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Actually I don't like the sound of a business who's main plan for the future is cost cutting ... they are closing smaller more outlying warehouses ... this is the opposite of official government policy aimed at providing jobs for all those people who want them. Personally I think central government might have lost control .... what are all the unemployed people who used to work in retail/smaller warehouses going to do?

https://ir.debenhams.com/static-files/fb8d0de1-556e-41d7-904e-b0b0b417830f

So stores rented for 18 years on average - and rents can only go upwards, from £260 million per year in 2014 to £300 million by 2019 ....and goodness knows what by 2030?

It's all their in the latest half-year financial report. What an eye opener? I want to believe them that they can cut costs in every area without destroying their suppliers, losing quality, and driving away customers. But do I believe them is the question which actually matters?

I would turn down a 200p offer. It far undervalues the potential of this business. If Centrica could find a way to cut wholesale electricity and gas prices then there is no reason with 12 million customers than this company couldn't have a free cash flow of £5 Billion per year. Put this on a multiple of 10 (not generally high for this sector, rather very conservative) and this would give an enterprise value of £50 Billion. Minus £3.2 Billion of net debt and you get a market cap of roughly £47 Billion. Hence that is about 6.5 times the current market cap or a share price of £7.80.

So would you sell a company that has the potential to be valued at £7.80 for £2. I wouldn't. They're not having my shares without a fair offer.

Hi Daniel.f

But I'm not sure these were genuine trends that the majority wanted? .... More like a market failure.

Most of the people I know like to live a "real" life - days out - eating out - driving to new places - nice walks - unique goods - handmade/artisan wares.

I'm not sure there was a genuine desire from the majority to have smaller companies first cut off from funding by RBS/Barclays/Lloyds and then bought out at rock-bottom prices by larger companies.

Also most of the people I know think that Google is doing more harm than good as they agree that they tend just to scroll through only the first couple of pages of search results .... this blatantly favours larger companies who are selling mass-produced standardised products (often paying poor wages in less developed countries and with poor employment rights). This is not what most of the people I know wanted from the economy .... it was all orchestrated by central bankers and the larger companies for their own benefit .... but I'd say at least 65% of the population has been made poorer by it in that there is less scope now for small businesses to be stable and to be handed down through the generations - if they don't expand they tend to die - yet their was a social benefit from having many small and medium sized businesses who just wanted stability and not to grow ever larger (to some extent Germany still has this with the Mittlestand).

Why do you think since 2007 the government has lost seats at every General Election and the Brexit vote was lost .... does it strike you that the population are happy or getting the economy that they want?

Daniel, I think people do realise that people need to make money to live and to build a life.....However considering that the debts of governments across the globe has been supposedly rising year upon year (from 40% of GDP to 80% in the UK over the past decade, and the gross debt of the US government has recently supposedly passed $21 Trillion), couple with £430 Billion in QE from the Bank of England, coupled with $4.5 Trillion in QE from the FED, and their has been investment into new oil and gas fields as well as into windfarms - and as you pointed out people in their world countries are being paid a pittance to make goods to be sold in the UK and USA), THEN why so many falling share prices in the markets and why so many listed companies going bust (Afren, Interserve, Xcite Energy, Patisserie Valerie, and a list of companies as long as my arm that have seen their share prices falling for over 7 years, RBS, Barclays, Capita, Carpetright, Mothercare, Interserve, Debenhams, Sainsburys, Tescos, Vodafone, Thomas Cook, Enquest, Premier Oil, GKP, Genel, Apache Oil, Premier Foods, Marks & Spencer, TUI, Aggreko, Topps Tiles plc. etc. etc. etc. far too many to list here).

Hence it just doesn't add up ... considering national debts increasing vastly, and vast QE programmes, how can so much shareholder value have been lost ...something badly wrong seems to be in the functioning of financial markets ...either people were ludicrously overoptimistic/overconfident in the past .... or else their has been fraud and malpractice in a whole host of companies leading to often 90% losses to shareholders (a 20-30% loss is perhaps understandable...as in someone miscalculated something at some point)...but for some may companies to have lost 90%+ of shareholder value raises questions about widescale financial fraud and sheer incompetence either amongst management or amongst the analysts who verified the previous share prices as being within a vageuly sensible ballpark range based on the most likely path the economic future was likely to take. Or No? What's your view please?

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/m/63d72496-57de-3227-b689-9b9ca44a9a59/ss_london-markets-flat-as-may.html

Apologies for last post, wrong board, genuine mistake (as you can verify from it never happening before, by me).

Daniel, I think people do realise that people need to make money to live and to build a life.....However considering that the debts of governments across the globe has been supposedly rising year upon year (from 40% of GDP to 80% in the UK over the past decade, and the gross debt of the US government has recently supposedly passed $21 Trillion), couple with £430 Billion in QE from the Bank of England, coupled with $4.5 Trillion in QE from the FED, and their has been investment into new oil and gas fields as well as into windfarms - and as you pointed out people in their world countries are being paid a pittance to make goods to be sold in the UK and USA), THEN why so many falling share prices in the markets and why so many listed companies going bust (Afren, Interserve, Xcite Energy, Patisserie Valerie, and a list of companies as long as my arm that have seen their share prices falling for over 7 years, RBS, Barclays, Capita, Carpetright, Mothercare, Interserve, Debenhams, Sainsburys, Tescos, Vodafone, Thomas Cook, Enquest, Premier Oil, GKP, Genel, Apache Oil, Premier Foods, Marks & Spencer, TUI, Aggreko, Topps Tiles plc. etc. etc. etc. far too many to list here).

Hence it just doesn't add up ... considering national debts increasing vastly, and vast QE programmes, how can so much shareholder value have been lost ...something badly wrong seems to be in the functioning of financial markets ...either people were ludicrously overoptimistic/overconfident in the past .... or else their has been fraud and malpractice in a whole host of companies leading to often 90% losses to shareholders (a 20-30% loss is perhaps understandable...as in someone miscalculated something at some point)...but for some may companies to have lost 90%+ of shareholder value raises questions about widescale financial fraud and sheer incompetence either amongst management or amongst the analysts who verified the previous share prices as being within a vageuly sensible ballpark range based on the most likely path the economic future was likely to take. Or No? What's your view please?

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/m/63d72496-57de-3227-b689-9b9ca44a9a59/ss_london-markets-flat-as-may.html

Daniel, I think people do realise that people need to make money to live and to build a life.....However considering that the debts of governments across the globe has been supposedly rising year upon year (from 40% of GDP to 80% in the UK over the past decade, and the gross debt of the US government has recently supposedly passed $21 Trillion), couple with £430 Billion in QE from the Bank of England, coupled with $4.5 Trillion in QE from the FED, and their has been investment into new oil and gas fields as well as into windfarms - and as you pointed out people in their world countries are being paid a pittance to make goods to be sold in the UK and USA), THEN why so many falling share prices in the markets and why so many listed companies going bust (Afren, Interserve, Xcite Energy, Patisserie Valerie, and a list of companies as long as my arm that have seen their share prices falling for over 7 years, RBS, Barclays, Capita, Carpetright, Mothercare, Interserve, Debenhams, Sainsburys, Tescos, Vodafone, Thomas Cook, Enquest, Premier Oil, GKP, Genel, Apache Oil, Premier Foods, Marks & Spencer, TUI, Aggreko, Topps Tiles plc. etc. etc. etc. far too many to list here).

Hence it just doesn't add up ... considering national debts increasing vastly, and vast QE programmes, how can so much shareholder value have been lost ...something badly wrong seems to be in the functioning of financial markets ...either people were ludicrously overoptimistic/overconfident in the past .... or else their has been fraud and malpractice in a whole host of companies leading to often 90% losses to shareholders (a 20-30% loss is perhaps understandable...as in someone miscalculated something at some point)...but for some may companies to have lost 90%+ of shareholder value raises questions about widescale financial fraud and sheer incompetence either amongst management or amongst the analysts who verified the previous share prices as being within a vageuly sensible ballpark range based on the most likely path the economic future was likely to take. Or No? What's your view please?

The solution is simple...employ more police....increase NHS spending by 8% per year (5% towards modernising equipment and 3% for more staff...doctors are paid by far enough already - but with more staff employed they would have a better work-life balance), increase investment into UK agriculture (mainly aimed at small to medium sized business and increasing competition in the sector), increase subsidies for hill farming to encourage beef as well as sheep, improve and electrify the rail infrastructure and particularly lines out to the coast in all directions, support and expand our fishing industry with a particular focus on the Atlantic, continue to slowly build wind turbines and invest a lot in tidal power (as to be honest offshore/onshore windfarms are flippin' ugly). And educate people to stop stabbing each other and take up growing flowers or home brewing instead ....the technology revolution has the potential to usher in a new hippie era (equivalent to the 1960s/70s). I actually think a hippie boom (minus the drugs and powered by renewable energy and fed on UK grown produce) would be as close as one could get to creating Utopia on Earth - not a bad aim for the UK hey?? Oh yeah - beef up the borders and stop thinking that we can afford to let a long of hangers on come into our Utopia for free. They can create their Utopia in Germany, Poland, France, Syria, Iraq, Australia, Guyana, Canada, Iceland etc. However the rewards of the UK government creating a Utopia in the UK must be a period of stability where the current population can enjoy the fruits of their labours ...their is no way it would be sustainable if people from other countries started hearing about what a great life UK policies had created and all flocked here...also it would be stupid ....who would be left with local knowledge to create Utopias in Bulgaria, Russia, Pakistan, Israel, Argentina, Spain, New Zealand, Uganda, Mozambique, Congo, Siera Leone, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Canary Islands, Paraguay, etc .... These countries are all rich in natural resources ....only they face the same problem as everywhere ... too many vested interests and short-term people not thinking about the future. I mean the UK is not much better than some....and worse than others (it's a pretty sweet life in Canada my friends tell me - far better on average than in the UK as their oil industry has doubled production over the past ten years and hence this generation can travel a lot more at very competitive prices). However the UK is a small country and oil prices shouldn't have more than a marginal impact on our economy (whether high or low). Really it is about the vision that policymakers have in the UK which will either make this country happy, fairly wealthy, and stable or the opposite (or somewhere in between being the most realistic based on my life experience so far). Ahhhh....dreams of utopia...halcyon days...

The solution is simply...stop denigrating the oil industry (so that they can continue with profitable investment for the future)....employ more police....increase NHS spending by 8% per year (5% towards modernising equipment and 3% for more staff...doctors are paid by far enough already - but with more staff employed they would have a better work-life balance), increase investment into UK agriculture (mainly aimed at small to medium sized business and increasing competition in the sector), increase subsidies for hill farming to encourage beef as well as sheep, improve and electrify the rail infrastructure and particularly lines out to the coast in all directions, support and expand our fishing industry with a particular focus on the Atlantic, continue to slowly build wind turbines and invest a lot in tidal power (as to be honest offshore/onshore windfarms are flippin' ugly). And educate people to stop stabbing each other and take up growing flowers or home brewing instead ....the technology revolution has the potential to usher in a new hippie era (equivalent to the 1960s/70s). I actually think a hippie boom (minus the drugs and powered by renewable energy and fed on UK grown produce) would be as close as one could get to creating Utopia on Earth - not a bad aim for the UK hey?? Oh yeah - beef up the borders and stop thinking that we can afford to let a long of hangers on come into our Utopia for free. They can create their Utopia in Germany, Polan, France, Syria, Iraq, Australia, Guyana, Canada, Iceland etc. However the rewards of the UK government creating a Utopia in the UK must be a period of stability where the current population can enjoy the fruits of their labours ...their is no way it would be sustainable if people from other countries started hearing about what a great life UK policies had created and all flocked here...also it would be stupid ....who would be left with local knowledge to create Utopias in Bulgaria, Russia, Pakistan, Israel, Argentina, Spain, New Zealand, Uganda etc .... These countries are all rich in natural resources ....only they face the same problem as everywhere ... too many vested interests and short-term people not thinking about the future.

Why weren't the institutions/pension funds fighting each other to buy at 35p or 45p in 2011 when really the financial future turned out fairly rosy for Lloyds didn't it? Surely you can't argue that the big fund managers/institutions suffer from emotional bias or fear the same as PIs - these people are professionals. Hence the only way I can explain it is if every institution/fund manager got their calculations of NAV/perceived value wrong, doing so simultaneously, and also all making those errors in the same direction (i.e. towards an undervaluation). Now statistically this is extremely unlikely....so how else can it be explained?

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/m/63d72496-57de-3227-b689-9b9ca44a9a59/ss_london-markets-flat-as-may.html

The traders take the share to some strange prices quite divorced from reality (as measured by prices six months to a year later). So are their separate markets for PIs and institutions but nobody has told the PI about this. Would it be quite a scandal if true or not? Certainly the PI would have a right to feel duped wouldn't they as the whole basis of the market was sold as there being one market for everyone from the big to the small (in terms of their trading capital/wealth). However I can't understand how the price could have gone to 20p in 2011 if there was really only one market for both PIs and institutions? Why were the institutions fighting each other to buy at 30p or 40p in 2011 when really the financial future turned out fairly rosy for Lloyds didn't it? Surely you can't argue that the big fund managers/institutions suffer from emotions or fear the same as PIs - these people are professionals. Hence the only way I can explain it is if every institution/fund manager got their calculations of NAV/perceived value wrong, simultaneously, and all making those errors in the same direction (i.e. towards an undervaluation). Now statistically this is extremely unlikely - hence more likely that something more sinister is going on. What seems more likely from an impartial viewpoint is that there is some kind of collusion between the institutions/big fund managers in setting prices - either that or there is a mechanism by which group-think, between supposedly separate institutions/managers, is able to emerge? But surely that would be a symptom of a poorly designed and regulated financial system?

It's only the political risk of investing in other countries that even makes UKOG seem remotely attractive. Personally I know I would prefer to be involved with a company drilling wells which flow at 20,000 bopd rather than 1,000 bopd. Many of the fields offshore Angola produce flow rates of 20,000 bopd per well. Also in the deeper horizons under the Gulf of Mexico they reckon some of the fields which are coming into drilling range may contain 50 Billion barrels of oil -which is about 40 times larger than the famous Brent field in the North Sea. Also these deeper fields in the Gulf of Mexico can theoretically produce as much as 80,000 bopd per well. Yes it's not necessarily easy to drill to a depth of 37,000 feet below the surface of the sea - but the rewards for doing so potentially dwarf any other projects that major oil companies have on the horizon. Anyway all I'm saying is that really there are so many places around the world where there are still conventional reservoirs that haven't been tapped into yet - so the Weald might be attractive to some, but I can't see it being attractive to BP myself. I think the areas that are attractive to BP are Egypt, Libya, Angola, Mexico, USA, Alaska, Canada, Mozambique, Namibia, Guyana, Ghana, Senegal, Brazil, Uruguay, West of Shetland/West of Ireland, Ivory Coast, Australia, etc.

Personally I don't see what was wrong with believing that Brexit would provide an extra £350 million per week to the NHS. The financial markets have had £430 Billion in newly created money from the Bank of England to bail them out. I'd have thought it was about time some more money was created by the Bank of England to allow increased staffing levels in the NHS, increased infrastructure spend by the armed forces and the education sector, and also increased spending on national infrastructure such as roads and to speed up the electrification of the railways.

You can't use the argument that there isn't the money available without higher taxation after having been okay with £430 Billion in QE to bailout the banks and holders of financial assets. What about some QE directed towards improving the lives of the vast majority of citizens this time around - such as aimed at upgrading infrastructure and at boosting funding for entrepreneurs and small-and-medium sized business creation (so that we can have a Mittlestand in the UK like Germany has).

BaysilHope, I have had my fair share of bad luck over the years on the markets. Hence I try to be realistic that a companies market cap will not necessarily reflect operational progress or profits (more often than not in the past I have never been rewarded with an increasing share price for buying into companies making good operational progress, or making increasing profits). From my perspective the market is largely made by people who are focusing on issues/things that I can't even see as being related to common-sense value, but the people in the market value what they value - and to some of them climate change and increasing the speed of progress towards a fully electric economy is more important than improving the NHS or ensuring that people who want to work in the UK actually have jobs which match their level of education/ability/skills. Anyway I don't want to spout my ideas. I try and read widely to get a sense of the direction in which society as a whole is going....as I can't fight the tide of history. And I do believe, based on ten years of experience, that the market will reward me more for being a good judge of the tide of history in my investments rather than worrying too much about whether a company has too much debt or is doing a good job operationally. One only has to look at the enormous debts (over $50 Billion) that many "Big Oil" companies have to realise debt is not a problem if the market doesn't want it to be. Also look at companies like AIG leading up to the last global financial crisis - very poor operational performance was not a problem in the market's eyes until all of a sudden 99% of shareholder value was wiped out over just a few short months, as it suddenly became a problem to the market - but why it suddenly became a problem at that point and not a few years earlier I will never know.

Also we are all beholden to external events outside of our control. I imagine that if the second Gulf War hadn't happened that oil prices would have taken a very different trajectory to the one that we have seen unfold since 2003. And it would have been quite possible for the second gulf war never to have happened. After all they actually had no weapons of mass destruction as it turned out. And a million people marched in London to protest getting involved militarily in Iraq for a second time in a little over ten years. And if the British hadn't supported the US then the US wouldn't have had enough support at the UN security council to make their war on Iraq at all legal - and so perhaps it might never have happened and Bush would just have had to leave Saddam in place much to his displeasure at not being able to settle old scores (which isn't the greatest reason to go to war anyway).

So I am phlegmatic about what I can hope to predict. If you are invested here then you probably believe, as I do, that oil will be needed for quite a while yet - that Teslas weighing 2.2 tonnes and requiring hundreds of kilograms of lithium per batt

Hopefully if this hits 8p I shall go long and out in a couple of years at 84p. Be interesting to see if my ideas about the future come true or not. However the market is an extreme place - was in Lloyds when it hit 20p in 2011. Also have watched companies like Kaz Minerals fall from over £10 to under £2 twice and then recover back to over £10 both times. I am somewhat of a veteran and know how extreme the markets can be ....also I know that the market cap of a company doesn't bear any relation to its future value in most cases - share prices seem to be set to take money off the PI by going far more extreme than makes any fundamental sense/bears any relation to a reasonable assessment of future cash flows. Also generally share prices will do the opposite as to the economic environment. So if the media is generally people positive about the economy it generally isn't a bad time to sell shares....and if the media is all doom and gloom whilst markets are simultaneously at multi-year lows then it is generally time to buy shares. And I just get a feeling if you people on here have really been putting your money where your mouth is and buying in recently then the market will test you a little bit more yet ... there is no easy money after all ....but if it hits 8p then it would be no different to Kaz Minerals hitting 70p in early 2016 and then a year later it was over 700p (so people who bought shares at the lows would have been rewarded ten-fold). So market a very extreme environment ...that's why I don't mind if I'm filtered....as a veteran I quite like being ignored....makes it easier to be right if you don't have to please the crowd.

Sorry I meant India/Africa/Indonesia can't afford to pay for oil even if they wanted to grow their economies. Basically the USA can cause a financial crisis in weak economies any time the USA wants to. Next time oil prices rise the people who suffer will be those involved in small and medium sized business in India/Africa/Indonesia - the Western media will not even report it. However the sad truth is that the FED bankrolls most of the world - they will just cut off liquidity to India/Africa/Indonesia if these countries stat using too much oil in the eyes of the American government - after all it's America first under Trump - that means low oil prices for US consumers even if other countries have to be sent back to the stone-age (like Venezuela) to keep oil prices low in the USA.

But nobody is willing to pay for oil in India/Africa/poor countries. The largest consumer of oil at a country level is the USA - once they go green and roll out electric vehicles on the same scale as China then the oil price will plummet to just a few dollars per barrel.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/saudis-falih-opec-may-cancel-april-meet-hold-081613675--sector.html

The energy minister of OPEC's de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, said over the weekend that the market was looking oversupplied until the end of the year but that April would be too early for any decision on output policy.

Well this is what the leader of OPEC is saying ... that the oil market looks like it will be in oversupply until next year.

The energy minister of OPEC's de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, said over the weekend that the market was looking oversupplied until the end of the year but that April would be too early for any decision on output policy.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/saudis-falih-opec-may-cancel-april-meet-hold-081613675--sector.html

Wouldn't worry too much about Goldman's trading....it is for tiny percentages here. Also Premier is obliged by the stock exchange rules to accept RNS's from companies trading their shares in order for those companies to notify investors of whether they have been increasing or decreasing their shareholding. If you can not understand the RNS about whether an investment house has been buying or selling shares in a company then really you need to ask someone who does .... it is not hard to understand ... I read it once and understood it first time without having it explained to me by anyone ... if you can read then you would be able to understand it with a little thought.

Anyway, it's not Goldman or PMO who are in control of the value created or destroyed by PMO. It's as simple as Pmo will invest shareholders money on certain assumptions about the future oil price .... if the oil price is above what PMO have assumed it will be in future then the PMO share price should rise ... if the future oil price is lower than what PMO have assumed (when costing projects and agreeing costs with contractors) then the PMO share price should fall.

PMO has lost value through making stupid assumptions about the future oil price ... basically that it would always remain above $100 forever. This was a completely ridiculous assumption given that the FED was printing free money and giving it to companies like Petrobras in the form of 100 year bonds at near zero percent interest - in order to boost Brazilian oil production.... as the American government needs cheap oil otherwise the social and economic order in the USA collapses ... a large country like that with a high standard of living will always need a plentiful supply of cheap oil if it's to avoid social/economic disorder.

Hence PMO was it's own worst enemy in the past because it made extremely stupid assumptions about the future long-term oil price. Hopefully they have learned their lesson and to base their new investments into greenfield projects on an oil price of 20% below what an impartial panel would consider a "realistic" oil price out to 2029. And if the contractors can't offer contracts at a price which is profitable to PMO based on such oil price assumptions then better not to do the project at all - another Solan would send PMO into administration in the future.

Good luck all ...personally I'd like to see PMO get the oil out of the ground at a cost where there isn't too much risk to shareholders and that shareholders can see value being created ...because ultimately who doesn't benefit from driving (without petrol/diesel transport our standard of living would soon col