Proposed Directors of Tirupati Graphite explain why they have requisitioned an GM. Watch the video here.
Exactly two months since last post. Its been a stinker the last two years. Hoping things are finally turning around. People have been saying this for months, but a few things picking up, and falling back immediately!. Maybe the weather is on the change too. Wishing you all well. O
Strange budget , needless to say. The Guardian were spot on about the British Isa . All my shares are in british companies with global business. So thanks for the extra £5k. Now if he made all Isa British only investments that would have had a some impact. It just makes these cabinet ministers look so dumb
N. It was a great holiday thanks. Sorry about you partners hip. Would be good to get that sorted.
A couple of things occurred to me yesterday. How have I avoided a takeover this year so far! I read a report yesterday about 100 companies delisting or being taken over last year and there are 40% fewer listed companies since 2008 crash. Surely the fewer companies the more in demand their stock will become. It is concern, and I dont know how they can reverse this trend.Spt taken out today on a criminally low valuation. Dont know how the board can recommend to shareholders. Shameful. Whatever happened to long term or even mid term investing? Some stocks are beginning to improve maybe the budget boost or inflation or anything but the health of the company! Gl
Hi all and a very belated happy new year. We saw it was snowing so decided to extend our trip another month😀! So we made it back. Leaving Australia on saturday flying in to sunday, landing in Doha back into saturday and then waiting 3 hours to take off on sunday again. confused ? I know we were! The new Qatar planes are just amazing, its like gliding with such low engine noise. Still a bit cramped but pretty good considering. It seems to me that airline food gets worse as the years roll by. Would not have thought it possible, but glad we took our own food.
In Australia there were quite extraordinary temperature drops. So one day it would be 38 degrees , the next only 20. We stayed in Melbourne with my partner’s sons who have the most amazing rental with pool at a very good rate in a very leafy suburb with lots of parks all around. Animal wise we must have come across virtually everything out in the bush snakes, a tiger snake which my partner actually stepped over inadvertently! Platypus, Joeys, koalas, Emu, posums, Some enormous Rays in shallow waters, no sharks fortunately. Amazing trip. Great welcome home at Heathrow long stay. Car had a flat, then they tried to charge us £950 on top of what we had already paid! Just what you need at 6 a.m after 30 hours travelling.
Kept an eye on the markets and even did some trading. USA, Japan and Australia all reaching new highs and the good old UK just slumbers alomg in its post Brexit wreckage. We are the laughing stock globally. Despite that their appears to be some deep value. Trouble is companies post great record results and a few days later its all forgotten. Think there will be many more takeouts this year. GL all
hi all. yes t we did indeed we finally made it to australia . hellish journey. started off well on an a380 which was luxurious and quiet to doha, then transferred to an old bucket shop plane for the 14 hour leg to melbourne, absolute torture. so the first thing we did was extend our stay for another month to february. i read about a family who hare flying and decided to go overland, it’s taken then 4 months to get to indonesia. probably to a month to get out of dover. anyway it is amazing here. been up the great ocean road and stayed in a forest by the sea. melbourne is about ten times the size i was expecting. a very young vibrant city with every cuisine from around the world and the best coffee which it is renowned. we are staying with my partners kids who somehow got the most amazing rental with pool in an area like a leafy wimbledon. parks everywhere and massive. gone do a train trip and hopefully see a bit more of old rural australia with a delightful lady we met in dorset last summer who lives here. that’s the joy of travel ,random meetings. yes the market is ****. still some signs of life though. this is the worst bear market ever apparently for small caps. somehow my isa is still above water, but a couple of pretty dire positions, that don’t really deserve it. still hanging onto n4p which i bought a few more of last week. still think they could pull a couple of rabbits from the hat. one of the partnerships operate from queensland uni which suffered the most horrendous flooding. hope you are all well and hanging in there or a bit better? best wishes and happy festivities
Hello T . Hope you are well. Has been a case of head down, perhaps not completely buried. Lot of conflicting and conflict news. Hopefully the news on Canada/USA border crossing is not a terror attack. We dont need anything else just now. The Dow didnt seem to flinch , it actually went up. Macro economics! People keep calling the end of bear market but now the government tells us we are in a 2 year recession. Looks like a May election to me. Cut the taxes they just put up, honour the triple lock to keep pensioners on board and avoid miserable winter election which they would almost certainly loose. They could just pull it off. Its their only chance basically. Mixture of how businesses are fairing and some rather staggering takeovers. Hotel chocolate? Must have overdosed on mars bars. Good luck all . Off for christmas in the sun to Aus next week Hoping this becomes habit forming!
Hi Nez. RCDO Part of my new strictness. it didnt do what I expected with all the positive news and director buys so exited with very small loss, which appears to have been the right move as it has fallen another 10%+. Will look to buy back at some stage as Looks a very good stock. It seems unless you are in takeover talk at the moment shares are going into retreat for the foreseeable. Glad I got out of Japan too, in fact there is nothing I regret getting out of. Narrow escape with Mission Group, which I also liked, but serious debt issue revealed today. Tried to buy into OTMP last month , which got take over last week. Never any shares available to purchase as all being mopped up by directors. Otherwise known as insider dealing. FA regulation as usual. Going to be a while before I buy anything else now. Thats the problem , I think even takeover bids will slow down now. Off to Australia next month for a break from all this hopefully. Gl all
Actually still have 9 stock! Forgot about Anic, the black sheep of the family currently trades at nearly 50% discount to asset value. Likely stay like that for another couple of years I suspect.
Hiya all . Another day another basket case gets taken over. There are many takeover candidates, but bot in my worst nightmare could I imagine the train wreck that is RTN be one of them. The only thing worth salvaging from the group is Wagama which they paid way too much for. Naturally the last time I visited I noticed a massive drop in the quality of food . We shared 1 meal between us with a couple of sides and it was still over priced. The actually have a net asset value per share of minus 30p ! When the stock price was about 32p. How on earth can it be worth 65p to Apollo.? All very fishy. A lot of commentators making a lot of very good points with completely different opinions. Thats a great example of just how confused the market is. Hardly surprising, but considering we are living in some of the worst times since the epic biblical stories of atrocities its amazing that the ftse is still in the top half if 7000.
Am down to 8 stock now as have been relieved of Smv a small cap set to disrupt the crooks that currently rule our house transaction industry. The Aussie company Pexa know a bargain when they sees one and played a blinder to acquire this on the cheap. There is no regulation in AIM. Somewhat surprisingly 4 of my 8 holdings are in profit. 4 paying dividends and 1 hoping to restore dividend next year. All in AIM! Must have a death wish, but thatbis where I see the best opportinity. Current top holdings: Niox, Eqls, Atm, Avg, also in Cog, Cnc, Inse and N4p my Foinavon of the stockmarkert which I fully expect to return at 100/1! Averaging up is key, as is timing, although there are exceptions obviously, but that is a law of averages itself. I would say averaging up is at least ten times more profitable than averaging down. as ever good luck and Best Wishes O
There is that nagging feeling that these markets are so well orchestrated by the few playing ‘illegal’ games.’ So easy to get caught out. I mentioned before that I operate a much tighter stop loss these days. If a share doesnt move or react how i expect, or heads south i’m out. Its the only logic that works, because updates, cash and balance sheets count for zilch. Well out of Japan, what a disaster area. Can thank Jim Mellon for that piece of useless advise. Someone pointed to the fact that pension funds are at their lowest in equities. That makes a certain amount of sense as there are rates of 6%. Even if high interest rates are here for longer (they change their minds weekly if not daily). Spt came out with a profit warning after completing a share buyback for cancellation. With over 200 million cash the price has still dropped another 30% to 86p!. I’m not in that one but used to trade it between £2-£3 not that long ago. Not going in even at this level because there is no sense or trust in this market and it it would appear to me that it is their customers who are in far worse positions, had a dabble in Igg, but got out when it went ex div. So just about break even on that. Still in. The basket case n4p . Just had another raise to buy another basket case in the nanotech life science department, it will get there one day. Hopefully before I die! There are some very good companies that I concentrate on still . My core portfolio is down to 9 now. Stopped the punts as they are just not working. Seems harder than ever, maybe a reflection of the times we live in. The eternal optimist, it will get better. GL
There will always be acquisitions and takeovers. I dont think bot trading will takeover on any major level. It supposedly is a device to balance the books. The current market decline uk is thanks to Brexit, inflation , Russia and and the dosey spineless BoE who like the ftse simply follow the FED. At some stage the market boom will return. Remember Gordon Brown declaring he had seen an end to boom and bust thanks to his genius economic management just 6 months before hit the worst financial crisis in living memory. Short term forecasting is pointless. As mentioned this is a long term game . The difficulty is the acceleration of technology and the speed at which some of it is superseded and becomes outdated. Gl all
Well here we are still dithering. China cut interest rates to boost their economy and we tinker with increasing interest rates. Bloody jobs worths. Does it really make a difference? Will never really know because they change their minds every other day based on what is going in in other countries. Fortunately got out of most of what I didnt and possibly shouldnt have got in, and the rest is up to the gods. At least have some decent dividends to help out, but the east doesnt look good again, so well out of there, but of course that still effects our trade to some degree, some of which should be positive. If its not one thing its another. Would have thought the markets would have learned to live with that by now
Hi everybody. Hope you are enjoying the sun if not the market. Bloomin Ocado! I suppose Amazon is the obvious fit. How that works for Morrison and M&S i’m not sure. I’m only in Aim NB! Its seems to be going ok, but very select few. Has been a bit erratic to put it mildly. As one goes up another couple go down. I am sort of making some headway, going from a down hill struggle to an uphill struggle. Lets hope that 5% rate will do it for now. Bailey confident of getting back to 2% inflation early next summer. Not sure I am as confident in his judgement so far. If thats true hopefully my kids will have shielded off most of the mortgage rise as they both got 5 year fixed with 2 to run. China and Japan managed to avoid this level of inflation with low interest rates. This looks like the western banks screwing everyone again after we bailed them out!
Hi Vulnax. Good to hear from you. Sounds a sensible approach. i cant actually add more cash. So I am trading a bit more than usual. Gervais Williams (Premier Miton) says this is the best market to get in he has seen in 30 years for small caps! People rate him highly, I’m not so sure. I think some fund managers are as deluded as some directors. I have managed to repair my portfolio considerably but still well adrift from my highs of 2 years ago. Edmund Shing from Parisbas says its a stock pickers market. It always has been imo. I guess its easier when there is a general market direction. My best performers have been NIox, Eqls and Atm, which luckily for me, so far, are my biggest holdings. I managed to let go of Cnic which was one of my longest largest holdings. Jut persistently failed to meet higher expectations. Always a worry that I’ve been impatient, but after two big buy back sessions it actually has been gradually drifting down. I hope I have learned that there is no profit in arguing with the market. It was a tough decision and still not sure it was right. I really sharpened up my loss tolerance to less than 10% in some cases on new purchases and much quicker to grab a profit when it happens. Intend to hold my larger holdings for a good bit longer if I can. BW & GL all
morning brigadevians. this is an epic struggle! i bought into jet2 on recent weakness and a recommendation from ‘****ney rebel’ on the paul scott podcast. also listen to paul hill. all these guys invest on a much bigger scale than me and interview directors and fund managers with some use full experiences. hill reckons he is right 60% of the time, but the ones he is right on, are generally bigger holdings. this is partly the advantage of averaging up rather than averaging down. they all agree how difficult this market is , with any good news quickly fading away. i really had not appreciated the financial problems of america. the debt ceiling raise is small comfort and is being hard fought. it amazes me how much more the ftse seems to agonise over american debt than the dow. we dont even have a deal with them. one thing agreed is that uk stocks are dirt cheap, arent they always! could be some be some more m&a over the summer. the other thing i discovered recently from two directors of small companies is how much more scrupulous their auditors are being, which should be a good thing. ocdo back at £3.65. i remember agonising whether to buy at the placing price of £18 a couple of years back. long term investing seem to be a thing of the past. good luck all
Aftrnoon all. Thought somEbody ought to check in! Hope you are all ok. Tight bit of an overhaul on my PF. Out of Japan really disappointing . Probably fly now I’ve gone. If I learnt one thing its how crap investment trusts are. Ken Wotton on the other hand who runs several is pretty shrewd at picking small cap stock. they do take time but many of his picks are coming good now most notably Inse, Brk, Mtw, and best of all Mgp which has been taken over, but there are several more I am keeping tabs on. Made a great profit on animal feed specialist Anp which obviously rose to far on the bounce so that was one of my best two week profits. The question . now is is it oversold again. Niox , the asthma diagnostic firm has been my best long term performer, currently known as a razor blade stock because of its repeat sales. Diagnostics is an interesting and lucrative sector. Mostly out of cyber security which has been a total disaster for me. Volumes are still very low keeping values suppressed. Fund managers keep saying how undervalue their share are but basically their discounts have all widened because of lack of confidence . Many are too big to trade like private investors can. when they do trade it tends to spike the market in both directions i thought it was a good way of investing in foreign countries, but too many problems with currencies and geopolitics. As ever good luck and BW
And now smv with multiple takeover offers. At this rate I dont need to sell anything, my stock will all get bought out. Shame is they are obviously worth considerably more which is why they are being bought. Who says money is tight?
Morning all. Just got my first takeover since god knows when . i mentioned MGP the other day partly because Gresham’s Ken Wooton mentioned it as a takeover target along with most of his other investments, but this did stand out. Un fortunately the market didnt like Cnic’s results this morning not doubling profits again, so that wiped out that particular joy! Gotta love this crazy market
Things must be improving . My last ten trades are all turning a profit . Anpario 30% up. Mind you haven taken a couple of large hits, yet unconverted. Should help me enormously with the shrinking capital gains tax allowance!
I dont own the bluechip anymore, decided to bank first profit of the new tax year!