Member Info for Grayling

Very resilient today in a falling market!

Never sell Shell!

So what? It cannot keep rising exponentially for ever. The update was clearly largely priced in before the announcement and lets see how the US expansion, which is just beginning, works out in terms of sales. There is bound to be profit taking on the way up, particularly by those who invested early and now have a disproportionate holding in FEVR and feel the need to re-balance their portfolio's.

Hats off to the CWU if they have managed to forestall the end of the DB pension scheme. I know this is being watched with interest by others in a similar position. It will be interesting to see how much influence the details of the agreement reached between management and union have on other ongoing negotiations.

Nonsense. I have seen this happen just as frequently in FTSE 100 companies. It is classic buy on the rumour sell on the news with shorter-term traders banking profits and long term holders tempted out in the hope of buying back in cheaper. Nice if you can afford to trade the volumes required to turn a decent profit or have the guts to risk coming out and timing the market right.

Having thought I had missed the boat buying in at �15 this is now in my "forever" fund. This company will either continue to grow or be taken out by a bigger player. Either way I see little downside in the long term, but would expect a degree of volatility as per usual. Based on these numbers I would also expect a modest uplift in the dividend.

If you take every bit of adverse news that hard maybe investing in shares is not for you? The comparisons with CLLN both by business model and management style/competence is also patently absurd.

Full details here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/01/22/national-grid-faces-20m-fine-us-storm-blackouts/

Sorry to bring bad news but according to the Torygraph National Grid are about to be stung by a $20M fine over their inadequate response to the recent storm outages in Massachusetts. Overall US income is also set to fall as after recent negotiations with the New York regulator where NG requested a revenue increase of $317m for the 2018/19 financial year but was forced to reduce this request to $206m.

Ahh but the government could then be tempted to make up the shortfall in the tax take by by increasing the point of consumption tax rate on online betting. Anyway who is really surprised that shares in Ladboke's/Coral and WH are so volatile? If this continues, then the regulatory threat to this lot will be greater than that hanging over the privatised utilities. Perhaps then even Centrica will be seen as a relative bargain!

business and it seems to me to be an ideal hedge against domestic headwinds. keep up the good work and this could develop into a very interesting proposition.

Gerry, sorry to hear you got burnt by the CLLN collapse. Hopefully not too badly if you are spread as thinly as I am over 20 or so stocks. Not sure about Questor and whether anyone actually looks retrospectively at his BUY/SELL/HOLD notes to see if they actually make (or save) investors any cash. I am full invested as of now and just reinvest my dividends. If I had to choose another share to put money into at the moment I am not sure it would be an easy choice. I would certainly avoid retail and any of the remaining outsourcers (Mitie, Capita, Serco etc.). Good luck and RR up nicely today!

Popped up on Newsnight to assure the word that outsourcing as a concept is not tainted by the CLLN failure. I made good money for several years out of Cable & Wireless under his tenure and so have no complaints about him. However, would I invest in Mitie, Interserve, Serco or G4S? Not a chance!

Hi Gerry, I see from your posts that we still share many portfolio shares in common (NG,VOD,GSK,CNA). Hope all is well with these long term and that they make a valuable contribution your pension. I recently bought into PRU and SSE and so far happier with the former than the latter! Best (fairly) recent buy has been Fevertree when it hit �15. I took Warren Buffetts advice to not be put off investing in companies whose share price has rocketed if you think the company is intrinsically very sound (his examples were IBM and Apple). I also made the decision on the back of the amount of the stuff we and everyone else I know consumes and still think it has legs. Were you ever or still in RR?

Miken. I do worry that the new IFRS standards will make the numbers look less attractive at next reporting and agree it is good that RR are presenting the figures with and without the application of the new accounting standard. It is noteworthy that although IFRS has been widely adopted, the major exception is the USA which has constantly criticised the system and refused to implement it so our big US competitors are not shackled to the rules about booking profit in advance, based on income from their equivalent of totalcare.

That analysis is a tad harsh given that RR was sitting on three successive profit warnings and an SP of only 536p just less than 2 years ago! I think you are a glass half empty sort. Mr East has steered the ship away from the rocks and I have no reason to doubt that he will continue to do so. You could say the recent flattening out in the SP represents a buying opportunity and the only thing holding this back at present is the poor dividend yield.

Be prepared for a drop if a positive outcome is announced "buy on the rumour, sell on the news"

CLLN was effectively a relatively unsophisticated Ponzi scheme in which management expanded and built a large industrial conglomerate, which only existed on the back of an ability to enter into future contracts of marginal worth across an ever increasing range of activities. Management then shamefully enriched themselves at the expense of the taxpayer, their hapless employees and investors. No different to Northern Rock's reliance on being able to write new mortgage business to disguise the losses on the loans already on the books. The city has known this for a couple of years now, but our bunch of rank incompetents in government remained blindly loyal to the Tory supporting chairman and his (now very rich ) cronies. The government may not have formally bailed out Carillion, but the cost to the taxpayer will in the end be enormous. The real costs of providing the services outsourced to CLLN will now have to be borne by government and that is without the extra cost in benefits to the large number of CLLN employees working on private sector projects and those of the many subcontractors and suppliers, many of whom will shortly be heading for the dole office. Perhaps the greatest irony in the cosy relationship between the establishment and this company is that 2017, Carillion received the Queen's Award for sustainability!

Not so concerned about that as it should be a net positive if disposal goes ahead. The failure of the A380 however is a different matter .............

Airbus has admitted that it may have to stop making the A380 super jumbo jet unless it wins more orders. The minimum number of A380s that Airbus is prepared to build is six per year. "If we can't work out a deal with Emirates I think there is no choice but to shut down the program." Not great news for RR as the Trent 900 is one of the engine options.