Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Missed this last week - Qatar's sovereign wealth fund has agreed to buy HSBC's global headquarters, London's biggest and most expensive office building, in the latest sign that the global financial capital's commercial property market is booming once more. Perhaps they can save a floor for running Sainsbury?
These shorted shares are of course shares 'lent' out by brokers out of the margin accounts of the likes of you and I ! These latest short levels though must be causing some regulatory 'raising of the eyebrows', especially as Sainbury is a household name - if price goes north in the event results prove better than expected Brokers could be forced call in these lent shares, except its all a bit of a sham as the shorters are mostly big institutions with access to either in house brokers or client friendly ones. Somewhat doubt QIA would allow lending of their shares, they can prevent this by certificating or by having a very high sell price on their own shares thereby taking them off book - that's what I would do if I were them. What is very odd about Sainsbury is out of 100 % - 43% owned by QIA /Schroders/Sains Family/ UBS add shorters means 55% of total stock is off market. Means something dramatic either way is going to happen!
Cello.just sold out 40k. Dealing in shares off the back of financials and fundamentals is one thing but I have decided sitting between shorters on the one hand and QIA/Sainsbury family holding on another, with the retail market oversupplied like it is makes this feel like Russian roulette.
You could be onto something. Same thing looks like it happened again most recently albeit to a slightly smaller degree. UBS 'trip' over 3% (nice coincidence) thereby creating more takeover rumours, SP then starts moving north (although slightly discounted as market has recovered a chunk of its early Oct correction) but at the same time shorters have been back in for more. Mobiles in plastic bag please!
Cello. Interesting theory UBS/QIA. i looked at this a while ago as had similar view. I became doubtful though as UBS made lots of noise earlier in the year about a possible QIA takeover. I couldn't reconcile why they would do this as it ultimately runs the risk of jacking the price up for QIA. Your comment about mobile numbers made me laugh. Some very good academic research (American) has looked at the behaviour etc of shorters. There is a classic line in it, which goes something like, the geographic location of shorters when following a lead shorter 'tend to be located closer'.......uuumm ...wonder what that means?!
Shorted position on SBRY has increased by my calcs by almost 1% over the last few days, despite shares going up. These guys must be constantly rolling over their positions some of which have been open since end of last year /beginning of this year. Given the market leader TSCo has a very small shorted position these shorters must believe that Sainsbury continues to be over valued Vs its peers. What is so concerning is this must be based on some INTEL we don't have as all the public stuff points to Sainsbury share price being under valued.
We shouldn't look to past performance but FTSE comparatives. Yes div is covered but less so than FTSE 100 cos. av. However, SBRY PE at less than 7 currently seems very low compared to x17 for FTSE 100. SBRY div yield was already very high BEFORE share price collapse, now on a yield of 7%. Even junk bonds aren't giving 7% yield. My guess dividend will be cut to give a yield of about 5 %, so less than last year but still an excellent return.
JJSS ......this site is useful for getting at short positions... Hope that helps http://shorttracker.co.uk
Here you are.... http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2012:086:0001:0024:en:PDF
Leonasdad. Your comments are a bit confusing. 1. Why would the qataries short the business if it is fundamentally strong? In theory they might want to short it if they thought it was very weak in order to hedge their 25% long position. 2. If the Qataris were shorting we would know about it. You can't hide a shorted position of any material value. If you do you are in breach of Regs.
Looks like smaller short positions are being exited as total short position now down below 10%. Have to say I am completely bewildered as to what the larger short positions such as Landsdowne and Pelham are doing given the SP is up 10% from where it hit rock bottom. I can only think they have hedged there own position and have to wait for matching contracts to close out.
The Qatar position is an interesting one: The shorters are waiting to see if a rights issue is on the cards and that's why they haven't yet closed their positions. A rights issue would hurt the Qatar's when they have already lost a fortune thanks to the shorters. Whilst a bit Machiavellian its possible however the Qatar's are not that unhappy with the shorters position because that makes a full takeover that much cheaper and clears the decks. I agree that they will want to be clear on strategy. The only strategy that would make sense to me is for Sainsbury to turn many stores in Mini Mall's to make better use of their expensive real estate - maybe the Jessops partnership is the start of this. Arguably the Qatar's have the deepest pockets of all in this Super Market War its just a question of whether long term the UK market is a good investment play - perhaps the fact UK is growing better than EU may help. I just pray either way they stay in.