Member Info for NAV_Mike

I also wonder if Taconic are betting on the buybacks not being renewed.

Now you can argue till kingdom come as to whether they have provided any support to the price, or have just encouraged selling, but the fact is HBR are buying around 570k a day currently.

Take that out of the market and surely Taconics position is made easier?

Well we are effectively down 6.7p on a day where Brent is $90 and FTSE has recovered most of its early losses.

Volume is a paltry 430k but then it doesnt have to be massive when these damn algos are constantly chipping away at the price.

We cant afford to go into a black hole of news else the valuation here could get really stupid

Sorry for moan....im just monumentally peed at myself at not selling out pre-divi. I really thought the Brent price had to lend support

Stupmy

I would imagine their rationale is a mix of the destructive nature of the EPL, the stock going out of favour once xd, and yes....the worry of a labour govt

Of course the saudi/russian production cuts that brought $90 Brent will hopefully have thrown at least a small sized spanner into the works

Stupmy

Theres a reason why Taconic upped their short to 3.12% (24.3m shares) and today could be it

The xd drop is 9.6p so the balance of 2.9p is probably down to a mix of our shorty friends and yet another crappy day in FTSE land

We all had a brief oportunity to get out first thing when the price was higher than the xd adjustment, but needless to say that rapidly disappeared

Yep indeed....I think theyve probably switched their algos on now - bid price suddenly dropped 2p thanks to a flurry of the usual small trades

Price is off as expected, but actually a penny higher than I pencilled in for the xd adjustment

Worse than you thought mate because as of yesterday there were only 779m shares in issue

Management will argue this is an interim dividend leaving the balance to be decided once full year results are known. I would counter that by saying that spending $176m to acheive another dollop of 'jam tomorrow' is a little erm......disappointing

Yes Nitro thats correct

The dead giveaway is that if you buy the shares after the price has been adjusted lower for xd, then of course you wont get the dividend. Otherwise everyone would buy at say 245 instead of 254 and still get the dividend

Well a 12c divi at $1.25 to £ means the price should fall automatically by 9.6p. Then its a case of whether $90 Brent has buyers interested, or if people decide selling without the divi is a good idea

As a side note, weve spent $176m to end up with an identical dividend to last time

Capital Fund Managers only increased by 0.01% which could easily be a recalculation due to reduced number of shares in issue

Erm nope....565k bought back today at average VWAP of £2.542

So.....

Anyone jumped ship or planning to before close?

Or are we all going to hold, collect the divi and pray we dont get a repeat of the last divi disaster?

(Only a fun question....not being nosey lol)

with the shares going xd on thursday, i think these taconic ******s may well try to get the price trending lower from that day, in a repeat of earlier in the year.

the big difference is the oil price environment and perhaps boa being almost out.

having said that, brent is over $90 and yet again we are not showng blue. are taconic suppressing the price, waiting for the right time to hammer it?

Well I got that assumption wrong....

Buyback was active and at a relatively high level....570k shares costing around $1.84m

Bit disappointing that we couldnt manage a decent rise then. Perhaps Taconic and others were busier than I thought

I honestly think our shorting friends will be working hard currently to keep a lid on the price ahead of going xd on Thursday

They wont have to trade vast numbers of shares to do this, as buybacks are still probably suspended and volume is low without them.

Still very frustrating though....nearly $90 for Brent and we show red on the day

Sorry...I meant earlier this year (last dividend record date)

Yes but remember what happened last year....

The stock went xd to the tune of around 9.5p around 289p then continued to drop and drop. Now was that purely circumstances or did shorters want to get their money back?

Missed much of the afternoon....any real reason for the 6p drop when Brent held so firm?

Profit taking? No buybacks to push against usual US selling?

Low volume day anyway....only 730k by close (but 1.4m in the auction and after hours trades)

Strangely enough I did wonder if the buybacks paused a little early yesterday.....453202 bought back which is a weird number and below the recent average

Around 15 days to go by my reckoning - so 3 weeks today?

At least the share price is nicely above the VWAP paid to date 258.5 vs 247.40 so buyback is nicely in the black by about £6m