Member Info for Numbers

The shops in South Africa don't seem to have been hit as hard as the UK shops. We have a shop called Woolworths which is the equivalent of M&S in the UK where the posh people go. Pick'n'Pay and Checkers are equivalent to Tesco and Morrisons. Pick'N'Pay has now introduced a 1 hour slot exclusive to pensioners at all their stores in SA. Every Wednesday from 07:00 to 08:00 the shop only lets in pensioners and they are supposed to show ID to get in and they also get double points on their loyalty card. Pick'N'Pay is also the only shop that I know of that offer home deliveries. Other retailers are attempting to start a home delivery service but this is likely to happen sometime in April.

Hand sanitiser is virtually impossible to source here and the tinned tuna was gone in Checkers but most other items are still in stock including toilet paper. People are selling it on-line at 3x the retail price and masks that were R200 for 20 are now R999 to R1250 for 20. You could buy a 100 pack of disposable gloves for under R200 and people are selling these gloves for R10 per per now! The president has introduced price fixing measures so people can report the rip-off merchants, but TBH I don't know if they will have the available manpower to investigate and deal with the transgressors.

More worrying is the president's speech on Sunday had many good ideas to identify and isolate people who were possible carriers. They were checking disembarking passenger's temperatures before going through security at the airports. Passengers also needed to complete a form that asked 6 questions about the countries they had visited, whether they had a fever and if they had contact with a known carrier of the COVID-19 virus. One high-risk couple wondered what would happen to them at the airport. Their forms weren't read on the spot - they were just collected and filed (hopefully to be examined later and people contacted if any other passengers test positive later).

I saw the same sort of thing happening with LUCE yesterday, although it went on for virtually the whole day. The SP was gradually walked down from 52p at open to 42p at around 14:00. So the price dipped by 20% on no news. Today it opened up and there were 2 big buys of £146K and £80K at 55p in the early morning. LUCE hit 75p today (50%+ rise) before dropping back.

Is this the MMs taking the SAGA SP down to trigger stop losses and to get weak holders to sell at a cheap price? Let's see if there are some big SAGA buys on Monday morning!

Yes, no use pulling the money out now at such a low price. If a buyer is found for Iclaprim we will recover some money. If not at least it rolls on until the next tax year and I can offset the MTFB losses against the (hopefully substantial) gains with EUA.

Perhaps yesterday was a MM tree-shake to hit some stop losses or to get nervous investors to sell up to buy up cheap shares. I'd normally bank the circa 50% paper profit but maybe I should wait until next week to see if a surprise RNS is in the pipeline...

LUCE also doing well - currently up over 50% today. I bought yesterday at just under 47p. Couple of fairly sizable buys at 55p earlier in the morning, 1 at £80K and another at £146K.

Volcano, yesterday was a strange day. There were lots of auto sells that continually dropped the price down and below 47p looked attractive to me as 30% of peak price. I have no idea what caused all these auto sells = maybe a big player wanted to take some money out but why at such a low price?

Definitely a big recovery now and there 2 big buys early in the morning - largest being £146K. Couldn't see a reason for the fall yesterday and today no real reason for the rise - very volatile share. Today the buys are outpacing sells by 9:1.

Many areas of South Africa have the same problems as Nairobi with thousands of people living in informal settlements or townships. The townships have communal toilet blocks and water standpipes – I’m not sure what the ratio of shacks to toilets is but it could be 10 shacks sharing 1 toilet. A significant proportion of the SA population have HIV/AIDS or TB, so have a compromised immune system. The combination of thousands of people living in cramped conditions, a large proportion having compromised immune systems and having shared water/toilets means COVID-19 entering a South African township would be catastrophic to that area. One doctor estimated a single undiagnosed COVID-19 carrier entering a township could infect 10,000 residents in a township due to people living in close proximity with shared toilet and cleaning facilities.

The shops here haven't run out of toilet paper or food yet. It is just the hand sanitiser that is virtually impossible to buy in the shops and tinned tuna is disappearing fast.

I bought a few yesterday at just under 47p. Difficult to catch a falling knife, but SP was only 30% of year high before CV. Still continued to fall but SP has really picked up today.

There was a big buy earlier today:
20-Mar-20 09:19:30 55.00 266,309 Buy* 146.47k O

Most shares are very volatile - although FTSE100 index may only move up or down <3% in a day, some shares are showing >10% daily swings.

The 2 new ships may suit Branson as they are virtually brand new. AFAIK the Spirit of Discovery was launched under 12 months ago. The Spirit of Adventure is currently being fitted out and due for launch in August 2020. Richard Branson may like the idea of a brand new unused "virgin" ship that will be ready for launch just after COVID-19 has (hopefully) been brought under control.

It looks like the Virgin Voyages ships have a passenger capacity of almost triple the SAGA ships (2770 against 999), but are going after the "adult only" market like SAGA rather than doing family cruises. SAGA could get lucky with an offer from Virgin, even if they don't get as much money back as they paid for the ships.

The ships will be profitable in the long-term, but IMO in the current economic market selling the ships, reducing debt and concentrating on developing their core insurance business would lead to a share price recovery much quicker than if SAGA keep the ships.

Perhaps investor sentiment. The PIs perceive KIE as more risky than BBY? Looking at stats for today, more sellers than buyers for KIE. More buyers than sellers for BBY (suggests bargain hunters now think BBY near bottom and is good to hold)?

Also ii shorts - KIE at around 5% shorts (although shorts now reducing). BBY shorts are below 1%.

So you now think that the SAGA share price is dropping to 7p. How did you get to that figure? Did you throw a couple of dice? :-)

Theosus, your comment about your wife getting lucky with her timing of buying MTRO reminds me of another story. In the 1990s I was working in a UK defence company and several of the guys there were right into betting on the horses. They were in their 30s and 40s and would buy the Racing Post and spend their breaks studying form and picking a pony that was likely to make them some money over the weekend. These guys put together a company sweepstake where everybody put in £1 and picked a horse they wanted to back. I don't know exactly how things worked as I wasn't into horse racing and thought that I'd end up losing every week. There was, however, a young woman (early 20s) who took part in this sweepstake and she also knew nothing about horses but she picked any horses that had a "royal" name or connection. If she couldn't find one that week she just picked a horse with a name that she liked. They ran this sweepstake for months and guys studying form in the Racing Post were all performing worse than the woman who knew nothing about horses. They would have made more money if they stopped buying the Racing Post and just gave her 30p cash each every week to supply them with her hot tip for the weekend! :-)

The guys also did a Grand National sweepstake where people paid £1 and picked a piece of paper out of a bag with the name of a random horse. This woman also won that sweepstake on one of the years. I guess that some people are naturally lucky and others need to keep learning to refine their techniques before their luck finally improves!

No, the page they accessed on the EUA website was from March 2019. This just gives us an idea that the temperature rises enough to thaw the ice sometime in April and mining can only commence when they can pump water.

Tuesday 14/04/20 at 07:00

It looks like a glitch. Tullow oil was showing at below 10p - almost 70% down. When I looked at the few trades they had went through at mid 20s...

All my shares are red except IAG. It started off red today and even dipped below 400p, but ended 2% up in the last couple of hours. Still lost about 25% since 24th of February but it is an airline share and it could be hit harder in the next couple of weeks depending on whether COVID-19 is brought under control or not. only bounced because the US airlines bounced on opening today.

Still waiting patiently for EUA to come back solid blue from suspension.

I thought I was getting a bargain buying at just over 30p, as it wouldn't dip below the 30p then bounce back up. Looks like I got that wrong and it has gone below 27p now. The only positive is I sold SAGA on 24th February at 43.3p with the intention of buying back at bottom, so losses aren't as bad now as if I'd held.

It is amazing how the current market sentiment is reducing the price of this share - down more than IAG since 24th February (IAG roughly 20% down and SAGA almost 40%).

vred, it appears IAG has hit some bad turbulence with the Coronavirus. I was seriously considering buying some more today when it dipped below 420p but decided to wait and see whether the virus is likely to be brought under control or whether a global pandemic is likely.

Now isn't a good time to be holding airline shares or holiday/cruise shares. I had SAGA shares, but sold at a small profit to buy IAG just before they plummeted from over 40p to low 30s. It's a case of whether to average down with IAG or buy back into SAGA. I cannot really see why SAGA has fallen so much - they do cruises for the over 50s as part of their business, but selling insurance still makes up a good proportion of their revenue and they have been making cost savings. They have big loans to pay for their shiny new ships, but their new ships are bigger and more efficient than their old vessels. They are almost 100% booked for cruises over this summer and passengers would lose the majority of their money if they cancelled their bookings now.

The IAG price is now virtually at the same price I bought at in August 2019 - bought at 437p and sold for 648p in January 2020. That was around 45% profit in under 6 months. It could be a case of Deja Vu - if the Coronavirus is brought under the control in the next month without significant flight restrictions between Europe and the USA, I wouldn't be surprised if IAG is back up and approaching 700p by Christmas. If we end up in a global pandemic then the share price will be kept low - how low will depend on the amount of flight cancellations that happen over the coming months...

Cuddothisnow, your posts MAY make more sense to the rest of us on the MTRO BB here if you wait until the drink or drugs start to wear off before posting any more as you are making little sense... :-)

I'm hoping that MTRO is up on Monday. The FTSE dipped by more than the Dow on Friday so it could bounce up 1%+. Most of the shares I hold have lost more than the FTSE in the past week (not a good time to own IAG shares!) and I have LUCE that has a manufacturing facility about 400 miles from the epicentre of the Corona virus outbreak.

Originally bought MTRO at 200p but bought some more at 167.6p to reduce average down to 188p.