious short selling tools.

By not acting in the interests of the investors, the Regulators are complicit in this activity. they are going to be paid regardless of any action and if they rock the boat , then they are putting at risk their nice little sinecure of a NED job that awaits them post retirement. AIMHOOC.

I've come to the firm conviction that the Stock Market is nothing other than an out and out unregulated casino. the perpetrators are there in full view and seem to be outside the regulation becasue they operate from some foreign domicile.

All these massive swings and so called ARBS trading and short sellers jumping in and out , creaming a fraction of a cent here and there and very quickly creating serious volatility. this impoverishes us all other. it makes it impossible for Pension Funds and Private Investors to operate in long term.
I wish that the toothless regulators would investigate and report publicly on their findings what value do they operators bring apart from creating panic selling and frustrating the will of the investors who are seeking a home for their capital .

Actually having suffered massive losses over the years because of my belief that this was a platform for LT investment; so Im taking full responsibility for my stupidity.
Now we're in a whole new paradigm with the government creating hundreds of billions of debt keeping companies from collapsing and at the same time allowing bars t ewards to come in and rake off billions for their own good.

what's the point ? of having Private shareholders losing their say x% dividends only to see the price get hammered by a multiple of the x% dividend . Any recovery in share price is then slowly rebuilt if the company is lucky . meanwhile the regulators stand back and allow the bar stews to wreck havoc and often take the plc company down using invidious short selling tools.

By not acting in the interests of the investors, the Regulators are complicit in this activity. they are going to be paid regardless of any action and if they rock the boat , then they are putting at risk their nice little sinecure of a NED job that awaits them post retirement. AIMHOOC.

Has anyone else come to a clear understanding that the stock market is just a casino for hedge funds and other shysters to manipulate and transfer funds to their mates and other connected parties? the MO seems to be ' you take it up X% today and I'll drive it down tomorrow' . 'Jam today , Cake tomorrow'.
the suckers are of course those putting their dosh into Pensions and ISAs which are being stripped of real value ilke no one's business.
As for the private shareholders , of which I'm one of the deluded many, NO one is interested in them or how we are being played for mugs. the only good news Ive heard is that the Saudis have been buying into Shell .... go figure !

and GSk is also a standout

No reason for most stocks to be oscillating widely interday and from one day to the next. But this is all due to the Arbs and short selling by scrupulous hedge funds. The likes of Odious Crispen and other mates of Boris ..... why cant a law be passed to curtail the freedom of these scavangers who serve no useful economic purpose apart from their own gratification to oblige all equity holders to hold for 21 days.

What also makes my blood boil is that trusted fund managers in the large institutions which manage the life and pension funds are loaningthe policyholders' stock investment out to these hedge funds for a considerable commission that they then pocket for themselves. Its pure daylight robbery.
Why is no regulator waking up to this .....

why is it easier to enslave a whole future generation and saddle the economy with massive debt when all it takes is to stop a handful of shorters and non-taxable non resident hedge funds operators creating havoc with long term investments?.this is not rocket science -follow the money and see who is gaining from all this panic selling and rebuying.

ReEsults out Friday ....my guess is that someone most likely leaking ahead of the announcement. will there be an investigation ? unlikely

It makes sense that its falling as its rocketted too high too fast - generally when acquiring a business at full value, the shares of the acquired fall in price . Yet LSE share price stormed ahead .

All I can make of it is that the fundamentals dont matter much and with the hedge funds and arbs tampering with the technology, they just gut the prices of all the shares day in, day out. There is more control in casinos