Member Info for getafgrip

Lots of great news on the way, and very likely results that will be ahead of high expectations!

SentinelOne up 5.59% today as I write. And announces its fiscal second quarter 2022 ended July 31, 2021 after market close on Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Well worth reading this:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/29/autonomy_founder_lynch_extradition_ruling/

I cannot convince myself that all of the various permutations are built into the share price, so that when and if this hits it will prove to be a very big issue.

Interesting that when the windmills are not turning fast enough, the Government lines up an old coal fired power station, due to the high cost of gas!!! Great news for Shell on two fronts.

One of my big concerns came from reading: The Rare Metals War by Guillame Pitron recently. Some of the rare earth metals that are the foundation of the green revolution, involve mining and processing 1200 tonnes of rock to produce just one tonne of one of the rare earth metals. Processing involves extraordinary volumes of water. Vast areas in Africa and China are industrial moonscape wastelands due to this, barely habitable, with toxic lakes thrown in as another consequence.

You mention recycling batteries, but many of the rare earth metals are mixed and turned into alloys that are incredibly difficult to recycle. The Americans have a policy going back decades that forces them to buy American for defence purposes like building the F35 fighter. But manufacturers nervously had to inform the Pentagon, that super-magnets used in it were sourced from China and it would cost billions extra to source and process the metals and manufacture the magnets. So they took the easy solution & China is now a preferred supplier for the American front-line stealth fighter programme! No foreseeable issues there then!

One of the main conclusions of the book is that the greenest energy solution around, with the least consequences for mankind, is to carry on using fossil fuels!

CP - I thought you were on Methane Cells in North Yorkshire!

You are dead right though, we waste so much capital on uncoordinated, wasteful, bone-stupid approaches to major strategic initiatives. Look at our approach to Broadband, the size and shape of tomatoes, when many consider the taste to be of importance!

Does anyone remember the massive overestimates of necessary electricity production capacity in the 70's to meet demand that never materialised! Kielder Water was built to satisfy the massive water demands of Teesside industry - demand that never materialised! Governments are really good at this sort of seat of the pants capital-obliterating extravaganza style of approach to problems! Why co-ordinate anything, or develop cost-effective solutions that will be a source of National pride when we can just throw money away randomly!

It's different strategically to the time when a national network of petrol/diesel filling stations was being set up. Then consolidated down to big hub & supermarket filling stations - Ooops! maybe not looking in to the future sufficiently here.

But, once you accept the necessity of parking next to a lam-post, plugging in, going in to the office and when you come out you are fully charged and stand a fighting chance of getting home, companies need to look at developing a nationally extended spiders-web of charging points, next to where EV's park, especially with a 75% subsidy.

Once BP has taken over a few lamp-posts they will not be available to Shell etc. Parking their tanks on what might have been you lawn. There was a broadly similar scenario years ago with the mobile phone companies. So a bit like persuading mobile phone companies then to jointly develop a network of transmitters, sharing them & giving uniform quality of UK mobile coverage. If it's the same lamp-post, same electricity, they might eventually be forced in to allowing multi-access with say a BP or a Shell key. Then you will actually have competition eating away at the super-profits that companies would aim for once there are enough EV's on the road.

I think that "if" that market was rigged coming up to the FTSE 250 data gathering point, the investment banks and institutions would need significant numbers of Dark shares to trade between each other and manipulate the price to what level they wanted - the magic £6.20p. Plus a few extra shares just in case shares they were needed. I think this may have had the effect of narrowing the number of shares in the post IPO market & effectively taking it to an artificially created high of £7.85p on the 30th July much quicker than anyone expected.

Following the FTSE 250 data collection point at COP yesterday, this leaves an overhang of shares that the investment banks & institutions are holding loosely without any commitment, that will probably be released judiciously into the market. Not flattening the Dark share price, but putting a break on it for a time. Also they will not be over enthusiastic about the share price suddenly racing upwards as it would tend to give the game away. In my view they are still largely controlling the share price, particularly with the waiving of lock-ins.

Great Crowdstrike figures, but SP dips after a brilliant rise!

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/crowdstrike-stock-slips-following-earnings-beat-hiked-outlook-11630441246

Spot on Sanchez - it will be like a Dark rat up a drainpipe tomorrow!

Come on, you are witnessing the gravitational pull of free market economics - in action when it is needed! That is when the FTSE 250 capitalisation/value sweep is finally concluded after COP prices today. The Russian Stock Exchange works in exactly the same way - the only market dynamic is simply whatever Putin says it will be!

BR - Kape Technologies looks really interesting, but I definitely intend to look more at both companies now so thank you for these suggestions. In truth I never look at spreading risk across a sector or across a range of sectors. I just go for excellence, prospects, market dynamics & live with the risk. Looking at my portfolio though it is definitely spread across sectors, but this was not my intention in buying the shares involved.

Eventually bought SentinelOne at $52, so very late to the party. I had wanted to buy into an ISA with the Halifax, but they went up from $40 while I was waiting for them to make a market in them! They announced opening a Czech Republic office and wemt up, they announced integration agreements with Cloudflare and Zsxaler and went up, they seem to do no wrong at the moment. Not into Crowdstrike yet, but they have risen a long way. I guess like high quality shares such as Square and Shopify they will soften after stunning results.

I bailed out of Dark entirely, but have bought back at£5.88p. The final FTSE 250 sweep is completed at COP tomorrow, then crowdstrike results, then SentinelOne results, then Dark results, then the Dark FTSE 250 announcement! Surely after tomorrow they will start to track up to challenge their high of £7.85p on the 30th July! My concern is that if the shares have been seriously manipulated, there may be a significant overhang of loosely held shares gradually released into the market, particularly with the waiving of the lock-ins!

Looks like this will bolster the OP in the gap between now and the onset of Winter. The colder it is on the East coast of the States this Winter the better it will be for the Oil Super-Majors! So its looking like great 3rd Quarter results, particularly with gas prices going into orbit.

Yes, I owe thanks to you regularly mentioning them for buying SentinelOne & hopefully going on to buy Crowdstrike, which will give me my own little "self-build" cyber defence ETF.

L - that is our biggest frustration, but probably our biggest advantage as investors. It is all looking too much like deja vue for us! A great time to borrow low & buy a fixed asset like a property that is going up by much more than average incomes each year (can this go on much longer), but each pound it is worth is declining in value with our persistent devaluation of the pound. But if you have a monster debt, why not make it worth less simply by devaluing the currency!

The SP compared to events is a remarkable series of convenient coincidences, unless you consider that there is a possibility that the backing investment banks & institutions might be tempted by a "deal" to lower the SP by sales between themselves, and in return the lock-in on sales is waived!

Yes L, its a good example - with the Bank of england base rate at 0.1% (if a company could secure this sort of rate) & Statista forecasting RPI of 2.5% (rather than CPI) we are looking at real term interest rates of in excess of 1.5% right now if a company could borrow at 1% say. I think Shell would probably be borrowing around 1.50-2% though (depending on a host of factors), but the real term interest rate still applies.

Statista has an estimate of inflation falling to 2% next year, but I think they are very wrong.

Demand pull and cost push inflation are in evidence now and gaining increasing traction. In the UK all builders supplies went up 10% recently, pretty well across the board. Demand occupations are demanding more money. Vacancies have reached an all time high. Distribution costs are rising dramatically, exascerbated by an acute driver shortage. There are staffing shortages in the hospitality & fresh produce industries. The list is endless and points in only one direction!

We are printing money like there is no tomorrow! The US government has been printing massive amounts of new money. On January 6, 2020, the US Federal Reserve had around $4 trillion dollars. On January 4, 2021, the number increased to $6.7 trillion dollars.

https://techstartups.com/2021/05/22/40-us-dollars-existence-printed-last-12-months-america-repeating-mistake-1921-weimar-germany/

Extract from the above:

40% of US dollars in existence were printed in the last 12 months: Is America repeating the same mistake of 1921 Weimar Germany?

So if a company can borrow at current rates, and put the money to high return use, whilst keeping their credit rating, maybe they should. Let's face it if you have a monster debt, & as a country we have, what is one of the most readily available tools to reduce it, particularly if there are sensitivities surrrouning increasing interest rates too sharply - inflation! I think its risky, but relatively sensible to increase inflation to reduce a big fixed debt, and Governments are not bothered because the next administration or our children ultimately pay whatever the bill. Make no mistake it is here and Government's are encouraging it!

You are right to highlight this. It is stunning & before the onset of winter as well.

I'm not sure about Prelude though. I think it;s biggest contribution to the Shell balance sheet, will come from an irate group of disgruntled shareholders sinking it & turning it into a underwater eco-marine park!

Ed1 - Another factor in this discussion will increasingly be the effects of inflation as it is definitely back in the system.
As a company, if you borrow significant sums of money at say 2% & obtain a return of 4% on its investment in the company, everything looks good, but not if the prevailing rate of inflation is say 6%. In which case you would have been better considering whether it was worthwhile taking out a low priced loan in the first place.

Also the odd companies these days that think about building their reserves for a rainy day, might be tempted to borrow cheap money & bolster their reserves. However whilst it sits in the treasury doing nothing 6% of it's value disappears every year due to inflation.

Add to all of this the question of where are interest rates going next & most people would agree the answer is upwards (as opposed to turning negative), as they are one of the only curbs to inflationary pressures.

Company borrowing is about a complex balance risk & return as people have said. And a necessary evil in most takeover situations or when say a Panicdemic hits!