Member Info for Dartron

I think Mr Royde will a load more. He is happy to buy em up at 130. He must know more about the biz than anyone else.

4M shares sold today (perhaps been worked for some time). Perhaps the reason why company did the buy back?

That is a considerable chunk, 1% of company. Lets hope selling is done. Might be tempted to add here if we go any lower.

A 9.5% yield is hampering your portfolio, are you sure?

Julian Baines is now overseeing recovery at RENX

Really. Why was this not RNS here? I had no idea.

Im not overly pleased with the news.

Im on a loss here for over 2 years. I think he should be flat out on sorting out EKF.

The share price does not say its time for coasting.

I cant call it Stumpy. I sold mine on the spike of the budget. Then noted Blackrock increase their short. However I wonder if they have given up on the idea. Perhaps they were hoping for auditing issues which were not forthcoming.

I note that YOU was tipped as a buy in IC when it had its own feature, but as a hold in the AIM top 50 write up. Inconsistent!

I lost some of my YOU winnings on AT. (Ashtead technology). Worse off over there. Exactly the same Macro bear case IMO (Growth stock needs to be punished). At least I put half in a Gold and Silver based investment trust. Cards on the table, I would like to buy back at £4.00 but doubtful we will see it. Price action does not seem bearish enough. (look at AT. for bearish price action!!). Meanwhile the S&P has its best week. What are we doing on AIM!!!!

Chart looks good to me. The bottom was in Sept 10th. We have now made a high above the last high on the downward move. As long as current price holds that confirms the reversal. We are a whisker of the 50MA. If I didnt already have a load, I would be a buyer. Not to mention the good update. I think timescales need to be realistic here. This is an oil tanker making a turn, not a sailing dinghy. I would think late January we should be off the lows. Hopefully some write ups and broker targets are forth coming. Too complex for me to value.

Tail end of article aimed at US audience (available in the news tab on Trading view)

Value investors will likely look at more than just these metrics, but the above data helps show that Prudential is likely undervalued currently. And when considering the strength of its earnings outlook, PUK sticks out at as one of the market's strongest value stocks.

Zacks Investment Research

It would be great to hear from the company as to how things are going. I expect they are going far batter than the share price would imply. Here is an old Edison research note, from June 2024. At least gives a good overview if anyone is not aware of all the aspects. Hopefully they provide an update and address the rises from the budget. I will say again, CARD have been quite clever with their tie up deals, all of which do not incur wage increase, such as Aldi, the Reject shop and what ever the American thing is? (will tariffs affect this??). Honestly think anyone with an average under £1 has nothing to worry about there.

https://www.edisongroup.com/research/look-inside-the-card/33707/

Damn. I missed my top up. Would still buy some though when I get some gains elsewhere.

Thanks for that. I was not aware of the oak bloke. I read the article, will read it again a bit slower over a coffee.

I came here to say.. Well we know who the seller might be now. City of London has almost 15% and they have been reducing. I hope to get a few more of these soon.

Its called the NASDAQ, or just buy Gold.

Yeah, and alliance pharma. I had that long until yesterday and just managed to get out with a few quid. We might see more shorts on AIM. Not worth bothering with really is it.

Great news that Spire are conducting a buy back. It may not be huge, but at least it shows confidence moving forward.

They are talking about £5M from now until the end of the year and the best part, is that the shares will be cancelled making it a real buy back as opposed to a token gesture. Doing some maths, I make that a similar 0.5% of the share capital to the short that GLG have here - also declared as 0.5%. Therefore we may have net buying of 1% of the SP over the next few months. This does not take in to account whether there are any other large sellers, however since the BB was issued via an RNS, I would hope other sellers may abate until the price is a little higher.

Could be good for AGFX?

Looking at currency charts, I see the EUR/GBP looking more volatile / declining for the £.

Would high net worth's, use AGFX to leave the UK behind!!?

Article about the £/dollar:

Investors are increasing bets that pound will plunge, says Barclays . Traders are building up short positions against the pound following the Budget, according to Barclays. Hedge funds and assets managers are increasing their bets that the value of the pound will decline in reaction to the Chancellor’s tax raising plans, according to Mimi Rushton, global head of currency distribution at Barclays. Barclays said that investors are now holding more short bets than long positions against the currency, where traders buy sterling in anticipation of its value rising. Investors now hold more short bets against the pound that long bets following the Budget, according to Barclays.

Thankyou Stach. One of my strategies is to buy oversold stocks that are short, as more often than not, you get a good return as the short has to buy back. The key is not buying too early. I think CARD was a good short up at £1.30. I think its a good buy at 90p (easy 10% upside from there). FWIW, I think shorts will exit here just fine, you have to respect that they are good at what they do. They may be nearly all out, you just never know. The budget seems an obvious bear point for the shorts to get some cheap stock which they NEED. I would expect another week of turning the thumb screws here as that in reality is how long it will take for the amateur investor to read some bear bate in the press and then want to sell. In the mean time we should let the CEO and CFO worry about the budget, and we should make sure that our average price is close to 90p as that is a good price until further news IMO.

Thanks Zed. Yes you are right, but in effect the contract hours are 8 but it doesn't say over what period. I assume that is per week? The employment model I have outlined of lots of people to do one job is the industry standard. I would be amazed if CARD was any different. Cheers.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Vladimir Lenin

But back to CARD, Yes the budget is going to hurt them, but no more than any other high street seller. Has anyone bothered to check the CARD website? Firstly, it seems to be done very well, and there are lots of high margin things on there for sale. They said 8% of sales were online and growing. This is much less affected by increases in cost of employing people. I also think the Aldi deal was a genius idea to achieve the same. These guys are on the ball.

The other thing I noticed from the website, is just how many jobs are available. As I said before, zero hours staff jobs. Loads of them. If they were shrewd, they could favour people who have the full NI threshold available. There are loads of Mums out there who only want a few hours a week between school - as in the case of my Mrs. She isn't going to hit the 5k threshold on a few hours here or there (I mentioned she has had no work for over 2 weeks now from her 'employer').

I think you lot are over thinking the cost increases here, trust the board to navigate this. They would have had a good idea this was coming, yet still offered a dividend. The share price is controlled by short sellers, in reality its less than 1% of the company changing hands, Shorts just churn the same stock over and over. I dont think there are any large sellers here, it just seems to be targeting retail investors, don't be a mug and sell down here. Buy some stock (if you want) and switch off until after Christmas.

IG are not accepting short sell spread bets on this otherwise I would have. I am greatly swayed by the opinions of the big short sellers. My suspicion is that the odds are just too much in my favour so they wont take the bet, but according to them, they cant find any stock to borrow (for their part in the bet)! LOL.

Tom, that is sometimes what happens. I see short go up a very small amount, and I think they just need a bit more liquidity. But in this case I think they have increased too much for that. .55 to .82 is a 45% increase.

Saint, I dont think that argument holds. As much as they have to pay the dividend the stock also drops that much usually. Look at card factory, it has been smashed even lower now that it has gone ex dividend day.

I sold all of my YOU over the Monday to Wednesday. Firstly I just had too much, and needed to derisk before results. Then I still had too much. Then on the afternoon of the budget I felt that I should buy other stocks that still had shorts, in the hope that they might then do the same as YOU. This only partially materialised, but since YOU has retraced I feel no worse off. I didnt feel the results were that great TBH, and also with 2 funds selling out I did not think we would see much buying pressure here over the long term. I did ok on AMS and SQZ, but bought AT. (up at £6 ouch) which has come back like YOU. Be interesting to compare broker targets between YOU and AT. when we get some YOU data. AT has a near 50% broker target and is another growth stock that may have suffered more if the budget was any worse.

Why did it spike? Well there may have been other shorts needing to close. A slight bit of manipulation and once the herd arrive, which they certainly did, it helped take it up more. But if Blackrock want to sell another batch of stock short, they are going to want to start of selling high, to be able to buy low. I didnt bother posting with over 100 comments on that day, but now its the regulars again I hope my comments are helpful. I will rebuy some YOU and do it all over again once Blackrock have it on the ropes!

Dont know if you know but but I first bought at the 900's and then the 800's. On the day it first dropped I messed up and lost a lot here. I have been trading it as best I can to recoup my money. I bought both dips and sold both tops. Im still down about 15% down on my original purchase, but that is not bad considering the SP halved!!

My Mrs is on zero hours in the leisure business (so work is driven by demand) She has had no work for 2 weeks. Yet the company wants excess staff on the books so when their busy or someone is sick there are people to cover. This is how many are 'employed' in this country. The worry is, if Labour clamp down on this, companies will demand over and beyond from a few permanent staff. Add in foreign workers who seem willing to accept these terms. Globalisation has eradicated a decent job for huge chunk of the population.

I would have thought a typical store would have many staff, all of whom get limited hours, depending on demand. Possibly even zero hours? I doubt there are many on 37 1/2 hour a week contracts. So therefore, if they pay 4 people to perform the full time job of one person, then they are saving 4 x the employers NI at the new threshold of 5k per employee. I agree that NI has increased and the threshold has been reduced. But I very much doubt that card factory workers are on full time weekly work. Speculation on my part, but it is what happens in most retail jobs.

I was going to say that they might cut staff at less busy times, but I would expect this is already fine tuned.

Regarding retail business rates (from a news article after todays budget):

In her highly-anticipated Autumn Budget statement today, the Chancellor announced a 40 per cent business rates relief for the industry, which is down from the current 75 per cent rate set to expire on 31 March.

So although business rates will increase, they are not going up as much as they could have. I think this is also a big issue.

I think like all high street business, they will have to get on with it. Ultimately the tax rises at card will get passed on to the consumer. They say Cards are a defensive business, something people wont cut back on.

I found this gem, while searching about business rates:

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-reeves-extends-englands-business-rates-relief-retail-hospitality-2024-10-30/

Sainsbury's (SBRY.L), opens new tab, Britain's second-largest supermarket group after Tesco (TSCO.L), opens new tab, has complained that it currently pays almost as much tax on its properties as it makes in operating profit.