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MTRO aren't only seeing low volumes - they are loads of weird trades of 1 and 2 buying and selling shares. They are ordinary trades rather than algos. Does anybody have an idea what is going on here?

I've not had much luck with SAGA over the years. Cannot remember the exact numbers of 1st purchase but bought on a Motley Fool recommendation at almost 190p and sold at 125p. Bought again at 110p and sold at 55p (only sold then to put money on a better bet to recoup the losses). Bought at 40p and got out with 10%+ profit (3rd time lucky!) Thought SAGA were a no brainer at 30p and they still dropped to under 15p! Still got them at 30p and have been seriously thinking of averaging down. They are a fairly diversified business with insurance making up the bulk of their profit, yet they are valued as if they are totally in the cruise business! They had old ships that they scrapped and commissioned 2 brand new ones. One launched Summer 2019 and the other due for launch later this year. Both are all balcony ships and carry a maximum of 999 passengers - SAGA have 50+ age restriction, although only 1 of a couple need to be over 50 as long as their partner is over 40. Really undervalued IMO but SAGA share price seems to be driven by poor market sentiment over the past few years and this may continue after COVID-19. Everyone uses the cliche of "cruise ships being floating petri dishes" but their brand new ships have spacious cabins and bathrooms so there might be more demand for these rather the mega cruise ships of the other operators.

MKS - they are a blast from the past. Used to have these as the bulk of my share portfolio in the 1990s. I think I bought hem at 300p or so and sold for 400-475p.

Was also considering AA when under 16p but thought about it too long and missed out. SAGA is still sitting at around 16p so the trick is to pick which one has the most upside over the next few months. Buying AA gives some diversity, but I still think SAGA could climb strongly in the coming months and be nudging 50p by year end if we get COVID-19 under control. DYOR and as I've said I've previously got SAGA well wrong!

Amers, After watching MTRO for a while I bought at 200p in mid Jan and had a paper profit of almost 15% by the end of Jan. Unfortunately I didn't pull out then and I bought some more at just below 180p. My reasoning was the previous low was 170p and MTRO was bouncing about near 200p for around 4 months before I bought in. I thought it would bounce back up off 170p and climb back up again to 200p but it continued to slide. Oops!

JTMacs, EUA has 2 main sites - Monchetundra and West Kytlim. Monchetundra (and flanks) makes up the vast amount of the EUA in ground PGM (maybe 90% Monchetundra and 10% West Kytlim?) EUA have previously been mining at West Kytlim for a few years (previously using contractors) and it is almost like a "hobby mine" for them. They have 2 diggers on-site, another and a tipper on order and they have serviced their wash plant. Very small scale.

Monchetundra is HUGE - something like 20km long? Needs investment/equipment/labour on a much larger scale to mine all the PGM. IMO we definitely need to sell Monchetundra or do a JV with one of the big players to monetize the in-ground assets. I was hoping Nornickel would either fully buy us out or buy Monchetundra as we are on their doorstep. If they just take Monchetundra, EUA would still exist and they could pay shareholders a special dividend. So my guess is we will still have the EUA shares and have WK to mine and get a special dividend as part of the payment for MT. Rest of the money from MT sale could also go to developing WK and mining that faster (generating an annual dividend). They have already taken on a couple of experts and the RNS said they are looking at adding to directors so IMO this sounded like a full takeover may not happen.

Mega derampers say it is all smoke and mirrors and EUA has overstated their position and this is spooking some people (as some people have gone all in on EUA). On day of suspension I was 100% happy that I was in and I'm going to make a packet - now only feel 90% certainty that I'll come out with over 7.2p per share. Two big positives are the 2 long-term directors have heavily invested their own money in EUA and it has been trading for years. One of the new experts they hired isn't being paid a salary - he gets EUA shares so he must be happy that the share price has potential.

My major concern is Christian Schaffalitzky is now wanting to start a crypto investment for PGMs starting later this year. If they don't appoint a Nomad and get delisted from AIM would they try to raise money via this crypto currency offer and take the company private? Even if this did happen, they would need to pay a fair price but would getting payment be straightforward when the company isn't officially trading on AIM?

Theosus, the EUA BB has tended to have people that have been ramping the share and they gang up and bully people who say anything negative. It's not so bad now as the share is suspended so everyone is trying to make sense of the various scant RNS that have been issued over the past couple of months. The rampers still think that anybody saying negative things must be holding a short but that isn't true. One of the rampers may have written the blog exposing TW and he may have had several previous names on the EUA BB and been banned because of bullying. I'm talking about Ruskiemole/Gulagescapee/Puntersfriend who have always had the same MO. They come along and seem pretty knowledgeable about the company but soon dominate the BB and pick fights with people who have alternative opinions. They play the man rather than debate any alternative views. Quickly break down and storm off in a huff and delete their account or get banned. IMO this guy also put together a research note from Gulag Capital Partners that valued EUA at 70p. Gulag Capital Partners doesn't seem to be a registered company - just a guy with a twitter account. Another guy TrickyDickieTwo is always called a deramper/shorter, but he showed a screenshot of his holdings and bought into EUA at 0.45p and has at least 100,000 shares (probably has 1 or 2m). He brings up valid concerns but he is bullied by the rampers (and some of the rampers think he is TW or works with him). There is another guy called Lamtree who doesn't have any holding or short position in EUA but he spends lots of time upsetting the rampers. It is quite common for posts or complete threads to be deleted on the EUA BB - happens several times per week. The MTRO BB is so much more relaxing than going into that madhouse!! Sorry for the off-topic discussions but we would be keelhauled and made to walk the plank if we had this discussion on the EUA BB.

Amers, I've just been doing some reading on Tom Winnifrith.
https://sharetipstersuncovered.wordpress.com/category/tom-winnifrith/

That sharetipster blog has lots of other pages about TW that shows he definitely isn't an investment guru (including not doing DD on companies he was buying/investing in). Virtually all the shares he tipped in 2011 and 2012 lost money and he was sacked. I can now understand why he looks for holes in AIM shares and sells subscriptions saying which ones are worth shorting given his past performance! He also previously recommended shorting NCYT and that wasn't a good call either!

IMO the prospects at EUA don't look too bad. We all hoped that a big offer from another company to buy out EUA would have materialized by now and this hasn't happened. It is more likely that either somebody bids on Monchetundra or we do a JV partnership with one of the big miners on Monchetundra.

That's 2 Nomads that we have heard are dodgy, but hopefully EUA will announce they have appointed one of the other Nomads with a better reputation in the near future.

JTMacs, sounds like the broker did okay out of that deal then! So what sort of trade does the buyer do for this? Do they set a max price they will pay for the deal? About 5% over the current price sounded like a big margin to me (but I only make small purchases and sometimes set limit buys below current price). It will be interesting to see if some other large buys come through after close.

Is there any reason why the buyer had to pay over 95p to buy over 100,000 shares? That's around a 5% premium on the price prior to the buy. Is it an impatient buyer, the broker taking advantage or normal practice to secure that amount of shares?

If you take the closing selling price on this LSE website I'll pick 7.2p as the site will have likely crashed well before close! :-)

Please put me down for 7.37p finish

Just around Easter - a perfect time for MTFB to make a resurrection!

Not quite day trading, but my limit sell on LUCE was triggered today at 84p. Banked over 75% profit in under 1 month. If somebody timed things perfectly and bought right at the low last month they would have more than doubled their money today. The SP will probably still keep rising, but I'm happy with that profit in these uncertain time. Did anybody but into AA at 15p? I missed the boat on it and it is now nudging 17p.

Fleccy, there seems to be so much negative news around 5G right now. This is another negative that the telecomms companies will need to deal with - more so VOD than BT. I'm a physicist but specialized in physical electronics and semiconductor technology when I graduated in the late 80s. I've worked on the optical and (wired) access parts of telecom networks, but never been involved with wireless. I've seen a few Youtube videos mentioning the evils of 5G during this lockdown period, but it isn't something I've looked into myself. You mention gamma rays as non-ionizing: they don't directly knock electrons from atoms, but I wouldn't want everyday exposure to them!

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...