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I agree that short selling and bot trading is corrosive. There have been attempts at a tax on share transactions - a 'Tobin tax' - including by the EU in the recent past, but this was fiercely rejected by the UK (and Sweden); the Wikipedia page on this makes for interesting reading; it also mentions that stamp duty - which is a form of transaction tax - has exemptions for institutional investors. I feel that given covid etc, now could be a good time to explore transaction taxes as a possible revenue source, which might have positive side-effects in reducing share price volatility due to excessive shorting etc (the Wikipedia article suggests some negatives mind).
Responding to latpulldown's post: I'd very much agree that this has been oversold, presumably driven by the expectation that the results were to be a car crash: There's some logic to that if you look over the past year's results and trading statements with the company freely admitting that it had gone off the rails - but those same results and statements also had info on how it planned to get back on track. I think the plummeting price has been due to the former; with today's statement we're seeing the early fruits of the latter causing the rebound. It feels like MCRO are taking the right actions so I expect the rebound has a long way to go yet. Given the issues it's been dealing with (both covid and its internal issues just mentioned) I don't think it'll get all the way back to £10 just yet (that £10-a-share company may now be somewhat damaged), but I do think it's on the way up. As ever working out what level it'll reach is the hardest part, but hopefully some dividends along the way will make it easier to hold on to, although I'm not in a hurry for those to resume.
Well spotted - so £8m set against a market capitalisation of about £120m - about 6.6% of the company's shares (unless £4m sold, £4m bought, in which case 3.3%). Either way big stock changes for INSE, is Gresham House buying again as rivaldo noted? Seems like INSE's a good place to be right now: It feels oversold, and the economy is likely to revive as vaccines come on-stream so the company can get back to normal service... and now this major shareholder activity, possibly just adjusting portfolios, but also the chance of a premium if this is leading up to a bid.
I see there were 2 large trades yesterday, each of approaching 1% of INSE's market cap (no idea if they're buys, sells or one of each). Quite a contrast from the typical < £5k trades; also interesting that a typical day's trading seems to have about a dozen (small) trades at the moment which feels very quiet. I wonder if there will be a "Holding in Company" RNS on Monday...
05-Nov-20 16:53:40 11.00 8,500,000 Unknown* 10.50 11.50 935.00k O
05-Nov-20 16:53:19 11.00 12,960,852 Unknown* 10.50 11.50 1m O
https://www.xaar.com/en/news/2020/xaar-sets-vision-for-the-future/
(from last week: 30th Sept)
Thank you to those who took the time to respond to my post re. the critique of SNG's trial results, see earlier in this thread. With some suggesting I check the original presentation re the numbers I referenced from the critique (in which case the results would be more favourable to SNG), I've done so; before continuing here's the page where the presentation is found,
https://www.synairgen.com/investors/presentations/
so anyway, the slide titled 'Demographics' is where the numbers are. The overall co-morbities numbers are basically the same (1 more in SNG001 group, but that group has 2 more participants; as % that's 54% vs. 54.17%). I was more concerned with the diabetes figures, having 9 in the placebo group and only 3 in the SNG001 group. Those figures get included within the co-morbidities figures, but if diabetes (or cardiovascular disease, also broken out on that slide) is a more dangerous co-morbidity than other co-morbidities that weren't specified, then the results aren't quite as good. Similarly there's a slightly higher proportion of women in the SNG001 group (43.75% vs 38% in the placebo group). One figure that does favour the SNG001 group is that the average 'frailty' is a higher number (I assume a higher number means more frail): 1.8 in the placebo and 2.1 in the SNG001 group.
In summary I remain excited by these results, but I think they need to be taken with a pinch of salt (as above) - having now checked the numbers (and do follow the link to the presentation above for your own satisfaction/research), overall it seems that they are a bit less favourable to SNG than the headline about the trial's success: I won't be investing the family silver on this one, it remains a small gamble (and thus small purchase) for me.
I guess I'm always a bit sceptical of grand claims: SNG's results are seemingly fantastic. I did want to dig a bit deeper though to understand the numbers, and found this critique which I thought was well reasoned,
https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-announcement-by-synairgen-that-their-drug-sng001-has-had-positive-results-in-initial-trials-on-covid-19-patients/
in particular I notice that there were more patients with additional risk factors (diabetes) on the placebo side of the trial, slightly taking the shine off the grand claims made: I'd prefer it if the company's RNS had mentioned this, rather than glossing over it. Nevertheless other aspects of the results still impress me, and I've bought a small amount of shares as a gamble: That is of course what this is until we get more detailed results; I particularly like that this drug might turn out to be important as a general antiviral treatment - including against potential other coronaviruses of the future...
I'd also note that most pharma companies like to be rather selective in what they report, so Synairgen are hardly unique here.
Looking at the current market capitalisation at the current price I think we're well into FTSE250 territory, so this may mean that tracker funds are buying shares: Given the current price and all the positives recently I'd see PFD getting promoted from it's current FTSE all-share index into the FTSE250 (esp. being able to offset the Premier Foods pension fund deficit against the Hovis pension fund surplus, I still don't understand how they managed that but it's good for shareholders - that was always the major risk with PFD, with that deficit previously not able to benefit from the ring-fenced Hovis scheme surplus). So I would expect that the closer we get to FTSE promotion/demotion day the stronger should be the demand for PFD.
As always, DYOR; my suggestion if you wish to check my logic would be to get the list of FTSE250 constituents with their market caps. This site doesn't seem to have that option that I could find, but the London Stock Exchange site does. So, get that, sort the list by market cap and hopefully you'll also find that PFD could sit comfortably in that index. (I suggest also looking up PFD there to use that site's figure for PFD market cap to be using the same source for your numbers when you do that check)
Comparing these figures is meaningless without considering how many shares were in existence in each case - thus for example measures like Earnings per Share; alternatively the market capitalisation in 2006 vs. 2019 would also be helpful. Maybe someone might like to post those sort of figures.
I think presenting the figures like that is misleading: All it tells us is that MCRO is a much bigger company than it was; it will also have more shares so each share held is a smaller piece of the overall company now than it was in 2006.
I've now noticed that that Sheffield Star article is derived from a Jaywing press release,
https://jaywing.com/news/a-bold-new-plan-for-future-growth
https://www.thestar.co.uk/business/marketing-firm-jaywing-sheffield-reorganises-growth-2894102
"Sheffield marketing company Jaywing is to reorganise for growth.
It has announced plans to create a ‘more integrated, collaborative and client-centric structure’, bringing together all areas of the business.
..." (I've not posted the whole article, just follow the link)
(responding to @persimmon's post): From the RNS of 6th May: "the Company intends now to release its Preliminary results by the end of June. Confirmation of the exact reporting date will be provided nearer the time"; on the company's Investor Relations section calendar "End of June 2020 - exact date to be confirmed".
I'm surprised the share price hasn't responded to that credit rating upgrade. The report itself makes interesting reading, covering plenty of ground in a very sober manner; thanks for posting the link.
Historical share prices: I don't know about online, but when I need them myself I go to my local library where they have an archive (microfiche) of the Financal Times, and look in there for the closing price on the date I need.
I noticed this article with IQE collaborating,
https://compoundsemiconductor.net/article/108829/CSC_And_Kubos_To_Commercialise_Cubic_GaN
...sounds interesting, I don't expect any immediate revenue implications though.