Member Info for JohnLewis79

Twitchy investors will be keeping an eye on Oct as stock prices and the indices cont at record levels. Remember 1987 when the rationale was that excess 'liquidity' would hold prices up (the greater-fool theory) or the cash of others would prop up the Dow trading at 2700, back stopped by the Nikkei trading at an absurd 50+ × earnings. Thus the Dow at c 20 x was deemed safe. Such rationales had not kept previous rallies from coming to abrupt nasty endings. I remember reading that Money Managers had abandoned valuing stocks for these were mere casino chips to be thrown at IBM, GM, Ford etc...buy the market. I think this was when computerised trading took hold and stock index futures were all the rage as these were highly liquid should you want out in times of crisis (sell futures as prices declined). As investors soon found out the door slammed shut on Black Monday the DJ plunging 500 points or c 23%. As ever the market corrected the aberration of Oct and investors had regained their poise and losses by 1988 close. Many wondered what had changed to the intrinsic value of their company stocks? The answer in most cases was not a lot, yet in many cases more than 25% of company values had vanished in less than a week. Many thought something was seriously wrong with markets. We know here that no market panic or crash is needed to decimate our co value, we do it slowly but surely, drip feeding the pain. Something like 90% of the fruits of a generations work has disappeared. As Oct nears I'm becoming very nervous for if the mrkt in good times can near wipe us off the map, what odds we can survive another fit of investors manic depressive gyrations? If we're on the 'random walk' of stock prices do you want to be on the journey or ......stop the market I wanna get off!

Bloke wandered over to a fellow with a rather nasty looking Alsatian, he looked at the dog rather tentatively and said " he looks a mean fellow does your dog bite?" The bloke said "Nope." So he reached down to pet him and the dog lunged at him nearly taking his hand off. "Jeez man I thought you said your dog don't bite" The bloke said " ain't my dawg".....so the moral is... "ask the right bloody question." As lth of Sphere are we asking the right questions?

Mrkt cap now dropped to c £8.4m and that's after some £60m+ being raised by investors to sink into this bottomless well. Outside of going bust, which we pretty much have been on three occasions...and had it not been for the misguided benevolence of investors, we must rank as one of the top 20 value destructing shares ever, a fixture of the 90% club for a year or more now. You would think the bod have a lot to answer for as stewards of our ever diminishing cash reserves but apparantly not as once again the begging bowl is being handed round to keep us afloat. Nobody following the last funding envisaged the precarious position we find ourselves in. I certainly didn't and regretfully ignored what the market was saying, funnily enough since day one of the IPO. Well a fool and his money and all that....or as I prefer to say "in life you must take the bitter with the sour." I wouldn't categorise our position as a turnaround one, they rarely turn in my experience, more of a SNAFU type which might turn......

Underperforming the All Share ytd ain't too clever but heh so am I!

As long as I don't buy it might....a very very big might!

Bloody hell....Woodford's involved in another disaster (Utilitywise)!!

News service 'up the pictures' this morning?

I have not worked out my probable opportunity (loss) invested here but let's take the All Aim index which was c 670 when i bought into Sphere and has risen not far short of 50% since then. Sphere has gone the other way falling c 80%. For sure there would not have been any guarantee I'd have picked a 'goodun' and made money but assuming I was breaking even I'd be financially a lot better off. I can only say had I invested in one of my other stocks I would be c 45% UP on what I bunged in here! I guess that's what you call compounding a loss!

No Co specific news the shares had a boost in vols & bargains on CE speculation to 805k & 21. Opened at 9.50 & closed at 10.25. Two notable deals a 300k buy at 10.375 & 200k sell at 10.00. Other than those it was the summer blues in the market the ftse at 6790 & AIM at 768 and currencies £$ 1.30 / £€ 1.79. The BofE cut rates 1/4%. to 1/4%. My personal holding was showing a 44% loss on gross. I have since added and made my position worse. Very clever of me! Have a good wk/end all.

I'd have to say I'm reasonably content with the volumes this wk (sub 200k atm) as lth are entrenched in their positions. I have changed my mind on this matter as I now consider that 'intrinsic value' ( net worth far exceeds mrkt cap) as my guideline. Do I have any evidence to substantiate that? No i do not. But does the market? Are they any better informed than myself and other pis? Maybe, I'm betting not. So this is pretty much a 360 degree turnabout for me to fall into the no vol trading camp. Might keep the Barrow boys on their toes throwing them a curve ball now and again! I/We need some figs so we can evaluate our prospects here. It's easy enough to speculate down the road a touch but some concrete evidence wouldn't go amiss before Sept.

I did say if I liked the nos.....they would have to be a lot better than what we have been fed to date.

I dunno I must be a simpleton or something akin as if I had £10m to lend Sphere I reckon I could get the deal done in tops 10 minutes. How so? I'd ask a few simple questions. i) What are the sales current & projected? ii) What is the GP or forecast loss? iii) What are the expenses? iv) What's in stock? v) Debts if any? Pretty much it and if I liked the answers they'd get the money. It could be done on a D4E or cash back which should not take much longer to arrange. Speed is of the essence. Any more delays will see the stock testing 5. Should we receive let's say £7m with cash on hand we should have c £10m and as we know the market views anything positive as a negative as far as Sphere is concerned...we will probably be valued less than cash. If you think P has a future beyond 17/18 this must be one of WB's soggy cigar butts that has a lot more puffs in it!

We know that generally speaking averaging down... is considered a no no as an investment strategy. Better to cut your losses at once and move on. Well perhaps but don't tell that to WB probably the bigest average downer of the lot. I give you just two examples, Washington Post ($27 to $20) and Affiliated which he bought on 107 days from $10 to $5 a share. He made a ton of money on both bought in the dog days of 1973/4 the US economy in recession and stocks completely out of favour. Whether my piddly av downing here bears me a similar result I don't know but you'd have to think WB's choice of stocks to follow down would be way superior to mine, they at least had assets even if of the depressed sort! Of course the major difference is he averages down during times of economic recessions (why buy stocks?) I average down in times of buoyant markets...when he will be averaging up and getting richer and richer. Still at least I'm eating my own cooking!

I really wonder that people whose grasp of the English language is near zero should be investing in the arcane world of the stock market. Here's a verbatim example: ....shorts are they borrow shares sell them the buy them back once they drop the profit from the spread

Don't sign up for anything. You will spend your life deleting rubbish you never wanted. I get about 20-30 a day sent to me none of which I have the slightest intention of ever reading. Even BBC's catch up service requires you to sign up with a password before you can watch. I deleted that double quick I can tell you. F'em.

No doubt in my mind that companies that focus on short term results or quick stock market results will attract shareholders who focus on the same factors. This imo leads to cynicism from investors and ultimately from the investment community at large. Pis (myself included) seek stocks with high turnover or trading characteristics in the belief that this will produce better than average sp's....it dont! Don't believe me? Check out the croupier at any casino he's the one raking in the cash or in stock market terms the 'liquidity'. So churning of shareholders 'old for new' is seen as progressive when patently it cannot be. I'm sure Sphere would prefer holders to remain year after year (as long as the service is good) making for a stable shareholder base, one of very low turnover who understands the operation and shares managements expectations. Whether this is achievable among pis is unknown due to short term speculation etc... but ideally anything above 80% stability would be very very good in a large Co but poor in a smaller outfit. As ever it's a two- way- play and in large part companies get the type of holder they seek and deserve if they focus on any of the aforementioned. Attracting the 'right sort' of shareholders (rational & emotionally stable) heh heh heh.... is nearly as important as retaining talented individuals to work for you. Whether boards give this a seconds consideration in this day and age i don't know as pis are being marginalised year on year and are rarely attracted to companies who dilute existing owners on a regular basis. That is our cross to bear here for every % you owned back in the IPO days you would most likely own less despite the Co assets improving. I suppose getting your average pis to think and act like an owner is no cinch when bods often release conflicting information but ultimately that surely is the goal. Focussing on the results and not fixated by the sp would be a start. A good morning to all rational long- termers residing here!

Client: "Thanks for putting me in that Sphere stock at 5. I hear it's gone up to 10." Broker: " Yes and that's just the beginning. In fact the company is doing so well now that it's an even better bet at 10 than it was when you first bought" Client: " Damn, I knew I shudda waited!"

.....there is no one more important to us than the shareholder of limited means who trusts us with a substantial portion of his or her savings. As I run the comany day-to-day that is the shareholder whose image is in my mind..... (WB) At the last count there were 250K holders of BRK (A) & Baby BERK shares. Not all are small holders...Many years ago a chart was issued of selected stocks showing the average holding period of freely traded shares. Heres a few of well known US Company's. AMAZON.COM (7 days).DELL (4 months). MICROSOFT (6months). IBM (14months). COCA COLA (26months) and BERK (180 months) I very much doubt any co comes anywhere near BERK loyal shareholders who consider themselves 'partners' not 'patsies'. I wonder why?

Latest on Acacia Mining the Tanz Govt now say they owe $190BN!! Blimey the GDP of the country ain't worth a 1/3 of that. The shares fell another 48 today. Don't know about you but I'm getting twitchy re companies trading in African countries. I guess Zam is different but we have fallen c 50% in a short space of time. That's telling us something.

Stories are legion of early investors in Buffet partnerships (they believed in him) parlaying thousands of $ into a million, no make that many millions, no make that hundreds of millions....a $10k investment in the '50's was worth over $400m by the late '70's and a single share in BRKSH could buy you a handsome house in many parts of the UK in 2017. Of course your talking holding on for many decades and believing that the man at the helm will deliver for you which in the early 60's looked a very, very long shot. So what is one to garner from the history of one Warren Buffet? First off there ain't been another WB. Plenty of aspires to the throne for sure, Peter Lynch, Phil Carret etc...but nobody comes close to his performance which as of last year's annual letter to holders showed an astonishing compound annual gain of 21% for holders since 1965. Or to put it another way per share book value has grown from $19 to $172.000 valued at marked to market. WB says that the intrinsic value of BH far exceeds that of book value ie those of unrecorded gains at our winners. Over time, stock values gravitate towards intrinsic value while actual earnings will vary according to the state of the economy. But WB says it's the managements job to deliver growth over time as stewards of our capital whether retained or not (BH has never paid a div)... they must earn their keep, compounding at a decent rate and avoiding stock splits etc... (there is barely 2m shares in BH (A) stock). Its like asking the pizza man to slice it into 5 pieces cos you cant eat 7. I have become side tracked from my initial blog which was on the benefits of lth for pis who stick with their invstmt through thick and thin riding the bear & bull markets. It's tough to do for sure and let's face it you need to take a lot on trust. So back to Sphere. Not a stock WB would give a second thought to as an investment so who is going to guide us from now on and have we backed a born loser that will never produce high returns on equity however good the management are. I guess we're more gamblers than value investors though I have one eye 'to value' perhaps too far down the line for comfort, with a sp that reflects neither risk or reward, what is the point of Sphere?