Member Info for richard12345

blue2guit, your portfolio is vastly bigger. I am dabbling with 19k, your budget is literally 10x! with a bigger budget, you can take more liberties,be more complacent,and the portfolio can be much safer. you can also go for long term plays, if you start with 10000, and can make 26% a year, you will have a million quid in 20 years, 100000 in 10 years. I call shares that COULD make 26% per year "millionaire" shares, that's about 1.94% per month, which is very feasible but is difficult. with your 200000, if you can make 9.59% you will have 500000 in 10 years, so you can be much less stringent.Peer to peer will soon have ISAs,with the 8% I make at FC,your 200k would become 432k in 10 years, and would be 16k a year.My food,transport,cinema and general shopping are funded entirely by my FundingCircle.com profits! I really like the FC process,and I have developed a methodology which is at the start of elite.with 1% risk exposure 3% of investors make 8%-10% 1% make more 67% make 6% to 8% 29% make 4%-6% 1% make 2%-4% nobody loses.total 101% because of rounding errors! their stats show 2% exposure or less and you wont lose money,10% exposure and about 1% of people lose money. the people who make more than 10% are probably the professional accountants, the site is very popular with accountants. based on these calculations,I think 19k is sufficient initial capital to develop into considerable wealth.right now its not about the amounts,but to see what percentages I can make,is it viable? I prefer to put trades of 100 x brokerage,which is 600 quid,that way brokerage only costs 2% for BUY-SELL.with that my portfolio can be up to 31 shares.needs stringent management to mitigate fund limits. am getting very high strike rate via stringent fundamentals,of the 11 shares held for at least a month,9 are in profit,the 2 which arent I believe will rocket within a few months,these are OPM and VED.VED will rocket because the price plummetted because much production was halted by a government process for some months but is now restarting. the rocketing will just be the reversion to normality! also their equity hugely undervalued, free minerals. OPM will rocket because they are expanding in an expanding sector,but their price hasnt changed since 9th march! when it does change,its a lot,and it dips first,spread is very big,its a penny share as an example, I bought 1008 quid on AHT in dec at about 7.794, based on fundamentals, got timing totally wrong, then topped up with 606 quid at about 8.534, the price now is 9.325, the total holding is about 14% in profit, total profit 225.52 quid, 17.8% profit on the initial trade,6.7% profit on the second one which was about 3 weeks ago. including brokerage and stamp duty. so that one is on target, have to be careful of overheating.will probably reduce the holding soon and rebuy at the next correction

should add also that if a share makes 20% in a year, and the trade is 600, brokerage 6, spread 0.12, to break even brokerage costs 36.5 days (2x6/600=2%, 2%/20% x year=36.5) stamp duty costs 9.1 days (0.5%/20% x year) spread costs 2.2 days total time to break even is 47.8 days. but you could do this 6 times and still make 4.3% profit in the year, outdoing inflation PLUS savings. 1200 quid would take 29.6 days. but a non growth share, eg say 5% in a year: brokerage costs 146 days stamp duty costs 36.5 days spread costs 8.8 days total time to break even is 191.3 days, do this twice and you lose 17.6 days of progress. if the spread is 5%, then the spread costs a year, high spreads are one of the hidden hazards. higher ranking shares have much better spreads. only trade high spread shares if the fundamentals are exemplary. big diversified portfolio with quality selection criteria, means some shares will rocket healthily and subsidize more liberties. you can trade whatever you want, eg penny shares, or go for dividends, but you need different methodologies. the more work you do the more profits. there is also a lot of learning curve, so you must procede gradually. the initial trading is not for profit but to learn as there are many landmines. a diversified portfolio enables more learning experience where you start to discern winner criteria of the season if you dont have much time, you should consider funds, eg this one made 63.88%: http://www.hl.co.uk/funds/fund-discounts,-prices--and--factsheets/search-results/c/cf-miton-uk-smaller-companies-class-b-income anyway, as regards XAR, one mustnt hurry, because it has huge growth potential, you could wait several months before trading and still make gigantic profits. I think delaying your trades increases profits, because you make less mistakes.

why SPD will make tons from Brazil world cup? this is based on 2 facts: 1. in 2012 their profits were boosted by the London Olympics and Euro 2012 2. they have expanded to 19 countries in europe, and are working on the US also they will sell a lot of each countries team replica kits etc, as well as Brazil world cup soccer balls, both replicas and authentics as regards excessive trading, this depends on the share and portfolio geometry. each of the following attributes enables you to trade more often: share geometry attributes: 1. share has small spread, eg XAR has low spread of 0.12% just now 2. share has high variance, ie it oscillates by bigger amounts relative to the trend 3. share has high growth, eg XAR looks like will be high growth. portfolio geometry: 4. diversified portfolio, many shares. 5. low risk exposure, money spread out between shares. 6. higher money per share. 7. quality of selection criteria. if you buy and sell a share, it costs you 2 x brokerage + spread + stamp_duty. my brokerage is about 6 quid, so if I buy and sell 600 quid of XAR, the cost is 2 x 1% + 0.12% + 0.5% = 2.62% but I think XAR's price once stabilised could double within a year, so the 2.62 is relatively small compared to 100. penny shares have very high spread, I have only one high spread share 4.5%, the others are all below 0.4%, most are below 0.2%. with penny shares you must buy and wait for huge gains, and have less money on more shares. high variance shares mean you can make money with shorter term trading, eg RMG has a large gradual variance, but the growth is too low and dividend uninteresting. the price regularly varies by 20 points, eg from 580 to 600, which would be 3.33% variance. spread 0.09%. so with 3000 quid, the cost is 2 x 0.2% + 0.09% + 0.5% = 0.99%. if you buy below 580 and sell above 600, you would make 3.33% - 0.99% = 2.34% profit each time, 70 quid. there is probably on average at least one such opportunity a month, so in a year that would be 28%. the fundamentals show it is very slow growth, and the graph shows it is gradual and big variance. in a month you could make a profit eg 0, 1, 2 times. the more money on a share, the less the brokerage eats into the profits(6).a diversified and balanced portfolio (4 and 5) means you can limit your losses and yet the portfolio make a profit.eg if you had 20 shares,with 5% money per share.and one share plummetted 10%, you would only lose 5% x 10% ie 0.5%. if the categories of shares are diversified,incomparably different companies,some other share will invariably rocket 10% also! and the portfolio would be unaffected! when I limited my losses on the XAR trade, losing about 165, the end of day value of my portfolio was only down 9 quid. I put too much on the XAR trade,as I correctly predicted the financials would be good,usually the plan works,needs study.

further reply, I am a private investor, completely self taught, the shares are an experiment: can I can grow the portfolio to become main income or millionaire? I entirely target growth companies, I study fundamentals AND the price graphs. I only invest in companies where I think can make 20% profit in the year.the reason is that FundingCircle and RateSetter outdo dividends and have much less risk. I make 8% at FC, so any share below 8% is not worth the risk. I completed 2 bids at FC today, and got 12.6% on a C rated company, and 11.4% on an A rated company. so I am really fussy about shares, they need to be extraspecial. XAR is in this category as is SPD. SPD is one of the top performers since 2009. and with Brazil world cup ahead, it will make tons of money. But just like XAR at the moment, I got completely wrong footed by SPD initially, but I learnt a lot and its my best trade now. I dont look more than a year ahead, too much uncertainty, many really good shares are cyclical, so you should only invest in an up cycle. eg house construction is cyclical, and we are in an up cycle, so there are some good opportunities in this sector. 2013 uninteresting, 2014 great, 2015 no idea. I only invest in companies where big funds are involved, ideal circumstance is where only a few funds are involved and the company is lower ranking, eg low in the FT100, or in the FT250, or say in the top 300. funds always research new investments in person, they send someone to evaluate company in person, to interview execs and tour place.provided at least one fund is involved,its not a boiler room scam. I recommend you put some money at least at FC, eg 100 quid on 100 companies would be 10000 quid, you will learn about the numerical side. you can ask companies questions directly in the Q & A, and learn a lot from their answers. but you could put 20 quid on 20 companies, which would be just 400 quid. numerics are the most important thing, because many good companies go bankrupt entirely because the financial management is bad. the difference between a good company and a bad company is in the details, from a distance they are identical. eg Comet and PC World looked the same, often next door neighbours, but Comet had flawed financial management. "textbook" failing. one of many. there is no agreement on what are good numerics, just use common sense, it is probabilistic and correlative truth. a bit like exercise and fruits are good for health, but one apple or swim wont change your health. you can soon tell if someone's lifestyle is unhealthy, same with companies finances. as regards buying too often, its fine provided your portfolio remains well in profit. if a portfolio has negative profits, you must be really careful, and diversify maximally. eg with the 11520 ISA, and 6 quid brokerage, you can aim for 19 diifferent shares of 606 quid.

next posting! now I dont quite trust the stock exchange, but it could be very lucrative, so I am experimenting with a margin of my wealth, to see if I can get it to work. the plan is to grow this margin until it hopefully becomes my main income. but if it fails, I have only risked a margin and will quit the stock exchange. I reuse the methodology I use at FC, and this is really effective. There are no share prices at FC, so it forces you to evaluate fundamentals. my first default had several bad fundamental criteria, good company but their financial management was in trouble. if you dont have much time and dont like risk, RateSetter.com is the most lucrative risk free investment I have found. where you currently will make 5.6% totally risk free on the 5 year: http://www.ratesetter.com/lending/market_view.aspx no upper limit. eg can put 100k, they have in built risk protection which has never defaulted even 1p to any lender. as I trade, both at FC and on the stock exchange, I learn from every bad and good decision. my methodology is continually being refined. Xar currently is where I have to refine my methodology. plummetting price, perfect fundamentals. its a meta level problem, huge profits will be made here IF you get your timing right. Now I strive to have a portfolio of 20 companies, right now I have 15, whenever I approach 20, I sell off some bad trades. once you have 20, everything is decided by statistics, but as you move towards 20, if your methodology is good, several will be star shares, eg SPD and AHT are 2 star shares at the moment. what you can do then, is start to consolidate to the star shares. 20 or more is basically a wide net, some fish WILL be big, but it takes at least a month before you know, a portfolio needs expansion phases, where you buy brand new shares, you should make small purchases for new shares in case they malfunction. as the portfolio fills up, you then need contraction phases, where you sell bad trades, and move the money to the star shares. once you own a share, you start to understand the behaviour of that particular share. a portfolio is actually a kind of company, the success depends on the quality of management, and the principles are similar to running a real company. I rank my shares by the average percentage gain per day of each, and eventually nail the worst performers, unless they are special cases where there is some mitigating argument. because there is a risk of big corrections, its important to have a dual approach, where part of each holding is long term, and part you sell whenever moderate profits have built up. the unsold shares ensure you gain from any rocketing, the sold portion protects from the inevitable corrections. the sold portions also enable you to buy new shares also instead of recycling at corrections. new shares are a kind of talent scouting.

I think there is overlap of methodology, I reply in 2 postings, most of my money is outside the stockmarket at FundingCircle.com where after defaults I make about 8%, month in, month out like clockwork. This is peer to peer lending, where you study the fundamentals of each company, and then bid on the loans: if you like the company you bid more money at a lower rate. dislike a company, then dont bid or bid less or bid higher rates. recently I often get some bids successful at say 12% or 11%, which IMHO outdoes dividends. you know right at the outset what you will make, the only risk is default where the company goes bankrupt, to mitigate against this, you are advised to limit your risk exposure to at most 1% per company. eg if you have 20000 to invest, then 20000/100=200, you shouldnt bid more than 200 per loan. minimum bid is 20 quid. there is no protection from defaults, so you MUST use due diligence. I have been investing there since summer 2012, and have more than 320 loans, and exactly 4 have fully defaulted. some others have defaulted, but the director guarantees are paying off the remaining instalments, so nothing lost. typically I will study the fundamentals of 20 companies, and then bid on 2 or 3. most companies I reject just on a superficial look at the fundamentals. the ones which pass the superficial inspection, I then get my calculator out and calculate different criteria. I then allocate money to the best ones, see first paragraph. I cannot tell you my criteria because the market works by everyone using different criteria, if everyone uses the same criteria you get bidding wars and everyone gets the worst rate! But if you study the supplied fundamentals you can figure your own criteria, and with time your criteria will become more sophisticated. At first I went for max interest rates, until I got my first default, I then realised I had to be much more careful, and began to learn! I now have a good sense of what a good company is, and can bid on the first one I look at if I think its good. anyway, FundingCircle.com is the best way to learn finance, you acquire generic financial skills and learn how the economy works. if you read the Q and A on each loan request, you will start to be able to determine things about companies that even the companies arent aware of. actually, using methodology I learnt there, I know that XAR is in fact 6 legal entities, Xaar PLC controls 4 entities, and one is Xaar Technology Ltd which controls a 5th, Xaar Trustee Limited. Also XAR has credit rating of 98, which is extremely high. the best companies are usually low 80s, many companies are 70s. since 2012 their credit rating has always been above 95 anyway, if you want to know how I found that, start reading the loan Q and A's, where often professional accountants participate, and you will learn insider tricks from them.

everything is certainly perfect, but the share price of a company can be contrary to the company. last night I said "sell all", the sell price was 863.5, and now its 817, it has lost 5.4% in a few hours. sell everything now, and rebuy after the rebound has begun. several of my best shares were like this, superb fundamentals, plummetting price. do not even think about buying in or holding until the days minimum is HIGHER than a recent day's maximum. today's minimum is already at 811.5, yesterday's was 856.1, the day before yesterday's low was 887.5, HIGHER than todays high 861, true freefall is where every second day the maximum is lower than the earlier minimum. this share has been plummetting since 21st Feb, this is NOT a rebound correction, keep well clear, DANGER share trading has nothing at all to do with what a company is, but is about second guessing the valuation of the company by the big funds. I have no doubts that XAR is an excellent company, in fact I was so certain the financials would be rosy I put a large trade the day before, when I read the financials before the markets opened I thought I was going to make possibly 10% profit in one day. instead the price was in freefall with virtually no trading. this is pathological, DO NOT BUY, DO NOT HOLD, SELL, RUN FOR THE EXITS, before you are left holding the can. riddler quoted IC giving 837, and even that has been breached, there are about 70000 buys and 163000 sells at the moment,

some rules I follow: 1. if there is sustained plummetting, its best to sell everything. 2. if the fundamentals are superb, its a good idea to eventually buy in. when you have both, ie sustained plumetting and superb fundamentals that is where you can get explosive profits, but the really tricky thing is judging the low. its a good idea also to buy in gradually, in case you misjudge. the daily high and daily low are generally quite reliable data for understanding share prices, in particular does todays low outdo earlier highs? this is good, and if todays high is below recent lows this is bad. if we look at the candlestick graph, the daily highs have been descending virtually every day since 21st feb, the pattern is as follows, where L means less than the previous day, and M means more, the number after each M is how many days were regained, S means same, starting with 22 feb: LLLSLLLLM1LLLLLLM3LL a bear market is where the maxima are descending, and a bull market where the minima are ascending. the minima have descended every day for the last 9 trading days, this is basically a freefall, so you MUST sell everything IMHO, limit your losses. recoup your losses by rebuying later not by holding. XAR has low spread, so rebuying is less costly. main cost is stamp duty and the brokerage. rules 1 and 2 basically mean you should sell ASAP, and then patiently wait till the correction is complete, the tricky thing is judging this right. the more fussy you are the better. eg if you want to be really cautious, you can wait till a big fund increases their holding in the RNS, or wait till 2 have, even if you have to wait 2 months! Einstein said that his work was 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration, with investment the work is 9% researching, 90% waiting, and 1% trading in that order. there is opportunity in adversity, its where there is a sustained correction yet brilliant fundamentals that the best profits are. its a real pain also when you misjudge, but that also means there is a valuable lesson to be learnt.

this looks like a major correction, and the fundamentals are excellent, basically XAR has the best growth fundamentals that I have seen recently, and it is relatively new to the FT250, what this means IMHO is that once the correction is complete, and shows sustained upwards movement, then it should trend upwards for months. what you can do is with the red and green candlestick graph, place a ruler on the daily maxima of the plummetting, then place another ruler on the recent minima, dont buy in until the latter line ascends and crosses the maxima line. prorealtime.com has candlestick end of day graphs for free where you can draw lines on the graph. its a french website. lse.co.uk is the best all round website, but other websites have their virtues, I use 3. best to play it safe: sell everything, then wait till after sustained upwards movement occurs, then buy in gradually. eg put an initial smaller trade, then top up at each mini correction, and when total is larger sell off some for profit whenever profits are reasonable. you will make most of your money from holding for months, the amount you lose by waiting till its already moving upwards will be insignificant relative to the profits made by holding after this. with this kind of share you dont make your money from one off price rockets, but from the gradual trend over months. SPD was comparable in some ways. they had 17.4% increase in profits, I bought in a larger trade and there was quite a big correction where I lost a lot of money when I sold out. I then rebought another larger trade, and lost even more money. I then was much more cautious, and using circumstantial evidence figured the correction was complete, and bought a smaller amount in case I was wrong, then doubled the trade a month later, and the totality has been making an incredible 0.29% per day. XAR's increase in profits are more than 8x that of SPD's, so it should do even better. its relatively far down the FT ranking, takes longer for money to be moved: funds will need to send an interviewer round to kick the tyres, once their due diligence is complete there will be frenzied buying, but this will take many weeks to complete. sea retreating for a big wave just now. after the XAR annuals were out, there was virtually no buying. this must be because they cannot buy in until the due diligence is complete. in the meantime the price will keep falling. probably only in April it will improve. several of my best shares had significant time lag from quality fundamentals till there was sustained price growing. in all cases the best approach is to buy in gradually, DO NOT HURRY, and it pays to reduce your holding once profits are significant eg once you have say 16% profits, halve the holding, then at the next mini correction double the holding. the above 2 lines are diverging currently so dont buy yet.

you are certainly right that changes affect prices, but if the change is words without numbers, the effect usually evaporates. it is froth. if a new executive is appointed, there is 50% probability he will be better, and 50% he will be worse. the big funds only rely on audited data, I dont care who is in charge or how wonderful your products are, just show me the money. only numbers have sustained effects, more precisely ratios of numbers. a company that is twice as big and makes twice as much profit is the same value for money.

my advice is to temporarily exit this share and then rebuy once it has stabilised. wait till at least next Friday (28th) the fundamentals are perfect, the problem is the sp is deemed as overvalued. the price has been correcting since 21st Feb which is almost a month, when a price corrects downwards for many days its best to limit your losses and exit. where the financials are good you can then rebuy in AFTER there seems to be sustained upward trend. I personally exited on 4th march at 10.27 and rebought in on 17th because I thought it was rebounding, and then panic sold on 18th around 9.255 losing 165 quid on this new trade! it was going to obliterate my profits. I was watching the specific trades, and virtually no trading and sliding price, I had to quit. at end of December 31 2012 the midprice was 279.5, a year later it was 1120, which is almost exactly 4x the starting price. but the profits have increased by a factor of 31.861/12.628 = 2.523 today is the 78th day of the year, so if we extrapolate 2.523 till today exponentially we get 2.523^(1+78/365)=3.075 279.5 x 3.075 = 859.5, it looks like that is where it could be headed. as regards Dinwoodie's future retirement, the price has been correcting since 21st Feb, some 24 days, there are 2 kinds of fundamentals, qualitative and numerical. numerical is eg a profit declaration, qualitative is eg an appointment/resignation/new product etc, words without numbers. qualitative announcements usually dont have sustained effects, the price will shoot up and then it will correct back down. For high ranking shares, ie ones where big funds are involved, eg AXA here, sustained price is entirely decided by published numerical criteria. Because all kinds of dramatic qualitative changes occur with companies without any effect on the numerics. With RMG, a lot of resignations at the top were announced on 13th Jan 2014, the price then rocketed up to 615 on 15th jan from 583 at the close of the trading before the 13th (the 10th). But on 27th the price was down to 559. and right now its 579.5. the price behaviour is the same as in December. no change whatsoever. big profits will be made on XAR, IF you get your timing right. so I personally totally ignore qualitative fundamentals, these are all hype and vapour. for penny shares its different, anything can happen. funds ignore penny shares because they have to send a researcher to interview a company before they invest as due diligence. but once the funds buy in, they decide the prices, and no amount of hype or qualitative changes have any long term effect. a merger or acquisition is different because there are indirect numerics. but a new product is meaningless, many new products fail despite being brilliant. Having paid for one product, companies dont want to upgrade in a hurry, modernisation eats into profits affecting their sp.

the annual financial statement is EXCELLENT, their profits have increased by more than 150% I was a bit mystified about why the price was plummetting and decided to take no chances and quit at around 925.5, then had a look at the forum for explanations, riddler's explanation that the p/e was too high seems the best explanation, Dinwoodie isnt retiring till 2015, so that shouldnt affect the share price, it's a year of forward guidance. here is my calculation of the p/e based on the current sell price 9.065 quid, the current number of shares 76.1m, and the december profits of 31.9 million capitalisation = 9.065 x 76.1 = 689.85 so the p/e ratio is 689.85/31.9 = 21.63, ie it will take more than 21 years for the profits to recoup the share value. there isnt any correct value for what the p/e should be, but at the end of 2012, I calculate the p/e ratio to be about 16.5, and at the end of 2011 it was 22.7, these latter based on mid prices and backdated. the equity per share at the moment is 110.042/689.85 = 15.9%, but at the end of 2012 and 2011 this was about 35% relative to the past values, the equity is still overvalued, over 2013 the profits increased 152%, but the capitalisation increased 307%, had the capitalisation increased by 152%, the price at end of December should have been 694p, this calculation based on mid prices and takes into account that the number of shares has changed also. the price at the start of 2013 on the other hand was probably undervalued. if we look at 2 years instead ie for 2012 + 2013, the profits increased by a factor of 4.15, the capitalisation was 175 at the start, from this the capitalisation at end of December 2013 should have been 724.5, ie the share price should have been 954.6, actual mid price about 1120, 17% too high. calculations also not taking into account dividends which have been flea sized. this would suggest the price is now reasonable, and its not going to rocket, which means its better to hold off and observe what happens before jumping on the bandwaggon. basically the company is excellent, but the price was too high, and could still be too high, for me I'm going to wait some weeks before buying in again, its a first class company, but the devil is in the price. no matter how good a company is, if the price is too high you should not buy, and no matter how mediocre a company is, if the price is too low you should consider buying. if a company is bad then you should never buy in. but what is a good price? its the price that the big investors regard as good, which to some extent depends on the price of other shares relative to their companies' perfomances. its the inter share bidding wars and inter stock exchange bidding wars rather than the intra share bidding wars. sometimes there is a time lag before the big investors organize money for a good opportunity,

10th march 1.139 million shares bought and 150 thousand sold today so far.

ok, have to think in terms of A-Plant then rather than Ashtead, Ashtead must be the umbrella group. as the price was low on 3rd March, and I was confident the interim would be good on 4th March, I decided to top up, with an overdraft, and that was a good decision because the price has really rocketed today, the price ended at 951.5, but I topped up at just under 853.5, which including stamp duty and excluding brokerage is a rise of more than 10.9% IN ONE DAY! the market generally dipped on 3rd March which boosted this trade further! as regards construction, I had a study of TW. (Taylor Wimpey) but I dont recommend this currently. BDEV and BWY I think are good investments currently, perhaps later TW. will be good. TW. shares did well in 2012, but I think there is some turbulence ahead.

thanks for the link, and is A-plant the same as Ashtead? there seems to be a summary of equipment on the website also at http://www.aplant.com/category/hire/ a lot of which is over my head! I think AHT shares are an ideal investment right now, also they are safer than house building because equipment hire is also for repair, maintenance, modernisation. repair and maintenance are recession proof. houses usually need major repair and maintenance work every 10 years, and there are a lot of houses out there! when a house looks in a bad state, its because the people havent maintained it. Nice looking houses are the ones where the people have work done to the house every several years. house building is more risky because it depends on government policy and monetary policy of the central bank. but for 2014, the house building sector looks safe as houses. I had a fence which was disintegrating, and replaced this with concrete panels, and the workers hired the equipment, eg cement mixer for setting the concrete posts, some kind of cutter for cutting the concrete panels to size, etc. the people wanted to rotivate the garden also by hiring a rotivator, but I ran out of funds. you make money from AHT shares from the share price rising, not from the dividends! because I moved new money to my portfolio, my AHT holding is now 7%, I think I will top that up sometime to some 10%. but maybe it will expand by itself to 10%!

as regards diversification, note that the purpose of diversifying a portfolio is not to maximize profits, but to minimize losses, which in fact is more important. because if you lose too much money it can be impossible to get back in the game. but if you never lose money, success is more or less inevitable, typically you start off with small successes, then with experience the successes become ever better. the less greedy and the more cautious you are, the more money you will make. so when offloading from investment A to investment B to diversify, dont worry about whether B makes less money. just make sure B appears to be good for its genre of investment. at this point in time AHT, BDEV, SPD, HWDN are all quality growth shares, and are "millionaire" shares, ie ones that can convert the ISA allowance into 1 million in 20 years. (while doing well). But you need to verify for yourself that these are good, and timing is always difficult to get right. I got the timing for AHT totally wrong and yet am well in profit. For 2014, basically the above 4 are good. But I cannot say anything about 2015. and there is no guarantee of these opinions, always exercise due diligence (aka dyor) especially at the time of purchase. really you need at least 8 apparently quality shares, preferably 10, ideally 20, better more than 20, more equals better if they all have been selected to the same high standards, because of the normal curve, where you can consolidate the worst ones to the best ones. continually buy new, sell bad, sell overexposed. it takes time to build up a portfolio, I have reached 19 now. the more you have, the better the best ones are IF your research is good. some elite fund manager said that if the fundamentals are good, then the investment will eventually succeed. companies fail for fundamental reasons, often with poor expansion process. the rule I follow is the first time I buy shares in a company to buy a smaller amount, about 1/20 of the budget, as the plan is to get 20. regardless how good it seems, I really restrain the first purchase. if the purchase does well then I may top up at a low, eg BDEV and HWDN had nice lows on 26th Feb before their financials on 27th. I keep most of my money outside the stock exchange, in peer to peer lending, as this is immune to stock market corrections. I currently make about 8% at FundingCircle.com, where you lend directly to companies, and can lend just 20 quid, and there is no protection from risk. you must research each company that you lend to. currently I sometimes get 12% on loans to A rated companies! I also have some money at http://www.ratesetter.com/lending/market_view.aspx where currently you get guaranteed 5.7% on 5 year bonds. https://www.wellesley.co.uk/ gives 7.5%, but their risk protection isnt fully guaranteed, I havent tried this one. zopa.com 4.9% guaranteed.

labels are a very reliable form of information! as a customer you wouldnt contact AHT but would contact a company from the phone book or even an insurance company, and they would contact AHT. most companies function via other companies, eg an electrician will buy his components from some trade store. It's very useful to note the supply chain where it is inadvertently revealed. your own company contacted some other company who contacted AHT. some neighbours had a wall repaired, and the brickwork was particularly good, I noted the number on the van, as I have a repair I need doing at some point for some brickwork that wasnt done correctly where the cement crumbled into sand after many years. Connish1210 has verified your inference, question for Connish1210, can you say what other specific kinds of equipment AHT hire out? I have had various work done where the people hired equipment, but I didnt think of looking for any labels! eg I had some jet cleaning done, where they hired some huge machine. companies tend to just hire for the day and forward the hire cost to the customer, so there is no risk or costs for them of the equipment.

have you verified then that they hire out the kind of equipment used for hurricanes and floods?

10 to 20% sounds acceptable BECAUSE AHT is lucrative, only go above 10% for really good shares. it depends how much money you have and how many apparently really lucrative shares you can find according to your criteria. a good approach is to put 5% on new shares, but where there is no progress for too long, consolidate these to better shares, which then become 10%. if your selection criteria are good, and you buy 20, then several will be real winners because of the normal curve, you can top these up at lows from the worst shares, or keep trying further new shares, its a good idea to change things gradually anyway, eg go from 50% to 40% first, when the price seems high, then many days later offload another 10% at another apparent high. when you reach 20%, you would have offloaded 30%, with 5% on each new share, that would be 6 companies, probably 2 will be excellent, 2 modest, and 2 duds. I topped up to HWDN and BDEV the day before their financials (27th feb) as the price was low and I was confident the interims would be good, and that worked like a charm. I made the mistake of offloading some BDEV on 12th feb, but I have rebought plus more. I think BDEV must have been seriously undervalued, as the price just keeps climbing, an upward correction! BDEV is a good one to diversify to, but dont delay too much as the upward correction could eventually complete, the AHT interim is on Tuesday 4th March I think one should always be researching new shares, at least for a watchlist. I focus on growth shares such as AHT because its a genre that I understand and you can realistically convert 10000 quid into a million quid in 20 years (if you can achieve 26% per year, have already made 10.9% profit on AHT since 20 dec so its on target). However growth shares plummet the most in a correction. you should only diversify to shares that appear to be really good, dont just diversify to anything. if you focus on a genre you start to know what is good, with a new genre go for smaller trades initially because everything goes wrong when you start, and eventually everything goes right. I have diversified now to 19 shares, the most recent one was a euro denominated one, the only euro one in the portfolio, partly as a study of merits/demerits of euro ones. my maximum risk exposure is now 11.5% I havent dabbled with exploratory mining, I think you should research the mining sectors first, to find which sector is the most lucrative, then focus on that. I would be wary of gold as the price has crashed a lot, quality gold price graph here: http://www.bullionvault.com/gold-price-chart.do silver and copper behave like gold, so you should probably avoid silver and copper also at this particular point in time.

I dont know if I am reading the same info, but their revenue grew 35% to 1037.5, their Q4 revenue increased 132% versus a year earlier, and their profit after tax is up 60% to 235m they also appear to be expanding, purchasing a hotel in New York and one in Rome this month. I would say this is a particularly good share to buy.