He actually holds a shade over 29% GS
And no RNS re buyback today (re Tuesday) either. Which suggests that PAYS is happy with the sp around the level it is at present. It will be interesting to see if the threat of more share purchases if the sp falls a bit from here will be enough to support it. GS
@ Technie - holiday was utterly fab. First time in India and certainly not the last. I am afraid I use Sharepad which does not seem to be able to produce a link that I can post. As for the low on 13th December I could not buy any shares below 270 (I got some there) but I was able to place a couple of September 17 bets one at 241 and one at 254. Don't know if any of that helps establish a low. FWIW (because I am a rank amateur) I have been using the daily close rather than candles so for me the low was 305.xx On that basis there has been a clear rising support line between 16th December and 8th February and using the closing sp the upper resistance line is pretty clear between 19th January and 10th Feb at which point it was broken so I am guessing that will become support going forward. What is also interesting to me is that assuming the sp does not collapse, the 200 day MA must inevitably turn up (the 200 day sp's dropping off are all in the 370's and are being replaced by sp's in the 400-410's. As the 20 day average is already rising and will do so more steeply than the 200 it looks as if we are about to see one of those golden cross thingies.... All that bothers me is that I do not see any financial surprises on results day. We know it all already. @Wolf is keen on the M&A angle but I have spent enough of my life close to M&A to know that these things do not run to a timetable and tend to go wrong at the last minute with awful regularity. I have no doubt PAYS is trying but if there is no announcement before or on whichever day they announce their final results then I suspect the sp will tank. Slight schizophrenia as I am invested but am also keeping some powder dry for that eventuality as there may be some cheap stock to be picked up then. Feel free to shoot me down - I ought to be an easy target. GS
With John Murphy under one arm and a pencil and ruler under the other I think we have been trading in a rising channel for the last 3-4 weeks. Today's sp rise looks to me like a break out from that, so I am guessing that we will see a higher support level establishing if there is no retrace in the next couple of days. Would any seasoned chartists care to comment (please be gentle)? And speculate as to where this may end? GS
Interesting that for the first time in weeks, there was no RNS today regarding the buyback of shares. Given that the sp moved up nicely on Friday, I hope the time for support is passing. If so, I cheerfully admit to being wrong in my read, although my new found charting skills.... ;-) caused me to buy a fair few back over the last couple of weeks. (See next post). GS
Reasonable volumes so far and it might just close above 400 today. Fingers crossed. GS
Very good news. My biggest reservation about XLM has always been the size of the WELP shareholding. I also have never believed that our CEO did not have huge influence over the way it voted/behaved. The reduction in that stake effectively opens the company up and I am sure we will see an improvement in the sp as a result. Maybe not today, but with the yield where it is, I am very happy to wait and add in the dips if there are any. GLA GS
@AL75 - Well said. GS
@ Wolf. Your level of confidence in PAYS full year results would not have been significantly different a few days before the short attack. Say you took out a Sept 17 buy contract at about 367-368p. Let's say you went in at £500 a point. Looked like the sp was recovering. It was. And then the shorts hit. When the sp was down over 100p from your entry and with you facing a margin call of over £50k - which you did not have in cash - you either baled or sold elsewhere to meet the call. Your certainty will probably be proved right (barring accounting errors - which happen BTW) but you still lost heavily. An extreme example, but anyone who says that they can predict with a high degree of certainty AND timing (which you imply) is riding for a fall. This is why the best fund managers (just look at Woodford and UTW or CPI) with better brains, information and tools than you or I, make huge mistakes. You, for example have been predicting with a high level of confidence that PAYS will do something in the M&A arena. I am sure they will one day, but so far you have been wrong. Here is another. I don't usually trawl back through posts, but I remembered roughly when it happened and I am on holiday and relaxing by the pool. These are your words on 6th October - when AEK's short had reached 3.01% "- hard to say what AEK logic is/was - clearly flawed though - losses are probably in the £10+mn mark - ouch !!!!. It does seem to have classic "double down" gambler traits - it looks to me that as sp continued to rise AEK increased the short to try and turn the tide - finger in the dyke stuff..denial as to making a mistake on initial trade." Ouch - "clearly flawed"?. The sp was about 450 then. GS
There is a difference between the timing of takeovers and the behaviour of a share in price terms. Shares go up when demand exceeds supply and vice versa. Takeovers are completely different. And I am not a short conspiracy theorist. They have better things to do than close a position and pretend they have not. As for a deal being close - it has either reached a price sensitive (reasonable probability it will happen = RNS) or it has not. Clearly, so far it has not. GS
History usually does not repeat itself. Although it might, if as per the last results RNS the full year results are indeed to be released on 7th March 2016... More seriously, the shorters are probably brighter, certainly have better tools and are likely to be better informed than anyone on this bb. They have got it right so far and I think you bet against them at your peril. GS
Well, I am buying - albeit carefully. But I cannot see a medium term downside at a price of less than £1. Seems silly cheap. GS
@Technie - excellent holiday - only on page 297 of John Murphy (many thanks again @jh) so only know half... :-) It was beginning to look yesterday as if the sp was turning to my fundamentalist eye and my elementary chart reading is the same as yours so I added very gently. Today is encouraging so far. However gently is the operative word as still nervous about the shorts and what happens to the sp if the results announcement in early March does no more than confirm what we already know... which will be disappointing to an expectant market. GL GS
@jh - very many thanks indeed. That was a real kindness posting the pdf links. Unfortunately I now really have no excuse but to start reading.... hopefully it will help improve the quality of my judgement - if not my posting. GS
You will get different answers from different posters. I suspect the technicalists(?) out there may point to some resistance around 360. In my case it is the price below which the argument in favour of buying stock looks overwhelming. I won't buy if it free falls past 360, but if the sp gets there and then sticks, I will tempted. Although as I already own enough here - despite someone's post to the contrary - there is no hurry on my part. Just greed. GL GS
@Technie - 3 weeks in India... I will surely find time for at least one of them while her indoors does her yoga :-) Many thanks for the suggestions. Here is to huge profits while I am away - ambitious Limits in place.... GS
@Technie - 1. Most important = off on holiday - can you recommend an easy book on technical analysis? 2. I believe the fundamentals here marry well with your charting and I would be completely unsurprised if we see significant new highs here quite soon.Trading seems strong, there have been huge management share purchases and the undercurrent of ID concerns worldwide must be music to PHTM's ears. Feels a bit like a perfect storm - in a good way. GL GS
@Technie - it will be great to have your input here. Interested to see how your chart reading stacks up against the fundamentals (which are quite hard to read right now I think). PHTM ought to be a money printing machine. Margins are fabulous, barriers to entry are deceptively strong and the international push for better ID (perhaps UK excepted) must be in its favour. I have been here for a while - the yield is good (sometimes excellent) and it has been one of the mainstays of my SIPP over the past few years. With that background I don't have much to say on this bb, but happy to fill you in/answer questions if you want. GL GS
@jh - thank you @frisby - And to think that back in December you thanked me for my "wise words'. I see you are not a frequent poster here, but if you check my posting history you will find that I have always tried to be clear about what I thought and why. I went to see LalaLand last night and thought it a complete waste of time. The person I was with thought it was brilliant. We agreed to differ. So you and I differ over the update, and there is no point in arguing over it - the market seems to be judging it and DESPITE the buyback the sp is falling. If you had bought as a result of that update you would be nearly 10% under water today. QED. However as far as long term holding is concerned - I have been here in some numbers since 2007. I have no regrets over that and I have no intention to sell my "core" holding any time soon. I suspect I have held more shares for a lot longer than you. Your biggest blunder is to think that my interests should be aligned with yours or anyone else's. My sole intent here is to make money. Our interests can only possibly be aligned if that is your aim also. And even then you may have a long view while I have a short one. I post on this bb and a couple of others because I think there are other sensible investors with views that should be considered. I trade my (hopefully sensible) views for theirs. But I make my own decisions. So please make absolutely no mistake. If one of us makes money at the other's expense - that is just the way it goes. It would simply be the result of a difference of opinion. GS
Maybe - who am I to argue with RB? But here goes anyway. 1. It was NOT a great update. The increases over previous guidance were immaterial and probably came out of the CFO's conjuring. 2. Continuing to implement a "bold" m&a strategy does not mean an acquisition is imminent. Wolf amongst others would like it to be (so would I) but it has been touted for many months without anything happening. So it will happen when it happens, but that may not be this year. 3. PAYS has developed a rep as a trader's share. Buy before an announcement, sell on the news. A number of posters here have made a lot of money doing just that. I freely admit to being one as I both hold PAYS longterm and trade it when I think it makes sense. I had wanted 425p+ but ended up selling hard at 405-408 because the update was weak. 4. Make no mistake, the shorts are still in and they are active - given the ongoing buyback the fall in sp from an intraday high of about 410p on 12th Jan to the 380p now is surely indication that they continue to spook other investors and are generating sells that either help them increase profit or allow them to close easily. I am relaxed about being wrong, but I still think the sp will fall to the 360's. So I won't add any here until it does or until there is a clear turnaround in sentiment. GLA GS