Member Info for OWLS

Invested here based on good recent momentum.

Certainly questions about the ethical credibility of Centrica.
I'm afraid that's capitalism for you, money comes first.

Now out after holding for 12 months. A 5% return, nothing to write home about but better than a loss.

Hi Spights,
I originally started off with a list of 200 shares that I monitored price movements in great detail, going back to 2000. Due to takeovers (such as William Hill) and company failures (such as Thomas Cook) this list has reduced to 157. Fortunately I have benefited from some takeovers and avoided the failures.
I am currently looking at a system that incorporates all 600+ FTSE companies and uses lots of financial metrics etc.

ZAC, well done with picking Fundsmith. However I believe that actively manged funds typically underperform index funds.

OCDO has been my best ever investment but it's all about the timing.

SPIGHTS, I'm in until the end of August so plenty of time to get to the top of my list, currently sat in 31st place (out of a list of 157).

ZAC, I think I read somewhere that 1% of companies have accounted for all share value gains, so unless you are lucky enough to hold one of those 1% companies then holding for the long term is not a wise move.
Investment funds are probably a good idea but I don't like paying others to make my investments for me. I like picking my own shares, it must be the inherent gambler in me.
Having said that I have opened a JISA for my granddaughter and that is all invested in a global ETF.

I agree Billy, VP lost his credibility a long rtime ago, his U turn was like St Paul on the road to Damascus.

ZAC,
I hold my shares for a year and then sell. My data tells me that this is the optimum time to hold shares.
This stops me holding on to shares that have fallen in the hope that they recover (they rarely do) or selling too early.
Obviously it doesn't always work but it works often enough to give me an average return of 12% per year.

Billy, who knew that £3.80 would be the low point ?
It has been in freefall from £29 so most people buying in that period woud have lost a lot of money.

SPIGHTS,
I'm good ta just not much to say about BP at the moment.
Concentrating on my horse racing at the moment, much more fun than shares.
I probably spend 90% of my time on the horses and 10% on my shares, even though shares provide 90% of my income and 10% from the horses.

SlickM,
By buying back shares the company has less cash to pay dividends therefore ultimately the shareholder is neither better nor worse off. I see no benefit in it, I would rather they invested the cash or increased the dividend.

Harbour is a bit risky, it's been my worst performing share over the years but I keep getting suckered in. Down 30% on it at the moment. It's been clobbered by the windfall tax.

Trish,
My last buys were Drax, Centrica and Jupiter Fund Mangement on the 5th of Jan.
Centrica is up 8%, Jupiter 6% and Drax breakeven. BATs is down 8% in the same period.

Effix is the laughing stock of the DRX board, stating it will never reach £3 before it then rose to £8.46.

You could have bought these at any time over the last 8 years and made a profit.

It must be terrible for anybody shorting.

Tried to book a service online but keep getting the message "booking system unavailable, please try again later".
Given up after 3 goes on different days and will go to quickfit instead. Also £20 cheaper.
That's probably my custome gone.
I won't be investing either.

By the way I seem to have been taken off the list !

What an optimistic bunch we are !

14 expect the share price to be higher, 2 to be lower.

A similar contest was run on HBR. I submitted a price just blow the current price, the other 20 or so expected the price to increase. I won 2 of the 3 competitions before the guy running it had had enough and sold up.