Member Info for fleccy

"I am starting to suspect that actually a world mathematical model not just for a country, could be created, in order to control inflation and automatize predictions on future price changes or bank rates."

You've just described the mathematical model called the market's, and how they should function.
Unfortunately, the market's have been allowed to give the big players the opportunity to make things up as they go along. As an example look at Drahi's purchase of 12% of BT, and then a further 6%, without any hints or headlines. In my opinion, the big players have been gifted control of the markets through various mechanisms, like off book trading, derivatives, etc. The big players can control a stocks price on exchange, using algo's, while they make the big deals off book in dark pools, and using derivatives. Not many people use certificated shares anymore, me included, they usually keep them in broker nominee accounts. Shares in a Nominee account are registered in the Broker's name, not the individual shareholders, so the Brokers can influence the companies they hold stocks in.

"Todays RNS Announces the redemption of $1 bill of callable FI notes with a coupon of 1.326 %.While it may not seem that important it adds to the already redeeemed $2/3 bill of debt announced so far this year"

Totally agree with everything in your post, but my issue was with the balance of buybacks vs dividends. They could have limited the buybacks to one Billion shares (£500 Million), and directed £1.5 Billion into other things,, like dividends lol.

"Without a willing buyer (LLOY) one can only assume that the share price would be even lower than it is presently."

You'd think so, but I don't believe the current buyback is having any effect on the share price. My guess is that Lloyds was punished for debasing the dividend, and investors would have rewarded them had they reinstated the "progressive" dividend policy, in place pre-covid. UK companies debasing their dividend get hammered, this isn't the US and stocks don't appear to follow the same rules. No doubt LTI will disagree with me, but the UK stock prices appear to benefit more from dividend hikes than buybacks.

"i did sell off a few funds a few months ago and purchased more dividend shares, some went ex div beginning of April but didn't reach the highs of last year, so held on to them for the dividend, so think i will just hold all the dividend payments on account until i see a good price for reinvesting"

Maybe I'm in a minority of one, because I haven't seen any articles with the same opinion, but I see dividend re-investment as a form of Growth. By re-investing dividends, you're growing your shareholding in the company, and grow your reinvested dividend capital gains during price recovery.
The markets are going through a change, with a Trillion Dollars wiped off tech stock valuations over the last week. At some point investors, in utility type stocks with real assets, will reap the benefits of buying while the prices have been low.

"Looks like some damaging weeks/months ahead then guys, do any of you have a good plan for dealing with it, you selling up or buying up or just sit it out and do nothing ?"

Damage? The only time an investor is damaged, is if they're a forced seller while sitting on a paper loss, turning the paper loss into a capital loss. The price could drop to 90p, but it's meaningless to long term holders. I topped up thousands of shares in BT, at 106 and 112p, while sitting on a big paper loss, I wasn't damaged by the paper loss, I used it to my advantage. A paper loss is just a state of mind, what's real is what you do when the price is depressed.

The shares in issue have fluctuated around 69 to 71 Billion over the last 10 years, the buybacks have been used to hold the shares in issue within the range, and nullify the effec of sharesave and bonus schemes.

5 November 2018
LLOYDS BANKING GROUP PLC - BLOCK LISTING OF SHARES
Application has been made to the UK Listing Authority and the London Stock Exchange for a block listing of 105,000,000

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/LLOY/additional-listing-s0zxhz08xl4a4pq.html

9 May 2018
LLOYDS BANKING GROUP PLC - BLOCK LISTING OF SHARES
Application has been made to the UK Listing Authority and the London Stock Exchange for a block listing of 415,000,000 ordinary shares

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/LLOY/additional-listing-jrziwk5b43zmcfp.html

6 December 2017
LLOYDS BANKING GROUP PLC - BLOCK LISTING OF SHARES
Application has been made to the UK Listing Authority and the London Stock Exchange for a block listing of 300,000,000 ordinary shares

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/LLOY/additional-listing-3qn99v0gyqgvuwe.html

29 June 2017
LLOYDS BANKING GROUP PLC - LISTING OF SHARES
Application has been made to the UK Listing Authority and the London Stock Exchange for a listing of 80,921,051 ordinary shares

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/LLOY/additional-listing-el6rjiwst5epjxx.html

18 May 2017
LLOYDS BANKING GROUP PLC - BLOCK LISTING OF SHARES
Application has been made to the UK Listing Authority and the London Stock Exchange for a block listing of 320,000,000 ordinary shares

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/LLOY/additional-listing-3bkg4gbp0qwu45h.html

23 February 2017
LLOYDS BANKING GROUP PLC - BLOCK LISTING OF SHARES
Application has been made to the UK Listing Authority and the London Stock Exchange for a block listing of 110,000,000 ordinary shares

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/LLOY/additional-listing-jqk5yndchazn7dv.html

"good to see"

Doesn't mean I like what they did in relation to the dividend. It'll be interesting to see if they get the dividend up to pre-covid levels soon, since investors want income in high inflationary environments, not buybacks.

"are you having a laugh? - I gave you the shares in issue 10 years ago - in that period about 3.5 Billion shares have been bought back and cancelled"

Where's your proof, show me the RNS's, showing shares issued and cancelled. Also look at the relative share prices, during the same period, as that is also a variable determining the amount's of shares to satisfy bonus/sharesave schemes.

"If you or any other investor is concerned that some remuneration is paid for in shares, and that others are created from saved money and other possibly from convertible bonds, then maybe you could find an investment where these things don't occur"

It wouldn't have bothered me if they'd restarted the dividend at pre-covid level, instead they rebased the dividend down, and made out that we're somehow getting benefit from the buybacks, which I'm still waiting to see evidence of. They definitely didn't have retail income seekers in mind when they made that decision, probably benefited brokers with retail shares in nominee accounts though.
As far as investing in Lloyds, I invest where I see value, which is why I bought more the day before ex dividend.

"LLOYDS shares in issue 10 years ago was about 70.34 Billion"

Because they've been doing buybacks every year to keep the shares in issue around 70 Billion. You didn't prove anything, I proved my point, with RNS's showing 967 million new shares issued between May 2019, and Feb 2020.
Where's your proof?

"It could be the case depending on how plans are set (i am not looking) that more shares are required as part of a remuneration package where shares replace cash , the lower the share price?"

Which was my point. You can't look at the Covid affected months, since they weren't indicative of normal operations, with dividends and bonus's suspended. In May 2019 the share price was sitting around 60p, when they did the intitial listing of 545,000,000; On the 18th Dec 2019 they did an additional listing of 352,000,000 shares when the share price was around 46p. If the share price stays low, then it stands to reason that they'll have to issue more shares to satisfy the various schemes. I used to do sharesave schemes, during employment, and the company I worked for capped the number of shares you could subscribe to, when the price dropped dramatically, instead of £250 a month, they limited it to £150 a month. To declare my view as nonsense, is disingenuous, dismissive, and unproven lol.

I'm still re-investing my divi's back into Lloyds, when they come through. Even though I prefer dividends over Buyback's, it doesn't change the fact that Lloyds is dirt cheap.

Feb 2022
"Application has been made to the Financial Conduct Authority and the London Stock Exchange for a block listing of 57,000,000 ordinary shares of 10p each in Lloyds Banking Group plc (the "Company"), comprising 20,000,000 for the Lloyds Banking Group Executive Group Ownership Share Plan 2016 and 37,000,000 shares for the Lloyds Banking Group Deferred Bonus Plan 2021"

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/LLOY/block-listing-of-shares-oldxnpwkbmd3u2z.html

Dec 2021
"Application has been made to the Financial Conduct Authority and the London Stock Exchange for a block listing of 87,000,000 ordinary shares of 10p each in Lloyds Banking Group plc (the "Company"), comprising 44,000,000 shares for the Lloyds Banking Group Share Incentive Plan, 30,000,000 for the Lloyds Banking Group Executive Group Ownership Share Plan 2016 and 13,000,000 shares for the Lloyds Banking Group Deferred Bonus Plan 2008 (together the "Plans")."

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/LLOY/block-listing-of-shares-e2134mbms06b36m.html

Feb21
"Application has been made to the Financial Conduct Authority and the London Stock Exchange for a block listing of 91,000,000 ordinary shares of 10p each in Lloyds Banking Group plc (the "Company"), comprising 75,000,000 shares for the Lloyds Banking Group Share Incentive Plan and 16,000,000 for the Lloyds Banking Group Executive Group Ownership Share Plan 2016 (together the "Plans")."

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/LLOY/block-listing-of-shares-mvu4yjep4rvjqb5.html

"Application has been made to the Financial Conduct Authority and the London Stock Exchange for a block listing of 585,000,000 ordinary shares of 10p each in Lloyds Banking Group plc (the "Company"), for the Lloyds Banking Group Deferred Bonus Plan 2021 (the "Plan"). "

This is what I was talking about when Longterminvestor accused me of talking nonsense. If they do further additional listings, like they did in 2019, they could easily get to a Billion new shares issued.

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/LLOY/block-listing-of-shares-bjrl8lbr0nruzxc.html

I'm not sure what drugs he's on, but he's found a cure for insomnia. I've recently got up, and had to stop reading the overnight posts, as I immediatly started drifting off. Sustained reading may require a heart monitor alarm, as a precaution against falling into a Coma.

"flec
no good taking isolated months over the years, and not all new shares are to do with staff - could be investment conversions (debt issuance's) into ordinary shares"

LTI
You said it was nonsense when I suggested Lloyds could List a Billion new shares a year, I then gave you an example of why I said what I said. You just dismiss anything anyone else says, even when they prove their point.
Is it that you're never wrong?

"'they will' ? a billion new shares issued each year - where did you get that nonsense from."

They could easily do that, depending the share price, and the amount they allocate for sharesaves and bonus awards.

As an example:
Date Shares Issued
Feb 2020 70,000,000
Dec 2019 352,000,000
May 2019 545,000,000
Total 967,000,000

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/LLOY/block-listing-of-shares-7j8ix84re0d4seg.html

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/LLOY/additional-listing-id1gbyp5233vd04.html

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/LLOY/additional-listing-us0bzha77ihjzzu.html

Not quite a Billion, but close.

"Lloyds paid out c£22 billion on PPI, if that amount was spent on buybacks at today's prices just think how many shares would be in issue today?
Today's market cap is c£30 billion, anything is possible."

Indeed, but the market seems to have forgotten that PPI ever happened, and just look for excuses to knock the price.

"For the record, a Halifax saver in its Everyday Saver account saw their interest rate cut to 0.01 per cent in March 2020 following two quick reductions in base rate as lockdown loomed.
Since then, the rate on Everyday Saver has been tickled up by 0.14 percentage points to 0.15 per cent. In contrast, base rate has gone up by 0.9 percentage points."

I have £20,000 in a Halifax everyday saver, and agree with everything you're saying, especially with online offerings like Marcus. If I've looked at it correctly, with Marcus interest rate at 0.9%, I would probably make around £150.00 extra in the Marcus account.
I use the Halifax sharedealing service for holding and purchasing shares, and I can view my shares from my Halifax online banking account. All my payments, bills, etc are done through my Halifax current account, and although £150 may seem like a lot, I don't consider my saving's interest as income. The money we have saved in the Halifax, is purely for use in front running our Bed and ISA strategy over the coming years; Basically top up the ISA's from savings and sell in the share dealing account, once the stock price is above the ISA top up price. I know that many will change accounts for an extra £10 in interest payment, but most probably can't be bothered. I lost interest in bank accounts years ago, pun intended, which is why I now use investments instead. The last time we had a substantial amount in a bank account was 2007/8, when we had £200,000 in a Halifax fixed rate saver offering 6% annual interest; It was squeeky bum time, since the money was tied up as the Halifax started going under; To be fair, I wasn't overly worried, as I figured there was no way the UK Government were going to watch UK savers lose money, although I wouldn't tie that much up in an individual account again.

I still reckon Lloyds would benefit from reducing the number of shares in issue, to around 20 Billion. I realise that I as a shareholder wont benefit initially, but 70 Billion shares in issue is clearly way too many. You say they'll use buybacks to get there, but how long would that take if they're also issuing a Billion new shares a year for share incentive plans?