Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Okay, I'll come back at 10 past 9 when it's gone red ;)
Well, I said yesterday that this doesn't seem to even manage a 10% increase if it announces positive news, but gets bashed on even middling news.
After this mediocre rise it hasn't even got back to the level I sold out at.
I think it's going to keep drifting down now for quite a long while and will probably hit 25p over the coming 3 months.
You can never tell how the markets going to react to any news from HUR.
GLA
CaptainSwag - time will reveal all.
As I said I sold out because I'm not prepared to take that level of risk
Whether HUR flies or dies I have still turned my paper loss into a real one, so it makes no difference to me which way it goes - it will not affect the size of my loss.
So I hope you are right and I am wrong and you do very well.
I've made my choice, I am responsible for it, and either way I've lost money - and that's down to me and me alone.
GLA
In summary:
I can't give you any specific facts why I now think HUR isn't going to be the wonder company we all hoped it would be, it's more of a gut feeling, but you should ALWAYS listen to your gut, because what it really is, is your subconscious SCREAMING at you to pay attention.
I'm quite long in the tooth and have seen this kind of AIM stock before, where evrything looks amazing, but the underlying real data doesn't support it.
One great example was RCG. I bought into them, made a lot of money, but got a bit concerned because they couldn't give any data of where their amazing biometrically secure laptops were being sold - so you couldn't go and see one, because they wouldn't tell you where they were being sold.
But... sales were great.
Then the CEO Dr Raymond Chow suddenly started referring to himself as Dr Sir Raymond Chow - I asked when was he knighted - what's going on?
Turned out he'd either bought some bogus title, or changes his name to include Sir - forget which , at which point I sold out immediately.
Other investors wanted to believe the story - "so what if he bought a title, so what if he's now calling himself "sir" when it isn't real?"
Well if he's some kind of Walter Mitty character who is lying about this - what else is he lying about?
Of course RCG turned out to be a disaster for investors and went the way that many wild-west AIM stocks go.
But that gut feeling that something isn't plum here - was well worth listening to.
If everything is great there's no need to lie or hide the truth.
The only time you need to stretch the truth is when the facts are your enemy.
Make your own minds up - but don't tell me that you're not getting that gut feeling that SOMETHING isn't right - even if you can't pin it down precisely.
Anyway, GLA.
He said:
"people come to me all of the time with ideas and business plans and tell me how much I can make if I back them. I'm not interested in how much I can make - I'm interested in how much I can lose."
Yes if I'm wrong now I will miss some upside. But if I stick with it and are wrong - I could lose everything.
It's not a risk I'm willing to take.
By Albi: "Longwait
"What changed Shutt's mind?"
I think Shutts himself posted his concerns. My view is had this board not been polluted with endless doubt, doom and gloom he may have held. Would that have been the right thing to do? I read the Art of Execution on the recommendation of other posters and one piece of advice stayed with me - those who cut their losses at 15%, statistically lost less and profited more than those who didn't. So in that sense I respect his decision to make a decision. I made this decision a while ago because I'm not great at trading and didn't buy in here at low prices (44p was my average). I cut my investment by 75% in the summer because I was overextended. That was the right decision for me as I can now relax to some extent (a great deal more than I could before) having profited from and made other investments in the interim in addition to Hurricane."
Correct on all fronts Albi, so full marks and hats off to you.
My final decision to sell was based on the art of execution, which observes that people can fall in love with a share, and be so over confident of their own assessment that they hold a share all the way to zero.
However, I didn't sell at -15% (wish I did), but at -33%, which is not so great since it means you have to make +50% from what you have left to get back to where you started.
My issues are that maybe I made a mistake - I mean it all looks great on paper - oil flowing, Dr.T seeming happy, etc, etc, etc.
The problem for me in a nutshell came from a) the SP hardly moving upwards on good news, b) the share price getting hammered on (what was on the face of it) not such bad news, c) the ambiguity of the BoD in RNS's (so while I want to believe nothing is wrong, this is AIM and we've all seen the disaster stories - so MAYBE the ambiguity is because specificity would create a disaster, d) the rush to quell good rumours, while e) nothing to quell bad rumours.
It's very common for companies to issue an RNS saying "we know no reason for the recent/sudden SP weakness" - but there's nothing, which MAY suggest they know there IS a reason for the current SP weakness but they don't want to say it.
Overall it's down to risk - do I want to continue believing in the story and my own initial assessment, or do I want to acknowledge that I am not infallible, that I might have made a mistake, and that there could indeed be a reason (that we don't know) for the SP getting hammered?
So it comes down to either having blind faith and an overconfidence in my own initial beliefs, or the ability to say "maybe I was wrong" and maybe there is something to justify the SP.
I believed this was all good and would come good, but the current share price contradicts my initial opinion.
So at -33% (the absolute mathematical limit of my faith) I have to step out of it in case I am wrong.
It reminds me of an interview Alan Whicker did years ago with a multi-millionaire entrepreneur that I saw and has alway
RNS tomorrow or Friday and another 30-40% off the share price.
GLA
Yes LONGWAIT, both here and at TLW the share price has been hammered, and at both there are shareholders sitting "calm" because they think they know better than the market.
Is that proof that the market is wrong, or that they are wrong, that they can't/won't sell because they'll lose so much, or that they are in love with their shares and can't face the fact that they are wrong.
Observing someone else doing something is not a good method for making your own decisions, since you don't know if they are right, wrong or insane to begin with.
Nobodies teased anything out of me, I posted that I'd sold when I sold.
There are no emotional apron strings, it's information gathering - either I made the right decision or the wrong decision, knowing which will help to make future investment decisions.
Yes I did say that because to me the sentiment was exceptionally bullish - but that was 7 months ago.
The sentiment now is **** poor and the share price is going the other way.
It's not got more of a feel of a Stanelco to it than a Tanfield, and I think that since sentiment has turned the other way it in a big way it isn't going to be hitting the kind of crazy highs that I thought I could possibly hit - not because it was inherently worth those values, but because sentiment could drive it there.
I now believe the news is bad, the model is flawed, and the share price will continue to fall - which is why I sold it all and transformed my paper loss into a real loss - since I'd rather take a known hit now, than an unknown hit later that could in theory end up being 100%.
There's zero chance there was an upside of 100% at the point I sold vs the price I bought at.
And he never bought any shares in HUR at any price - so if we're playing do what Buffet does then you lose.
LONGWAIT - surely all clairvoyance is delusional.
I'm not claiming to have psychic abilities, I'm simply extrapolating the blatantly obvious to it's logical conclusion.
Don't worry if it all goes wrong I'll send you a sixpence to stick in yer christmas pud.
Buffet is talking about following overall market trends, not speculating on an individual high risk stock - in fact mentioning Buffet and HUR in the same breath is laughable, he wouldn't touch it with a 10ft barge pole.
LONGWAIT: "Since neither you nor I know of any cause of the share price fall, how can it be contrary to what I want to believe?" That's got to be one of the most non-sensical things you've said, and you've got some real competition in your previous comments.
Clearly what you want to believe is that HUR is amazing, is worth a £gazillion, there's no risk at all, everything is 100% hunky spunky dory and you're going to be rich, rich, rich beyond your wildest dreams.
But the company is sat on it's hands watching the share price fall, and fall, and fall - and they still say nothing. Which tells you it's because there's nothing they can say to contradict the share price fall, which means the share price fall is correct.
Meaning the next RNS will decimate the share price.
That is logic, and logic beats flights of fancy and wanting to believe HURs streets are paved with gold.
LONGWAIT - they could issue an RNS observing the tumbling share price and negative speculation and say there's no reason for it - you know, like they did to shut down the positive rumours.
And there IS a reason for the share price - it's just that the reason is contrary to what you want to believe, so you have dismissed it.
Sometimes the colours get muddled up.
Some big sells going through now by the look of it - I bet it's CA offloading more.
On the flip side, if some of the stocks you hold start to get hammered, it increases the shares you hold in decent companies in percentage terms, so you have to sell the good ones to fund the bad ones resulting in a portfolio full of rubbish.
That would be a rather silly rule, because if the shares in a company they hold took off, they'd have to immediately start selling and miss making any moey from the SP rise.
This would only make sense if they were an income fund, in which case they wouldn't be holding HUR in the first place.