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RDSB should surpass the £15.18p reached on the 12th March 2021 over the next 3-days, simply because we are nearly 5-months further into managing the Panicdemic. Investors and Institutions seeking Income will see to this & the economies of the developed world look to be turning the corner.

Hopefully, BE, positivity will become infectious, with any luck it will start to counteract the downward spiral, we are all doomed, unsubstantiated, relentless negativity of some that pervades this blog, generally skewing views & destroying the rational debate it replaces.

nlinden - I have been getting more and more frustrated with the Halifax ISA & share dealing service. I reached breaking point finally when they did not make a market in SentinelOne on the US market, and I watched the share track p from $40 to $50. Also transferring my cash from a share account with them took a full 3-days! Enough was enough - opened an IG account, funded it and bought SentinelOne in around 15-minutes. Happy days so far.

A multi-faceted prospective outcome, that will or may occur over widely varying estimates of time, measured in years, cannot be accurately absorbed into the current share price. The widely varying and impacting outcomes can only be guessed at. If ML is extradited then he will face a range of most probably punitive outcomes, or be exonerated altogether. Estimates of the prospective damage to Darktrace, built into the share-price, can only mitigate what ultimately happens not account for it with any degree of exactitude.

In terms of basic research on the RDS fortunes/prospects barometer you cannot beat driving past a couple of filling stations. I've spent too much of my life being unhappy with petrol price rises. Now it just brings a smile to my face!

After reading "Putin's People" by Catherine Belton, FT Russia correspondent, I really fancy a reinforced desk in a nuclear bunker as far away from Russia and China as you can get!

The Americans have very short memories:

International Signal and Control (ISC) was a U.S. defense contractor based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania that was involved in the manufacture of electronic missile subassemblies, navigation components, fuses, power supplies for proximity fuzes, and grenade technology.

By the 1980s, ISC's business primarily consisted of illegal arms sales started at the behest of various US clandestine organizations. On paper the company looked to be extremely profitable on sales of high-priced "above board" items, but in fact these profits were essentially non-existent. After the sale of the company to Ferranti in 1987 all illegal sales ended immediately, leaving the company with no obvious cash flow, and the merger led to the ultimate collapse of Ferranti in 1991.

Mike Lynch is extremely likely to be extradited to the USA to face trial. It is also extremely likely that he will face the same fate there as Autonomy's finance director. It is also extremely likely that investors will still be saying it's all in the share price! The Americans might even set up a plea bargain for him, bearing in mind that he is one of the most influential cyber-entrepreneurs of his generation. If the British Government was serious in wanting to combat cyber threats from Russia and China, why will they not step in!

I can hardly wait to see the tensions in the Middle-East Chart & its predictions for the oil price!

Looks like it's only 2% of their business. Roo argue that it would take a disproportionate amount of resources to build the business further in Spain. There are plenty of other countries in which to build market share, but disappointing news all the same. It really depends whether other countries join the bandwagon & put pressure on the Roo business model. Bring on the drones.

I've seen the same type of criticism on other LSE blogs. As you say a wheel seems to have come off recently, as they used to be good for summary information on companies etc. Now they don't even seem to have great coverage & if you are looking for information on international companies - forget it! One of my friends has kept trying to get me to open an IG account & I think that is going to be my direction of broker travel as the Halifax is nothing to shout about either!

The following should provide clarity from the Shell Global Site:

Royal Dutch Shell plc (the ‘company’) announced the commencement of share buybacks on July 29, 2021 as part of its move to the next phase of its capital allocation framework, which includes shareholder distributions in a range of 20-30% of CFFO. The company has entered into an irrevocable, non-discretionary arrangement with a broker to enable the purchase of A ordinary shares and/or B ordinary shares for a period up to and including December 29, 2021. The aggregate maximum consideration for the purchase of A ordinary shares and/or B ordinary shares is $2.0 billion, of which it is expected that more than half will have been completed by the company’s Q3 results, which are scheduled for October 28, 2021. The purpose of the share buybacks is to reduce the issued share capital of the company. All shares repurchased as part of this arrangement will be cancelled.

The maximum number of ordinary shares which may be purchased by the company under this arrangement is 780,000,000, which is the maximum pursuant to the authority granted by shareholders at the company's 2021 Annual General Meeting . The shares bought back under this arrangement will be whichever of the A ordinary shares and/or B ordinary shares traded in the GBP denomination is economically the least expensive on a given trading day.

I disagree that an input of this magnitude, defined as being completed within only 5-months, will have little impact on the RDSB share price. Obviously we can all do the maths in that it only impacts 2% of Shell shares etc, but share buy-backs are a completely legal support mechanism for Shell's share price. Char is probably right in saying that the Shell shares will not see £14 again, but for the wrong reasons!

HL are dreadful. I occasionally check information through their site and it is very unreliable. dated and inconsistent. For instant share prices I tend to use Google or Yahoo.

Overman -No, I was onboard virtually from the beginning, buying the majority of my shares in Dark at £3.20p, but buying 2 x after this. Came out a few days ago five figures ahead & switched to SentinelOne. I regard Shorts as one of the derivative inputs that turn the Markets into an irrational lottery, or casino & never touch them on principle. Nothing stated on an obscure blog like LSE is going to shift market sentiment anyway.

This Reuters article goes back to February, but explains the concerns relating to Dark very well - investors will continue to say that these concerns are all in the share price. Are they really!!!!:

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2AH1D4

Some interesting headline figures from Yahoo, for anyone who is optimistically inclined, and wants to revel in today's great news!

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shell-rds-q2-earnings-beat-090809565.html

Pokerchips:
Unfortunately the Circus leaves town when RDSB goes extremely predictably north of £14/share! I understand the Clowns are undergoing free counselling sessions!

I was totally committed to being a long-term holder of Dark shares. Cyber security will likely be one of the big themes of the coming years. At some point though there will be a focus on the companies in the sector best exploiting the opportunity & building the fundamentals - not least of which is profit.

My analysis of the Mike Lynch situation however prompted me to bail out of Dark altogether. Experience over the years has taught me not to let a 5-minute, 5-figure gain go. However I looked at it though the Mike Lynch affair, until it is resolved, it is a sword of Damocles hanging over the company, prospective sales, and the Dark share performance.

The shares do appear to be in an overdue consolidation phase. I am very keen on them still and may buy back, once Mike Lynch & his extradition and prospective trial are history, and hopefully once i have a 30-day gap from last owning Dark shares so that I can go for a new capital gains allowance for 2022, therefore committing not to sell until then.

Essentially, if there is a storm, I will not go out and stand in the middle of a field, I will seek shelter until it blows over. Is the Mike Lynch affair a storm or just a shower though?

It is difficult to export reluctant billionaires.

In my view the Dark storm clouds will remain until this issue is resolved. Mike Lynch's former finance director is already banged up in the States, which is a strong indication of what lies in prospect for him. Breaking rocks in the hot sun is not very enticing.

I know full well that it is not directly comparable as a company & that there were vastly different issues at play, but the punitive and aggressive treatment of BP by the American courts should be borne in mind. They would happily have destroyed BP, and very nearly did! At the time of the Deepwater Horizon accident around a decade ago BP was capitalised at $180 billion. The cost to BP has exceeded $71 billion. Divestments are reliably indicated as being somewhere north of $40 billion. Effectively it is now $71 billion smaller than it would have been, without counting the lost return on capital employed on these huge payments! Just a thought.

All I am saying is that the Mike Lynch affair is not going to go away, or be resolved anytime soon. The impact on the SP does however make it more vulnerable to a takeover. If you are having difficulty cleaning up your own act, and you appear to be weakened by this, sometimes another company steps in and does it for you.

https://www.verdict.co.uk/darktrace-ipo-links-to-alleged-fraudster-mike-lynch-tarnish-float/

An excellent summary as you would expect from Reuters. The best thing for all concerned would be for the Mike Lynch issues to be resolved speedily, but the Autonomy sale has been under legal scrutiny for a decade now. Ultimately he will most likely appeal the Home Secretary's decision if necessary.

If his £4.5m of shares are shaken out they may go to a stake-builder or prospective bidder, but money-laundering charges or not ties need to be severed with Mike Lynch anyway. Not least because if there is any bid going to come in for Dark there is a 95% chance that it will be from the other side of the Atlantic. US investors will be wary of buying in to, or supporting a bid for Dark unless the Hewlett Packard/Autonomy issues are resolved first.

Absolutely. Anyone in danger of losing $50m is going to be all ears when the cyber defence company rep contacts them. Just recently you would not even need to do any cold marketing, the opportunities are simply queuing up!