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Thanks for the comprehensive reply fleccy. COVID-19 has been giving me a chance to rethink my investment strategy and I have been asking myself similar questions to the ones you've listed.
I moved from the UK to South Africa in 2011, so I only really know what BT offered and how they operated up till then. I always thought that BT had reasonable fundamentals but it was unloved by investors for some reason. Their biggest problem was their pension deficit, but I figured they would turn the corner and the price would go back up. This obviously hasn't happened but COVID-19 has somewhat changed the investing goalposts and BT is making more sense as a long-term bet. I think even lamtree would agree that BT isn't likely to disappear in the aftermath after COVID-19!
I currently hold IAG and SAGA as which have obviously been hammered in the current market! IAG was good for me last year - I banked 42% profit on them. I bought back into IAG again this year and I'm down almost 67% - not a good move with hindsight but it's only a paper loss unless I decide to sell.
I know that this 5G COVID conspiracy theory is crazy.
It does seem that 5G may be an unnecessary step too far though. Telecomms companies are always wanting to drive innovation and each time the network gets bigger, better, faster more. IMO the 4G speeds are more than sufficient for video streaming to smartphones. The majority of people will just be using wireless with their smartphones, as they will have a fibre connection to their homes.
Why spend all the extra upgrading to 5G right now? Also with 5G the frequencies used seem to be getting closer and closer to microwave radiation. More 5G basestations are required to ensure a "decent" signal to all the urban areas. A decent signal at near microwave radiation means the 5G basestations could be cooking us more than the 4G signals. It's not something I've studied in detail myself, but I've seen people warning that energy emitted for 5G is significantly higher than 3G and 4G. People dislike cellphone basestations and the telcos are planning to get around this by incorporating mini 5G transmitters into streetlights so there won't be the need for additional masts with lots of unsightly aerials. I saw something about telcos doing a 5G trial somewhere in the NE of England and they removed all the trees growing in the pavement as these would interfere with the 5G signal from the streetlamps. There was also a photo of a tree that was allegedly next to a 5G streetlight and the nearest half of the tree to the 5G transmitter has withered and died. I don't know if it was fake news or not but I'm going to look into 5G a bit more to see what energy the 5G streetlights emit and at what frequency to determine if it poses a genuine health risk or if the people are just scaremongering.
I'll have plenty of time to do it as I live in South Africa and the technology here is a few years behind the UK. We got fibre run in our neighbourhood last year and our phones are still using 3G here.
Eight days ago on another BB we were discussing which shares are currently offering the best value. COVID-19 has caused a deep correction in the FTSE100 and there is an opportunity to buy into big companies at "bargain" prices. One of the other guys mentioned BT for a long-term hold. I wasn't so sure, as I'd previously bought in at around 300p and watched the price continually drop and I eventually cut my losses at around 220-230p.
I thought that Vodafone would have been a better bet at that time (BT was 130p and VOD was 115p). IFAIK the other guy hasn't bought BT yet and I wondered how long it would take the VOD SP to catch up with BT. Well 8 days later the 2 SP are 111p, so VOD dropped 3.5% and BT dropped almost 15%. The current BT price is now looking even more of a "bargain" but it seems that negative market sentiment is pulling BT down.
I've seen people mention BT sliding to 100p and this is reached it could be a psychological point where new bargain hunters pile in. It happened with VOD in March - the SP only finished under 100p for 1 day and bounced back strongly. There are lots of people out bargain hunting in the current climate and BT has historically paid good dividends so could be a good long-term hold. However, there is not much point in receiving a 5% annual dividend if the SP drops by 5% over the year.
So what plans have BT already put in place or plan to do to drive the business forward? Does BT have too many employees and influenced by the unions as lamtree suggests?
Bertram, the chances are there is a fair amount of Huawei NEs in the BT network. I was working for Fujitsu at the BT Martlesham labs from 2004 to 2008 during the BT21CN testing prior to rollout. Huawei was on-site in the labs, but they were the secondary or back-up vendors during network testing (with equipment for covering both the optical and access parts of the network). Huawei didn't do core routing on BT21CN. Fujitsu was the lead supplier for the copper and fibre MSANs that provided connectivity to customer CPE. BT probably dealt with Huawei as they were cheaper, so it probably helped them to negotiate better deals when buying equipment from the other vendors and the idea was there was no difference with traffic on the BT21CN network whether it was routed through Fujitsu or Huawei equipment, although the underlying MSAN technology and OAMP were totally different. BT had 2 vendors involved with each part of the network so if the lead vendor had issues during product development they had a back-up vendor they could buy kit from. I don't know what the final network roll-out looked like, but during lab testing it sounded like Fujitsu were going to supply around 75% of the access equipment and Huawei 25%.
LUCE is in a reasonable position to restart production as they have a big dedicated factory in China (about 500 miles from Wuhan) that produces their products and they sent out a relatively positive RNS saying none of their 1000 workforce has had the virus on 24th of March.
The big drop to around 40p on no news made no sense and they were oversold and quickly bounced back to the 60-70p range. IMO they still offer good value at under 75p and will get back to the figures you're quoting. I'd love to see this happening by the end of May, but IMO it will take up to 12 months for the recovery.
R1yam: "India is hopelessly positioned to fight off Covid-19 so....
When the virus knocks out the Indian workforce - and it surely will - don’t expect your WiFi and phones to keep on working. Having lost a fortune I’m looking to buy back in at .70 pence. This isn’t sour grapes folks his is reality. Until we have a cure we’re all knackered. Best of luck to all."
As fleccy says the Indian people typically look after the call centres and the NOC. The call centre provides 1st line support and the people in the NOC are constantly monitoring the state of the network for alarms. The 1st line support people deal with the simple faults (asking customers if it their MODEM plugged in and what the state of the LEDs flashing on the CPE). Any problems that aren't resolved by rebooting the CPE are escalated to 2nd line support who are UK based. The state of the network can also be checked by UK engineers who can connect to the NOC via a VPN. All the data paths of a telecommunications network have diversely routed resilient paths - if a fault is detected in the primary path the traffic is automatically switched to the secondary path (switching time under 50ms). An alarm is then sent to the NOC to warn of a LOS on the primary path. The UK field engineers can logon to the NE that generated the alarm to investigate the problem and replace any faulty hardware as necessary. Telecommunications networks are designed to support 5 9s reliability - ie being up a minimum of 99.999% of the time. There will be isolated network faults during COVID-19 but most will be hitless and won't disrupt customer traffic.
I worked in UK telecommunications (not for Vodafone) between 2000 and 2008. I worked on DWDM optical as well as copper and fibre MSANs. I haven't worked on any wireless equipment, but the OAM procedures should be the same. Part of my job was to train up the Indian NOC staff on what each alarm meant and how to diagnose faults. Even though the majority of the network monitoring was to be done in India, there was still a small UK NOC in the UK and this is probably also the case for Vodafone. The Indian people were okay with following performing database back-ups and following written upgrade procedures. As soon as something unexpected happened or there was a network problem the majority were lost and required us to show them how to fault-find and fix any errors.
drunkinftl it is interesting that Pt and Pd are rare earth metals, yet their primary value is driven by their uses in industry rather than it being a rare shiny metal.
Gold is used in industry, but it is primarily seem as a way of storing wealth. People hoard gold bars and it can be used virtually universally in place of FIAT. It is strange that the same hasn't happened with PGM metals!
It seems like Trump has always been a climate change denier. Obama's vehicle fuel economy targets of 5% reductions year on year were pretty challenging. Some of the automakers have probably been struggling to meet the rules but have said 2.4% is a much easier to achieve. Trump is proposing to relax the rules even more to 1.5% improvement year on year. The oil companies will benefit as they will sell more fuel if vehicles aren't as efficient, so it sounds like he may be doing this to protect their sales volumes...
Sorry Ian, I just skim read the post and saw 7 years and thought it must be a lockdown extension.
We are doing okay - day 6 of strict lockdown in SA. For 21 days we can only leave our properties to go food shopping or go to the pharmacy/doctor (except essential workers). Even the essential workers need to apply for a permit to say their company and what they are doing. The government weren't even allowing people to buy booze or fags during the lockdown! They have now allowed people to buy cigarettes again provided they buy them along with some food items. The booze ban has caught out a few people - yesterday there was a FB ad on the Somerset West pages saying they would swap some 420 for a few bottles of wine - preferably Sauvignon Blanc (not an April fool honest, it was so funny that I made a screenshot before it was pulled). Maybe the admin didn't know what 420 meant as their post was live for almost 50 minutes before it was removed! The funniest thing was they got a reply saying they didn't have any wine but could swap it for some cash...
Toyota have been working on a new lean burn engine using hydrogen rather than petrol or diesel. It sounds like they got the technology right. The bad thing is they don't need to use Pt or Pd as they don't need catalytic converters!
This could really kill the Pd demand and the price will plummet. The only good thing is the technology is 5 years off so hopefully somebody can persuade Putin to reduce the 7 year lockdown that Ian mentioned. Scary times...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLSvT_2ocDQ
Expecting positive growth in the 2019 results. Lots of director buys in September at between 80p and 97p seems to show they are happy with the performance of LUCE. I was hoping to see it back above 80p again tomorrow if good results released.
PDMSPiper, get my money back LOL in my dreams!!! I've already mentally written off this investment as my stake in MTFB is so low. As I'm 99% down now I'd be happy getting 5% of my investment back and if an Iclaprim sale returned 10% of my initial investment I'd be dancing in the streets even though that is currently illegal here! :-)
I'm living in South Africa and we are on 21 day full lockdown since midnight on Thursday. The SA definition of lockdown is much stricter than the UK. You cannot walk, jog, cycle or even take your dog for a walk on the streets here. Only food shops are open and people can only leave their house to go buy food, medication or seek medical attention. Even if people are living in flats or security complexes with communal grounds they cannot go out walking their dogs in the communal area according to police minister Cele. You need to stick to your house or private garden for exercising or dog walking and if you don't have one than the dog is supposed to do it's business in your house or flat! Luckily we have a big walled garden of over an acre for the dogs and kids to run about in!
PDMSPiper, LOL even predictive text on smartphones is changing worth to worry with a MTFB holding!
I'm also one of the unlucky ones who bought in before the St Valentine's day disaster and lost 99% of my investment. It isn't worth selling up as the current value of the holding wouldn't even buy my family lunch at a restaurant.
Let's hope a buyer sees Iclaprim as worth buying from MTFB and we get a big bounce.
Lamtree, having a laugh on a BB is one thing. IMO your posts are going too far now. We've had all the personal insults before until one of our friends left (again).
I suggest you go for a long walk before continuing on making jokes about mental illness. Some of us could end up with mental issues before COVID-19 lockdown is over...
Well there are so many "bargains" out there, as some shares have lost 50% or more since the fun and games with COVID-19 started. There are a few questions that I'm asking when looking to buy in:
1) Buy low and sell high to make money. How do you predict/guess when a particular share is at or near the low?
2) After COVID-19 some sectors are going to recover quicker than others. Which sectors are like to bounce back big to recover the big loss during COVID-19?
3) What FTSE100 companies are worth buying now and tucking away for the long-term?
I currently have LUCE, KIE, MTRO, IAG, MTFB and SAGA. LUCE is the only 1 in profit - bought at 47p as my short-term recovery share. My buy signal was it hit 30% of the year high and felt it was oversold when bought in at 47p - share kept falling and bottom was 40p. This is a very volatile small cap company with a big dedicated manufacturing plant in China (around 500 miles from Wuhan and no workers seem to be affected by the virus). Have set a limit sell at 83p to bank a 75% profit. I've previously traded LUCE last year and banked 50%+ profit on it.
KIE is a bit underwater (111p average) and I think this will recover fast as about 80% of the KIE sites seem to be still operating. IMO bargain current price.
IAG is good bet long-term and tempted to buy more below 200p. How much below 200p the share will reach is the gamble if want to hold short-term. IMO good long-term hold.
Other shares are very speculative at the moment - could rocket or could plummet depending on events and market sentiment. TBH I would buy more SAGA shares but MTRO is looking like a dog now! MTFB is a dead duck unless they find somebody to buy their antibiotic Iclaprim. 99% down on this one!
Lamtree, so you only posted you would short at 4p to emphasize that your EUA research didn't inspire confidence and you weren't unlucky enough to follow through.
I was did a few EUA trades from November through until suspension. Initially got in a 2.45p and sold roughly 35% of my holdings at 6.22p. Initial plan was to buy back in again at 5.77p but price kept on going up. I hold 47,777 shares at 3.5p average, so had just over a 100% paper profit when EUA suspended. I'm still 100% happy to be in EUA right now and look forward to their next RNS...
Lamtree, we can only speculate why the directors are staying away from social media. Hopefully the directors are now in the latter stages of negotiation a sale with one of the buyers and want to bring this for a shareholder vote rather than keeping in touch with shareholders via social media.
You now are taking a big interest in a share that you aren't invested in. Why is this? Boredom, you enjoy winding people up or you took on a short position? You did mention on this BB that you would be taking on a short position if the price hit 4p. Would you like to confirm if this was just talk to wind another poster up or did you follow through on your statement? Come on, Lamtree spill the beans!
But lamtree, EUA will not be expecting a member of Joe public to buy them out. That is probably why they attended the Mining Indaba in South Africa and PDAC in Canada. They were mixing with the people in the mining industry...
It is funny how people have "favourite" shares that they keep buying into as well as "dog" shares. I bought into BT at around 300p and it was downhill all the way! I finally bit the bullet and turned a paper loss into a real one at 230p ish. I had other stocks that helped make up the BT loss. I've watched it falling and thinking that BT must turn the corner sometime. TBH I still am still nervous about BT and would rather buy VOD (and the people shorting MTRO apparently also bought into VOD this week). If we say VOD is about 115p and BT is 130p, what do you think the upside price of BT is by the end of the year? Is there a possibility of VOD recovering quicker and catching up with the BT price? I haven't looked that much into VOD but as I say BT has been a "dog" share for me so far!