Member Info for LordAdam

Thanks for the input ... that gives me a different way of looking at it and thinking about it. TRAK is very thinly traded and this site's trade lists some time shows trades from previous days (let alone hours) that are out of sequence ... now I may be beginning to see what may lie behind these price movements and my wrong interpretation of them. You don't happen to have a trade list for 14-16th of October do you? I'd really like to see what was behind that sudden drop to 210ish on the 14th and those dates have now disappeared out of my window of opportunity. Mike

Just finished processing the trade lists for Trakm8's day today. Grabbed the numbers from the actual trade list, put them in a sheet and crunched them. First, the volume sold/bought figures on the LSE site here don't appear to be very accurate. The list of actual trades gives 34495 bought and 9691 sold. That's over three times as many shares bought as sold. The market makers put the price down at about 10:47 and from then until the end of the day ... 16 trades bought 31,484 shares at about 240 ... 3 trades sold 9,691 shares at about 237. So on the face of it it looks as though the MM's sold 31,000 shares at 240 when earlier in the day they were selling them at almost 250 and bought just under 10,000 for 237. I don't know what they are playing at ... but the maths says it's not working ... Clearly there's no pressure here for selling, quite the opposite, on every dip there's a steady stream of buyers entering the market. The obvious message is to hold and let them play their games ... the only down side is that this type of bogus activity is creating volatility where there really isn't any from a supply/demand point of view. Mike

10-15p down on no trade at all ... looks like someone is short of stock to sell again ... I feel tremors in the tree again ... but a bit more subtle this time. Mike

The large 'UT' trade at the end (16:35:03) was a closing auction between the market makers ... it's not actually shares moving to/from investors. But the sequence of small trades compressed into the last 5 minutes of the market is very interesting. I can offer two alternatives ... the first I think is likely ... the overall number of bargains is not too great, 150 overall, and the transactions are lots of small ones -- I think some broker somewhere has been having trouble with their systems and finally got all their orders out together. The second alternative seems a lot less likely ... there's some kind of corporate action on the go and these are insiders taking a position before the news comes out tomorrow. My instinct goes against the second explanation ... the trades aren't big enough and there's too many of them. We shall have to see what tomorrow brings ... I suggest getting up early and having a look at the RNS feed! Mike

Academia is a great place for learning about shares and starting out in the market ... it's not that you learn anything about the stock market from the educational establishment -- it's just that its a great place for being able to keep an eye on the market day by day and meet/talk with others who may be into the market in a serious way! That's how I got started back in the 80's. Trouble was I left again for the real world and my investing went onto the back burner ... then in 2001 it was traded in for a house just after 9/11. Didn't get back to it again until the start of this year. That gap has cost me dear. Now I'm hastily making a money making machine to provide for my retirement! Good to have you aboard in the forum ... that's a subtle witticism! Mike

Since the attempted tree shaking last Wednesday there's been consistent buying pressure on the market for TRAK. Today, Monday, is no exception ... by 9.45 buyers to sellers are 5:1 and some of the less canny are paying 253p. There just isn't enough liquidity in the market at the moment and something will have to give. In the old days the market makers might go to the company and ask them to release shares for trading ... but I seem to recall that Trakm8 doesn't hold any shares in treasury and in any case it wouldn't be in their interest to create/release shares. The only resolution that I can see for the market makers is a significant shift up from the present trading range of 240-250 so that some profits are taken. This week is going to be very interesting!! Mike

Light-hearted or not ... I think you've got it pretty much taped there to be honest. Ps. would you like me to send you a link for an application form to be a politician? (On second thoughts ... don't answer that, well not in public!) Mike

Of course it's really nice when you get it right ... but it's not so good when you get it wrong ... and I've got it wrong more than a few times. My guess is that the Market Makers won't try that again for a while. Their basic problem is lack of liquidity. They were faced with a rising market with buying demand and not enough stock on their books to satisfy it. Several days buying meant that they need stock again ... hence the tree shake ... and it did work to some extent, but there is too much pent up demand for the share and there were more folk buying than selling at the lower price. Basically when they reduced the price we all piled in and there wasn't time for short term holders to get worried and start selling before they had to put the price back up again. Tree shaking takes a quiet/slow market to work well and folk are keen to get into Trak rather than take profits at the moment -- did you see how the volume peaked up at the lower price? I think/feel that they are going to have to go the traditional route ... and that is allow the price to raise until natural profit taking happens. Trouble is that TRAK is only capitalised at £70m (even now) and over half of that is held in management and institutional hands. The rest of us are in for the long term and there's just no slack out there. There's just no telling how much the demand side of the equation will drive the supply side up before a balance is reached. With this liquidity there's no telling how high it might go until we reach a balance ... Plus, underpinning all this, is the fundamental fact that this is a solid company, doing solid things and just plain getting on with it ... no wonder the management are holding on to so much of the equity! I know I'm not giving up what I've got even if 10% in a day is tempting! (Sorry that was in bad taste.) Mike

They're back on offer at 233 again now ... 9:25 am ... I managed to buy at just under 214 ... did anyone else get in? Mike

Now that's a tree shake ... very little volume, no real justification for a big price movement ... but from 8:20 to 9:00 on the basis of about 10,000 shares they moved the price down from an offer of 240 to 210 ... 12.5% down. Of course a number of people have fallen out of the tree (or let go) but a whole pile more (me included) jumped on and bought .... by 9:20 buyers outnumbered sellers 3:2 ... so I'm not so sure that the MM's did themselves any favours. I suspect that by the end of the day we'll be back to the 230-240 range. Mike

Very positive results ... it will be interesting to see what effect this has on the SP! Mike

LOL ... Thanks for reminding me about that ... yes, roller coasters, flying helmets and goggles ... you have to laugh don't you? I mean take it too seriously and you'd go mad -- not that we're not all mad here. I guess the difference was that I thought we'd see a 10-15p dip temporarily ... without chasing up the archive I seem to remember the prediction there was a return to under 100? Anyway, as you say, that's long out of the window. The thing that always catches me by surprise with TRAK is the timing ... I'd pencilled in 220 some time before the end of the year, but I didn't expect us to get to this point so quickly. I'm going to have to look at the figures again to form a new expection/target. But realistically everything that we see and everything that the price does is promising for the future. Mike

Yes ... I got that wrong didn't I! Mike

Here's my take on the thing ... there's been a lot of transactions but a lot of them have been for incredibly small trades. The overall volume has been up but not excessively so. Also, Trakm8 is a very small cap company, very thinly traded -- with 50% of the companies share held tight in management and institutional hands ... all in all not a very dynamic trading scenario ... that goes some way to explaining the very big spread that we see alot of the time. Because the share is so thinly traded there's only 2-3 market makers and they handle things much like it was done back in the pre-big-bang days (1984) ... effectively they manipulate the market to suit themselves when they can get away with it. Over the last 6-9 months I've watched them doing it several times. My guess is that next week we will have a 'tree shaking' ... this is when the price should really be rising due to limited selling and demand but the market makers put the price down -- the opposite of what you would expect. This causes the less committed holders 'to take profits' by selling and fills the MM's stock book back up again. I've lost count of the number of times they've played this trick on TRAK. So if I'm right you'll see a dip over 3-5 days starting about Mon-Tue that will probably go all the way down to about 210 ... after that we'll see a recovery to the 225-230 level again. Either way, right or wrong ... the real answer is to do what I'm doing which is to hold ... of course if it does go down to 210 it may be your last chance to get in or top-up at anything like 200! GL Mike

If you took the money and put it in a bank you would have to get 4% interest to end up with 670 by the end of March. It's only 6 months away. 4% is the equivalent annual interest rate. As I can do better than that investing it pays me to take the cash and invest it. Mike

When I sold it was for 656 ... 656p invested now for a yield of 670p at the back end of March is the same as a 4% per annum rate of return on the investment. I was referring to the rate of return, or the time value of the money, rather than the simple numerical percentage increase (which is of the order of 2%). Effectively its like putting 656p in the bank at 4% and taking out 670 at the end of March. So if I can get a better rate of return than 4% I'm better off cashing in and putting the money to use elsewhere. If I can't get 4% then I'm better off leaving it in AML shares. As I generally make 5-10% elsewhere I cashed in and put the money to work ... with the market over the last few days I've already made my 4% and more :) Hope that helps. Mike

As it turned out I made the right move ... having converted our AML holdings into cash we put it into other things and have easily recouped the 4% that it would have been worth if we had left it in AML until the cash offer came in next spring. But of course it could (and still could) have gone the other way! Good luck with the mechanics of the deal ... I see that the time value of the money is, as you would expect, creating upward pressure on the price. Mike

Some things never change ... this used to go on before the Big-Bang (1984) and its still going on ... We've consistently had buyers outnumbering sellers all day long today ... and yet the price opened lower and has been lower nearly all the time. You'd think that the price would rise ... but no ... the market makers decided before the bell that it would go down and down they kept it even though we had 5:1 buyers to sellers until 3:30. This is one of those occasions when the share price reflects what the market makers think rather than what the market thinks ... clearly the numbers say that the share price should be rising? Yet another good reason not to be a chartist I suppose! Mike

With smaller companies it often takes a little while for RNS announcements to take effect -- they're not as closely watched and followed as the big boys are. And that seems to be the case here ... The market is slowly picking up in these shares today ... interestingly the bulk of the sentiment is positive, buyers lead sellers 3:1 at the moment. I think your analysis of the VG situation is correct ... the Vertu board are nothing if not astute and if they could have, they would have postponed this deal -- the uncertainty of DieselGate could never have helped. On the plus side, even by the statements in the RNS, only 6% previously and 9% afterwards is based in the VG brand. That's a lot less than the national average of 20% and diesel of course is only a part of that. In addition any major settlements will be made by VW direct and not picked up by dealers. In a macabre twist even a recall to replace software etc will generate income for the dealership chain. Overall the situation could be cash positive for the dealers ... with one exception ... that's if the brand name is devalued and customers are lost long term (ala M&S type of situation) ... but then that would only be say a 20% drop in a 9% section of the business ... hardly profit warning stuff! No overall I can see this acquisition being positive ... the board will have done its sums and know that it can generate income out of this ... plus its only spent a part of its cash reserves and still has £40m of bank facilities if it chooses to use them. I'm going to stay for the party ... Mike

My thoughts exactly ... have VTU made the faux pas of buying the last VW diesel to be sold before the news broke ... or have they pulled off a nicer little earner and stashed it in the bottom drawer until the heat dies down? I notice the statement that its meant to be earnings enhancing in the first full year ... but then nothing to say whether that is pre or post the DieselGate issue. So far there's not a lot of volume in the market place so there's no rush to get in or out -- maybe every one is waiting for some clarification? Mike