Member Info for phoenixchi

This share makes me want to give up the markets. Seemed like a terrific set of results, one broker upgrades and one downgrades and the yet the price drops badly. What is even more annoying is how it is giving up most of its recent gains. No sense here now, unless there is something we don't know. Time to depart GPOR because this is just too irrational.

Love this share. Been with it since the early 90p's and done very nicely. In hindsight, though, this could have been the one to set me up for rest of life such has been its success. But, if I had a shop selling hindsight I would been doing even better than PAYS! Anyway, what is this 'predictions of a further 16% bottom-line rise next week'? Can anyone explain? I can't find any reference to it but I might be being very thick. Very, very hard to have any reservations about PAYS and so this isn't a reservation, more of a tiny niggle. Over the past years since I bought in, there has always been something to look forward to. FTSE250, Skrill, plus much moore. I believe these have been a factor in driving the price upward. However, after the last full year results we had nothing left for a while. Great results, trading in FTSE250, Skrill merger going well. Hence, along with general market jitters, PAYS price fell for a few weeks. It has come back strongly now and I am hoping that anticipation of half-year results will serve as a fresh motivation for buyers to get on board. If it doesn't, and if the general market starts to fall again until Euro vote, I wonder if we might see the price drift downwards again. Hope not.

Totally agree. It is beyond belief that the generally idiotic public, now weaned on a diet of X Factor, paying £8 for a doughnut and a coffee, changing their 'mobie' every five minutes, and generally soaking up all the debt they can, should be allowed such a crucial vote. If we vote out, then I'm looking to leave for good.

Thank the Lord there is some sense with PAYS investors! The consequences of leaving are dire but the general public are so poorly educated about finance they do not understand the near-catastrophe an exit will bring upon us. It is absolutely spot on to say that a lot of people are only looking at this from an immigration angle. It worries me because at my sports club, right on the border of Notts and Yorkshire, there is a real majority in favour of exit because of immigration. They are poorly informed over finance and think I am an 'immigrant' because I come from London! I was there yesterday and there are a small handful of members from Eastern Europe, so why so many are worried about immigration and losing our national identity beats me. They should try living in East London for a while. Cameron, though, is an idiot for putting this to the vote and taking such a risk. He and his advisors openly used this an an election tool last year never thinking it might be a close vote. I bet they are bricking it now because if we vote to exit he will have to resign. I am really concerned that this might be a much closer vote than is generally thought because, as I have already said, the overriding issue about the EU is our economic status without it yet too many just don't get that. One idiot yesterday tried to tell me that 'last time we voted to come out of the ERM in 1975 we powered ahead as a nation'. Should he be voting about an EU exit? I think not. Was there even a vote about an exchange rate mechanism is 1975? I don't recall one, and as for powering ahead. Well, we powered ahead to borrow from the IMF in 1976 because we were broke and then powered ahead some more into two winters of discontent and total chaos. Yet, his vote might end up dictating what happens to my investments. I give up!

It beats me what is going on with this share the past few days. Up and down by similar amounts with no news that I am aware of emerging. After nearly 30 years of playing the stock market I sadly am beginning to conclude that manipulation is rife among the MM's and that this share is possibly falling victim to exactly that.

Anyone got any idea / theory / knowledge why this share has fallen over the past few days, despite the market being positive overall? Is it profit taking after a sustained good run or is something else brewing. Hopefully the reverse will stop soon but I'd be interested to know if anyone has a view.

Don't understand what you mean here, riddock57. The share price has been hovering around £1.90 for many weeks ever since that was the price CSC agreed to pay for the takeover. In other words, there is no speculation left in this SP unless rumor dictates another. very, very late bid is on the horizon. The SP did its big jump from around about £1 last autumn when the first of a few potential suitors, Capita, came bidding at £1.60. Or, am I missing something in what you are saying?

Yes, have to agree. At present this seems a share which will have many tearing their hair out in a year or so that they didn't buy into at £3. I bought in at £3.80 and will be gong in again very early next week and thus averaging down. However, they still looked cheap at £3.50 and now look at them so there is no guarantee that the market's illogical view here will end soon. I can only imagine that fear of the UK leaving the EU is contributing to negative sentiment here. Although SMP's portfolio is quite wide, the UK seems to think that London and the South East are the only areas that matter in the whole country. Hence, a bit of negativity about 9 Elms combined with the fear of how much London might suffer with a 'Brexit' may well have driven the SP down to this level. Of course, the UK leaving the EU will not do London any good and I firmly believe will be one of the stupidest decisions we will ever make if we do go. I would like to think that, in the end, we will not be so stupid, the same way that I would like to think that fear etc. is now more than factored into this share price. But, I'm old enough to know that I could be wrong on both counts!!

It seems to me that there is a bit of an expectation among share investors these days for rises to happen just because they should. If only it were that simple. Inclusion in the Ftse250 was never a guarantee of instant increase in SP. As I posted a couple of weeks back, aside from MM manipulation, the only thing that can make a share price move is demand / supply. I suspect that a number of investors here have simply assumed the demand from tracker funds would be greater than the supply of shares and thus a price rise would follow. But the SP has risen a long way in a short time and so there was always going to be plenty of sellers who had been there for a lot of the ride and wanted to take profits. Hence, so far, the sellers have outnumbered the buyers. As GSmiley says, this is a great share and, all being well, over the mid-to longer term it should rise in price but modern day investors who have only seen a rising market since 2009 need to bear in mind that there will be plenty of ups and downs. Furthermore, sometimes those ups and downs will be highly irrational. So, I think it is important that anyone playing this share - and I have been in it since 2011 - remembers there are absolutely no certainties in either life or in the stock market! None of th

Good post, Wolfhound. I was taught in my formative years that admitting you are / were wrong is a mark of maturity. Well, I have to admit that I was wrong over how MM's and others manipulated share prices. I never thought it didn't happen, I simply thought that it didn't go on to the extent some believed it did. But I was wrong. Your latest post has changed my mind, alongside how the after-hours prices on PAYS give us just a 1.5p drop on the day. This SP does seem to have been manipulated and I have learned a lesson. I now live in hope that I will have my new outlook on MM's etc, borne out by some hefty gains over the next few days!!

BobbyS.. I think previous poster meant that the Market Makers might be short of shares, so they mark the price down to 'treeshake' those already holding into selling... If that is the case, i could be the forerunner of more rises but don't bank on it, as perhaps some unwelcome news might be surfacing either about PAYS or the industry as a whole. PAYS have suffered before from scaremongering but have always recovered. Who knows...

Now wtf? Why a drop today so far? Seems a touch overdone to be profit taking?

'Its about time real people with real motives for investment stood up.' Totally right. After almost 40 years playing the market, the last few months have really irritated me. Fundamentals have been ignored just a bit too much and too many 'investors' (I use the term loosely) have been panicking at the tiniest issue. Even that or we have seen market manipulation. How on earth this share could see such a large fall in recent weeks has baffled me. Even if their London interests were revalued downwards, we would still be too far beneath NAV to make sense. OK, it was a strong case for topping up but such has been the stupidity of recent months, I have simply sat on what I already have and kept faith that I got in when they were too cheap even four months or so ago.

If the MM's were manipulating to be ready for 21st, they'd surely have done the same in preparation for tomorrow? In fact, they may well have been doing so because of the recent falls. Personally, I am not yet convinced that the MM's mess around as much as some think. That said, the last few days' worth of drops have been hard to explain, so perhaps they have been 'warehousing'. Again, though, why take the brakes off today? If I were a MM and I was dealing in PAYS, and if I were warehousing, I would have been looking to push the price down right up until tomorrow because there has been no indication from the trading updates of a disappointing year-end set of results. Also, by forcing the price down I would be in a slightly better place just in case the market doesn't like the results and we see a fall. So, all in all, who really knows? In the end, it has been a great share, seems to remain a great share and will hopefully become an ever better share. Probably best to concentrate on that than worry about MM's!

We are all hoping that the start of the FTSE250 listing will see a rise due to tracker funds coming in. But a note of caution, perhaps. Leaving aside whether or not MM's manipulate prices or not, the only thing which will drive price up is a surplus of demand over supply. Obvious stuff. Hence, we are hoping that the demand from the tracker funds will drive SP up but that will only happen if such demand does actually outstrip supply. What might be worth remembering is that this share has come quite a long way in a relatively short time. As a result, there are probably a lot of those already holding who would only be too happy to take profits once the price starts to rise on increased demand. So, it seems to me that if the tracker funds find enough sellers the rise we are hoping for might not be that spectacular. I do believe that the results next week are more important. If they are really good - and indications from trading updates seem to suggest they will be - we may well see a nice rise then, as buyers possibly switch from WorldPay to Pays. Of course, if the surge of buyers on good results is maintained through to the FTSE250 trading day we could see even more rises. However, my original point still applies. Demand must outstrip supply first and perhaps the level of the former to the latter might not be quite as big as thought. Hence, 10% rise by end of 21st? Hope so because that would be worth a great deal of money to me but I am far from convinced we will see quite that much My prediction? circa £4.20 maximum by close of play on March 21st. If I am wrong, I will gladly accept being told so!

Many of us probably felt the same way. Personally, I sold enough at £4.06 to cover my original stake and a little bit more and left the rest to run. Thus, in theory I have a share for nothing but always hard to think of it that way when its falls!!!

Having been with the share so long, I obviously share your sentiments but I will be surprised if it is quite as easy as that. You don't have to look that hard to find sensibly argued views which suggest PAYS is not quite as ready yet for the big time as it needs to be. Now, I am not saying those views are correct and want to stay in at my current quite heavy level but stock market history is littered with other 'no-brainers' which quickly went wrong. Hence, I prefer a slightly more cautious approach! Yup, do agree though about the latest batch of youngsters in the markets. Many of them are but pawns in the game. However, youngsters aside, this short-term volatility is overdone because this is no longer an AIM share. More importantly though, is there a case for looking at the repeat recoveries and asking if the buying strength which emerges on the dips would have, by now, pushed us higher but for these setbacks? Without the fall-backs, perhaps the buyers who always come in at lower prices would have come in at higher levels? Currently, we seem to be unable to establish much about the £4 level and I was disappointed on Friday to see a 22p fall from the high of the day. Obviously year-end results and FTSE250 listing are crucial short-term points which could kick us on again. But what I don't want is to see good news simply support current SP level because the general market is in the midst of yet another panic attack - a panic attack like so many recent others which is not really justified. Fingers crossed.

Good reply, CM... Funnily enough, if I wasn't financially OK I would probably be more tolerant of the market fluctuations and see this drop in PAYS as a buying opportunity. But accumulating capital aligned with increasing age has made me more risk averse. I am not the only one who feels like, as I know others in similar positions who feel the same way. What has happened with me is that I have looked more and more and what I have got, my age, and what I want to do for the rest of my life before concluding that I probably have enough money now. Of course, I want more but my values have become such that seeing the value in something is more important than just having it. Anyway, must not ramble. I agree with you that shares are still your best chance of accumulating whatever level of capital may make you happy. It certainly won't happen with the pathetic interest rates now on offer! That said, I recently put a six figure sum into a 5 year fixed rate bond at a fraction over 3%. For most of my 55 years that would have been a pathetic rate of interest but in recent weeks I began to sell off my share portfolio and realised that sleeping soundly at night was better for me than the highs and lows of watching share prices. This is probably a good opportunity to load up some more, though, but this time I am sitting tight and when £4.50 is hit, I will be out for the last time, having started with OPAY at the low 90p's. I will be sad to stop playing a share that has easily been the best I have ever had in 30 plus years but events like today turn my stomach because now the market seems a lesser level playing field that has ever been in its history. I wish you the very best with this and think you could have done a lot worse than being into PAYS!

Yet another day when PAYS SP takes a hit for no reason of any substance. Some research outfit has published a report saying that Wirecard - another card payment provider - is up to no good. Hence, PAYS which has no direct connection that I can see takes a 5% dive. The stock market nowadays is just plain stupid. Full of little boys who poop their paints at the tiniest, weeniest bit of bad news. Once this share hits £4.50 I am going to sell the rest of my recently down-sized, share portfolio. At 55 and financially set-up, why do I need to subject myself to a stock market which resembles a casino more than it ever has. But a casino open to all kinds of manipulation which one that actually used a wheel and croupiers would be shut down for. Backing racehorses is a straighter game - and that is saying something!! LOL...

So, China is set to grow at only 5.5% GDP, oil is dropping in price again, and company earnings are gloomy. But's lets look at that all a bit closer. A GDP of only 5.5%! What a joke. Most countries in history would bite the arm off of everyone who offered them that kind of growth. Oil price dropping. Well, could be solved virtually overnight if the suppliers put their heads together for five minutes - which they surely will soon. Gloomy company earnings. What tosh, honestly. How on earth do earnings suddenly look so gloomy? What do I mean? Well, surely companies had enough foresight to see this all coming and should have been more realistic with their earnings forecasts? In the same vein, surely, surely, the stock market didn't think that continued massive growth was possible in China (if it was to be fully believed to begin with)? Hence, what we have here is stupidity on the markets now. This is a sell off based on too many investors thinking that markets only ever rise - which they have done since 2009. Hence, some bad news suddenly emerges and it all gets treated out of proportion sending the markets into meltdown. I've been investing in shares since 1986 and have seen all the pullbacks since then. None have been based on such stupid and panicky behaviour as this one is. It is a sell off being overdone. Trouble is, eventually it forces people like me who usually sit out crashes to get out as well. Hence, I dumped everything I had first thing this morning aside from this share, another property developer, a bank and an engineering outfit. GPOR and the other property outfits are now too far beneath NAV to make any sense at these levels. When this nonsense has settled down - and timing here will have to be very well judged - I will be coming back into the market in a big way because too many excellent fundamentals are being ignored now. In the meantime, I will be surprised (but not shocked) if basic common sense about NAV's don't start to kick back on very soon with property developers like GPOR. We shall see.