Member Info for fleccy

Zesty I'm just interested in the subject and this is a busy forum where I can air my view. I decided to learn the basics of Bitcoin because I wanted to understand the investment case for the token; As far as I can tell Bitcoin has only one real use and that's to allow punters to bet on the price direction, the token itself has no real purpose and doesn't fulfil a societal need. The decentralised nature of the token is hyped as its biggest strength, but I'd argue it's amongst its biggest weaknesses. When you're defrauded out of your tokens, or lose your private key for whatever reason, your Bitcoin is gone like a f art in the wind. Lose your Bitcoin and there's no one you can call to take responsibility for making good your losses, at least with centralised managed services you're protected by the institution backing the transaction. Before the ETF's an investment in Bitcoin was like buying a house and not insuring it, if the house burned down you'd lose everything. The ETF's centralise BTC and put the institutions in control, which means they also have a good amount of control over the price movement. Because Bitcoin has no real utility it will eventually fail in my opinion, it's just a matter of when, not if.

I find QBT interesting because I can't see how they'll commercialise their products, or even if their methods will work on the live BTC network. If I have any agenda it's just to satisfy my own curiosity, what happens with QBT's price has no financial impact on me; QBT's stock price could go to the moon, or crash and burn, either way it doesn't affect me.

There's no way of knowing how much resource QBT have committed to reverse engineering Asic rigs, could one person or 10 people to understand the architecture.

I also have no idea how many ASICS QBT have used for solo and mining pool testing, but my guess is that you'd need a lot of ASICS to measure a live network probability improvement using something like Method B. The large miners increase their chances of winning by throwing massive processing power at the task, so unless QBT use significant processing power to live test I'm not sure they'll achieve measurable results, do you understand what I'm saying? Imagine a tug of war where you have 100 men on one side and 10 men on the other side, even if you replace the 10 man team with a team that's twice as strong, the 100 man team will still easily win every time, so how would you measure the improvement? In the case of Bitcoin mining finding a winning hash also depends on luck, so the big miners skew the probability in their favour by using more Asic's, so I'd guess for QBT to prove their Method's work they need a large operation with a lot of processing power.

"But more importantly to me, the rest of the market has risen strongly and I have decided to sell and seek a bargain and one that is still currently paying quite a high yield. I am aware of the risks, but the potential reward seems well worth it"

Good luck with your choice, we should all do what's right for us. We're currently sitting on a £24,000 paper gain on our Lloyds shares, and I still consider them undervalued with a fair value over 70p, so I'll just watch and wait.

I'm just projecting my opinion through humour,

I personally see significant risks with an investment in QBT. QBT was formed from Clear leisure, an owner of theme parks, so it's quite a transformation to become a Bitcoin focused technology company, it feels like an opportunistic move to climb aboard the Crypto hype train.

Bitcoin miners like MARA have Billions invested in ASICS and infrastructure, and clearly have far deeper pockets than QBT, if it's possible to improve the efficiency of Brute Force hashing you can bet the big miners will have researched it themselves. Whatever QBT have achieved in the lab won't necessarily achieve the same efficiencies on the live Bitcoin network, and QBT stated in their last R&D update that "The porting of Method A and Method B onto commercial rigs has proven to be very challenging. The R&D team is currently testing different solutions for the final stage in order to deliver a fully reliable product. An exact date for market roll-out cannot be provided at this stage".

Apparently the Bitcoin Network performs 500 times more operations per second than the World's most powerful supercomputer, so even if QBT have something they will need to incorporate the product into a large mining operation to prove it works. I have doubts about SaaS, since the speed of the Bitcoin network requires any operations to be as close to the ASIC's as possible to reduce latency to an absolute minimum.

I'm just expressing a opinion take it or leave it, but my opinion has nothing to do with ego and is unbiased since I'm not invested in QBT. I'm not a believer in Bitcoin so I consider any resource directed at the token as wasted, at best I'd view it as a form of online gambling with facilitator's, winners, and losers.

OFCOM expressed an opinion and used it's powers to coerce BT into lowering landline rental charges, whether a voluntary reduction can be used as evidence of overcharging is a different matter. The class action has also includes Split Purchase customers, which OFCOM described as well engaged and therefore requiring no further action, so the lawyers have included a customer type OFCOM considered as being treated fairly.

In my personal opinion I don't see how BT have done anything wrong, especially since all Communication providers operate a policy of increasing out of contract pricing significantly; I've experienced it myself when I was a Sky customer, if you don't renegotiate at the end of your contract then you'll get hammered by a significant price increase, they all do it.

Abject there's some contradiction in your post, on the one hand you state that my "lack of criticism and low expectations of both companies and their management annoys" you, and on the other hand you state "Fleccy my holding is approaching yours in Bt And I have probably 1/3 your holding in vod"; You either believe the companies are undervalued, or you don't, and if you don't believe the companies share prices will eventually recover to fair value, why invest there at all? If you read through my previous thread, about the compounding effect of reinvesting dividends when the share price drop's, you'll get some understanding of my thought processes. I used to work in Telecoms, so I have a bias toward investing in the sector, but my reasoning for investing in BT and Vodafone is because I believe they're cheap safe stocks, and I have unlimited patience when it comes to investing as long as I'm receiving dividends.

IDMB if I had a crystal ball all my stock purchases would be timed to perfection, I'd consistently buy at the bottom and sell at the top, but I haven't got some way of predicting the future unfortunately. Obviously when I first invested in Vodafone and BT I had no idea the prices would fall so low, but we are where we are so I play the hand I've been dealt. I've now brought my averages down to low enough levels to mitigate any risk of losing money in the event of a takeover, in fact if BT or Vod should become takeover target's I'll make a good profit on them.

John Maynard Keynes said that markets can stay irrational for longer than you can stay solvent, fortunately I can stay solvent longer than the market can remain irrational.

They're working hard on Method D should all else fail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7KDrW70EnA

The National Security review was only the first hurdle and it was a non issue anyway. Now they have to persuade the CMA and OFCOM that the merger isn't anticompetitive, which might be comparable to Evel Knievel's Snake River Canyon Jump attempt.

I'm invested in BT and Vodafone. The "Dog" reference was made by Steve Sedgwick on CNBC this morning. In terms of performance, looking back over the past 5 years Vodafone, BT and Telecom Italia have all underperformed equally, down by approximately 50%; Orange has done slightly better, down 23%, but the clear winner is Deutsche Telekom who is up 47% over the same period.

My own personal view is that BT and Vodafone's low valuations are an opportunity to top up and build my holdings at good yields. Vodafone are cutting their dividend for the second time, but that was expected. At the current prices I'll continue topping up my BT and Vodafone holdings, as dividends roll in, and also invest my Lloyds dividends back into BT and Vodafone too, since they both look bargain basement valuations to me.

https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BT.A:LON?window=5Y&comparison=LON%3AVOD%2CEPA%3AORA%2CBIT%3ATIT%2CETR%3ADTE

I didn't see anything in the video that we don't already know, he didn't explain why BT's P/E is less than 6, or anything about BT's cost cutting plans, or anything about the projected drop off in capex after 2026. BT isn't a Revenue growth play, it's a cost cutting play leading to increased bottom line Net Profit down the road.

My personal investment case for BT, is my belief that they'll grow the bottom line at the end of the current 5G and FTTP Capex cycle, which will likely be the last large large Network infrastructure transformation for generations.

The presenter on CNBC just described Vodafone as a Dog, but the market has given the whole telecom sector the Dog treatment, apart from Deutsch Telekom due to their US investment in T-Mobile. Anyone who believes that winners will always be winners and dogs will always be dogs, should probably avoid telecom stocks, personally I don't believe that so I'll continue topping up while I see value.

Putting it another way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWwOJlOI1nU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLgMsqjsj58

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUON3hz-qiI

As someone who's voted Conservative over many years, because I believed they were the party of business, I won't be voting for them anymore. I wont vote Tory because I no longer trust them, they seem uninterested in the plight of the UK stock market and offer ineffectual ideas like the British ISA, when they should restrict all ISA's to UK stocks only. Hunt has reduced Capital Gain and dividend allowances, further chipping away at the UK investment case and done nothing to help UK stocks by offering tax incentives to UK focused funds.

I wont vote Labour because Brown hammered DB pension schemes by removing tax relief on dividends, eventually leading to the majority of them closing; Meanwhile Politicians and civil servants enjoy generous Final salary pension schemes. DB pension schemes were also big investors in UK stocks, not anymore, another unintended consequence of political meddling.

I wont vote LIBDEM because they were the most vocal about overturning Brexit, which makes them really untrustworthy in my opinion, they should change their name to the Woke party.

I realise that Caveat Emptor applies to investing, but the Conservatives show no interest in helping UK stocks. I wont be voting Labour, but they can't be any worse than the Conservatives, and they might be more inclined to support UK companies.

Goat, the 23rd is just a case management conference for the Gutman case and not the result of the Patourel case.

Savage, I'm quite the case he was referring to was the Patourel one. The Gutman cases are aimed at the various Mobile providers, including Telefonica for O2 before they merged with VM.

The court case is over and everyone is awaiting the CAT's decision.

https://www.catribunal.org.uk/cases/13817721-justin-le-patourel

"When will these two follow!"

When the market decides to take their boot off the Telecom sector. My personal view is that the market is heavily manipulated, at both the sector and individual stock level. I look at companies like Rolls Royce as an example of how the market turns when you wouldn't expect it, and how the market creates narratives to suit its agenda. While the market has punished publicly traded Telecom stocks, Private Equity has been mopping up European infrastructure assets, and investing Billions into new infrastructure like Altnets in the UK. Clearly Private Equity are eyeing up cheap Telecom infrastructure assets, while prices are depressed by market forces justified by questionable narratives; Telecom Italia's fixed line business and Vantage Towers are examples of what I'm talking about. By depressing Telecom stock prices, it stops the companies from selling stock to raise cash for investment, or paying down debt, therefore encouraging companies to sell assets. Private Equity were sniffing around Openreach at the start of Jansen's tenure at BT.

You should read the Compounding thread I started, it tells you what I'm doing.

Is anyone else getting loads of out of date old news articles when they search Google News? I set the filter to find news within the last 24 hours, but I'm getting loads of articles from years ago.

BT wont be affected by house prices, since it provides an essential service in today's modern world. Most people can't manage without their connectivity so even if younger renters decide to use their mobiles, instead of FTTP, BT have that covered with their ownership of EE.

I expect to see a lot of 5G and FTTP bundling in future years, so CP's and others will likely focus on discounted bundled packages utilising a full range of services including IOT.

Missed posting a link to one of the charts in the previous link.

This is the chart comparing the value of the stock in each universe.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRYwu6rv7Vk2093vnE9975iJIfiNBDGYW08VmYU2MK2tsi0o9bA3rDwV9NV0XA6QJrkQeqet_jppwWg/pubchart?oid=1399088825&format=interactive

I expected a response from Toff to my post in the sub £1 thread. I think compounded growth through dividend reinvestment is a subject worthy of its own thread. As I said in the previous thread dividends aren't guaranteed, but neither is continual price outperformance of growth stocks over value stocks.

I'll repost the previous chart showing the compounding effect of reinvesting 7% returns over an 11 year period, with an initial investment of £100,000. After 11 years the £100,000 will have grown to £210,485.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRYwu6rv7Vk2093vnE9975iJIfiNBDGYW08VmYU2MK2tsi0o9bA3rDwV9NV0XA6QJrkQeqet_jppwWg/pubchart?oid=257670331&format=interactive

The next example involve two different Fleccy's in parallel universes.

Fleccy1 and Fleccy2 both invest £100,000 in BT stock, at £2 a share, purchasing 50,000 shares each; In Fleccy2's universe the share price immediately halves a week after he buy's the stock, but in Fleccy1's universe the price remains at £2 a share. The dividend remains at 7.7p a share in both universes and both Fleccy's reinvest their yearly dividends back into BT stock. After 19 years of dividend reinvestment the value of Fleccy2's portfolio catches up up with Fleccy1's, with each owning approximately £204,000 of stock, but after year 19 Fleccy2's reinvestment pulls way ahead of Fleccy1's due to more dividends buying more stock at a cheaper price. After 30 years Fleccy2's stock is worth £498,000, whereas Fleccy1's stock is only worth £322,000.

The reason Fleccy2 outperforms Fleccy1 over 30 years of reinvestment, is due to each Fleccy2's year on year reinvestment buying increasingly more stock than Fleccy1's. After 30 years of reinvestment, Fleccy2 will own around 498,000 shares with a dividend of £38,000, whereas Fleccy1 will own around 161,000 shares with a dividend of £12,000

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRYwu6rv7Vk2093vnE9975iJIfiNBDGYW08VmYU2MK2tsi0o9bA3rDwV9NV0XA6QJrkQeqet_jppwWg/pubchart?oid=933652602&format=interactive

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRYwu6rv7Vk2093vnE9975iJIfiNBDGYW08VmYU2MK2tsi0o9bA3rDwV9NV0XA6QJrkQeqet_jppwWg/pubchart?oid=305726335&format=interactive

Obviously this is a made up example, aimed at demonstrating the power of dividend reinvestment when a stock drops in price. If both Fleccy's retired after 30 years of reinvesting dividends, and decided to take income instead, Fleccy2 would be far better off even though he initially suffered a paper loss due to the drop in price of his initial investment.