Member Info for fleccy

Mandy I don't know how many times I need to tell you, I'm not in any way involved with, or a member of, the CWU. I was a CWU member up to 2019, for legal protection at work considerations, but cancelled my membership when I retired. I have never worked for BT, but did work for Cable & Wireless followed by Vodafone.

I don't make any secret of the fact I don't mind sitting on paper losses, and I prefer to top up when the price drops since I get more stock for my money. As far as inflation's concerned, the worst thing to hold during high inflation is cash whereas equities are considered a hedge against inflation. Dividend reinvestment allows me to grow the size of my holdings, and the lower the price drops the better the compounding effect due to reinvestment.

UK stocks have been punished by the markets over many years, with FTSE stocks now reported as being amongst the cheapest on the planet, so my paper losses are due to timing and market movement since initial investments and every top up reduces the average cost per share. I've mentioned all this before, you just seem to have a defective long term memory, you should probably take medical advice about that.

I see current global Geopolitics as an opportunity to buy cheaper due to market sentiment, even though it's irrelevant to BT's long term share price or business prospects, so no contradiction on my part. Incidentally, Egypt has just pulled its Ambassador from Tel Aviv and the rhetoric coming out of the Israeli War cabinet suggests they're choosing to ignore any US requests for restraint. I believe the market was getting ahead of itself in last week's stock rally, so we could easily see a reversal should things escalate further in the Middle East.

Jambone you should keep a check on your vivid imagination, my dislike of Bitcoin has nothing whatsoever to do with my investment in Lloyds. Lloyds share price will eventually recover, because its business model is based on a proven model that's survived for hundreds of years. If Bitcoin was on target to be as successful as enthusiasts believe, then the Banks would aggressively pile in and accumulate every BTC as it's produced, but that isn't what's happening. Any BTC transaction for goods is converted to Fiat at the point of sale, so all the conversion risk is placed on the purchaser. Do you believe that Blackrock will have any risk to themselves if they get their Spot ETF approval? They'll happily take fund fee's and whatever associated revenue they can generate at zero risk to themselves; If anyone believes the likes of Blackrock and others want to open ETF's because they're believers, then they're deluded and underestimate the longer term impact Spot ETF's could have on BTC, once the initial surge dissipates. I don't really think much about my Lloyds investment apart from dividend dates and looking at topping up, when I actually want the price to drop since I get more shares for the money.

I post here because it's a busy forum and I enjoy expressing my views. I have no emotional attachment to QBT and have no interest in their success or failure, but their claims of a 2.6 times increase in probability of winning has caught my interest, and I can't wait to see if their claims pan out in the real world.

TOTHEMOON, what is the point of Bitcoin? If it's just so the HODLers can keep a cold wallet in a safe, in the hope that it goes stratospheric, then that isn't a valid use. Should the BTC bubble irreparably burst, those cold wallets will be no better than really expensive paper weights. Gold has a variety of real world uses, from jewellery to electronics and medicine; Oil is a store of energy and useful within the chemical industry for the production of many materials.

Bitcoin is a an electronic manufactured fake commodity with no real world use, probably a digital equivalent of Fool's Gold, so where does its value come from? As far as I can tell, Bitcoin's value is based on hype, FOMO and belief; With the vested interest creating the hype, speculators creating and driving FOMO, and the believers Holding On For Dear Life. If the Bitcoin price doesn't live up to the hype, then the next halving could nail the BTC coffin shut and finally see the demise of this fake commodity; The vested interests want US Spot ETF's to refuel the BTC engine, since there are signs the tank is nearly empty, with recent rises mainly speculative. Much of the price increases and hype is driven by rich evangelist believers like Michael Saylor, with MicroStrategy adding $147.3 million of Bitcoin in September bringing their BTC total to $4.68 billion. What happens if the 80% get scared and decide to bail? There'd be no coming back from that.

I'm not losing sleep over it, the only reason I was looking at topping up was due to the ridiculously cheap valuations.

I'm currently watching and waiting to see the effect of the Middle East conflict, going off what I've been watching the whole region is teetering on the edge of a full blown regional war. Even the Turkish people are protesting in their millions, and the longer this goes on the more chance moderate Arab state's leaders will be forced to react in some way. The biggest risk for the West is that Oil could be affected, which has a economic knock on effect on everything else. The problem for the US, UK and many EU countries, is that our politicians are seen as intransigent to the plight of Gazan's and West Bank Palestinians, and are accused of hypocrisy for allowing Israel to do whatever they want. I'm surprised by the recent rally in stocks in general, and because of the above unless Israel backs off it's probably unsustainable. The market seems to have a short memory and intentionally blinkered view, creating rallies for little reason like interest rates being held while the World burns. I suspect FOMO should be locked away while the Middle East and Ukraine is in turmoil, and China possibly weighing up Taiwan while the US is distracted; If there was a geopolitical index, equivalent to the VIX, it'd probably in the high 60's by now.

Yep, I was gearing up to buy more below 110p on results day and it went the other way lol. I was kicking myself for not jumping in before results day and I've been waiting for the trend to reverse ever since, but it just wants to keep climbing. If I decided to jump in on Monday, it'd probably drop like a brick on Tuesday 🫤

Nic I don't see them using CBDC's for everyday spending, since we all have debit cards and apps on our phones that perform the same function as electronic money. CBDC's would probably be used for more niche functions and would likely use an online service, App, or something similar to a debit card.

The HMRC have a system called Connect, collecting data from multiple sources to detect fraud, using crypto wont shield you from them.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-12089927/HMRC-Connect-holds-55bn-data-items-bid-tackle-tax-evasion.html

These narratives about Government controlling your money, so you need Bitcoin to have privacy is BS in my opinion. Even if you use Bitcoin you'll still need Bank accounts, since central banks and Governments will never give up control of the money supply and there's no chance of Bitcoin gaining wide spread adoption because it's expensive and rubbish at processing transactions, even with the Lightning Network.

Nic, as far as your view on traceability of how you spend your money, you can already use cash to make purchases free from scrutiny. If you were involved in criminality and DeFi crypto was used to evade scrutiny, it wouldn't work, anyone can set up a node on the Bitcoin network and every transaction is shared with every node, Government agencies could set up node's of their own and build a database associating every wallet address with every user, and log their transactions. Even if you made a transfer off chain, it would have to be recorded on chain after the transfer. If you think your wallet addresses will stay anonymous, think again, Government's would use various means to identify wallet owners. Everything is visible to everyone on a decentralised network.

Nic I totally agree with you in reference to CBDC's and have said as much previously. A CBDC can be tied to a specific use case and record transactions in respect of a service or commodity. You could have CBDC's tied to Oil or Gold and facilitate the transaction's using the CBDC, and record the transaction in the blockchain while the goods are supplied. A CBDC could be issued as benefits for claimants and targeted at specific uses like rent for landlord's, or purchasing specific goods. It would give Government a way of controlling how benefits are spent, so they aren't squandered on booze and cig's. CBDC's would be controlled centrally and likely based on proof of stake rather than proof of work like BTC.

Pas I wasn't really interested in looking at BTC until around 2018, after a discussion with a really enthusiastic guy at the gym. My son with some friends apparently mined a few BTC in the very early days, around 2009/10, but I only found out about that years later and he thinks they deleted or lost them. I've never been interested in Bitcoin, as I've always viewed it as nothing more than a bit of useless code and the closer I've looked at the technology the more convinced I am that I'm right. The reason I'm convinced that BTC will eventually disappear is because it has no useful purpose, apart from criminality. Even the enthusiasts have dropped all the previous use cases and now describe it simply as a store of value and compare it to commodities.

Can anyone on here tell me what BTC does more efficiently than anything it's touted as superior to? The one possible efficient use case for BTC is exchange of tokens, but only in the absence of regulatory and Government agency oversight, which is what makes it useful for criminals.

I'm quite sure I can debunk any use case people on here come up with, to justify BTC's existence.

History will remember Bitcoin as the biggest scam/ponzi scheme ever, Its value is based entirely on hype and FOMO. I have no idea when it'll die, or what will eventually kill it, but it'll be mentioned in historical texts along with other nonsensical bubbles like Tulip mania.

Not me, that's for sure. The only consolation is that the value our existing BT holding, has increased by over £10,000 over the last couple of days.

I might have gambled 134p on QBT, not much more. Wasn't QBT's 133.333 Million share placing supposed to be be hitting the market from yesterday? There's been some trades for bunches of 1,000,000 today as well:

2023-11-03T11:26:28Z GBp 1.477 1000000 1,480,000

2023-11-03T08:56:45Z GBp 1.50005 1000000 1,500,000

2023-11-03T08:50:43Z GBp 1.508 1000000 1,510,000

Our portfolio is up over £20,000 since the 1st Nov, the whole market is bullish.

Kintbury Capital Llp opened a 0.55% short position on Monday and BT is up over 8% since then. Presumably they have some sort of hedging policy, but it still has to be hurting.

You can check the stats for the top miners here:

https://btc.com/stats/pool?pool_mode=day

It's possible Argo could have won more Bitcoin if one of its competitors reduced its hashrate, so Argo won more Blocks without increasing its own hashrate. Antpool took the lead over Foundry recently, but Foundry have now resumed their place at the top.

You're correct I haven't been directing dividend reinvestments at Vodafone, as I've considered the dividend as unsafe, but that doesn't mean I'm not constantly appraising them. Vodafone are currently going through a reorganisation, including the recent announced sale of Vodafone Spain, so I do constantly weigh up the sustainability of the dividend. Vodafone's doubly tempting because a £20,000 top up would knock 17p off my VOD average cost per share and assuming the dividend is maintained it'll be around 3.8p next February; Never say never.

As far as NWG I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole and out of the three I have previously considered LGEN, but I just prefer Lloyds.

I didn't see the point of your post yesterday, pointing out what you would have done when BT was around 110p, clearly I gambled on a post result drop and got it wrong, and didn't need someone pointing out the obvious to rub my nose in it. The market is still bearish on BT so a drop back to 110p isn't out of the question, should the macro situation deteriorate in the coming weeks.

Plutuq, it just saves confusion for people who can't be bothered to read back through the thread. There are over 100 posts on here daily, only someone who's dumb wouldn't realise why I reference specific quotes; I also don't understand what's wrong with people who feel the need to criticise the practice.

"Not advice for Fleccy"

Non taken lol

Just to demonstrate how bullish the market is today, my portfolio has gained over £15,000 since yesterday's close. I'll sit on my hands for now, there are plenty of geopolitical events that could derail the current bullishness in the not too distant future.

"Fleccy should have done £20k here at 110. No idea why he was fussing over a penny here or there before he bought."

Indeed, in the absence of a crystal ball I gambled on the price going sub 110p, but I'm still sitting on £20,000 and I'll weigh up opportunities as they arise, whether it be BT or elsewhere. I might even take a chance on Vodafone, or Lloyds, but I wont be jumping in on a day like today when the whole market is bullish.