Member Info for TheThinker

I agree Montedawnster. Remember Lady Gaga's bacon dress. Greggs could do a croissant coat with cornish pasty shoes. On point fashion whilst at the same time being extremely tasty...

Oh BTW bull flag forming in advance of Earnings on 3 Mar. Good Luck Everyone.

Skool Daze was one of the best games on ZX Spectrum back in the 80's. There was normally one kid who could supply a C90 cassette with a myriad of games on it such as Jet Set Willy, Sabre Wolf, Sabateur, Alien8. You pressed LOAD"" on a squishy rubber keyboard, hit play on a dodgy cassette player that you had nicked off your sister and waited. If you were lucky after several minutes of staring at hypnotic horizontal lines and high pitched squeeling the game appeared. If you were unlucky, the thing crashed and you got the dreaded LOAD ERROR or the machine defaulted back to the boot up screen ZX Spectrum, Sinclair Industries 1981. Right, I'm off to play Super Breakout on Atari whilst I wait for ITV to get up to 130p net month.

Could be..There were 2 dips recently (24 Jan) then slightly higher dip (7 Feb). This could be double bottom which can precede a period of growth. Good Luck.

FRES has got 1000p in it which should boost MAFL. I held FRES seperately, watched it touch high 900's then drop and waver around 900p. I sold on a peak at 918p just in profit to get out as there was too much apparent MM involvement for me e.g. FRES would drop on days when silver was rising. Good job I sold as it is now mid 600's and still more messing around. I still believe FRES has 1000p in it but only once MMs b****r off. My opinion only, Good Luck all.

This is fabulous stuff. I always like to hear people's stories as to how they got into investing. ITV was very big in the 80's when there was only BBC1, BB2 and ITV. Then Channel 4 came along, early 80's I believe. Teachers were great back then, smoking with the naughty kids round the back of the bike sheds, etc. I never heard of any encouraging kids to start trading/investing at my school as it would not be viewed on favourably if they lost their parents' money but hey, who are we to question it. I bought my first FT paper at 14 and my peers wondered what the heck I was doing. I studied the meaning of the companies lists, symbols and articles and so when I was old enough to open a trading account I had the basics. My biggest regret was not buying Psion when it went from 700p to around 7000p, especially since my other half advised me to buy it. It would have instantly cleared our mortgage and put a couple of nice cars on the drive. Nevermind, there have been other deals which turned out OK. Best wishes and Good Luck with your investments.

Investing in 100k chunks in one go is very bold and not for the weak hearted. If one does intend to invest 100k total it is better to split into 4 x 25k chunks invested regularly and strategically to make the best of the dips. You'll end up with a better return at lower risk. Good Luck Everyone.

I've followed MKS for several years and shop there every several years for my underpants, LOL. I have watched them struggle and strain against all the problems faced by high street retail. IMO they would be better splitting the company into M&S Food and M&S Clothes. M&S Food fills a high end retail food space just below Waitrose and has a loyal following and status for the middle class customer. It sources food from UK which is highly appealing to it's customers. I'm sorry to say M&S clothing no longer holds that same prestige. Most items sourced outside the UK, non-descript, weak branding, quality not great for the money. Primarni clothes can give the customer almost the same at a fraction of the price. Next fill a similar retail space but have good branding and appeal to both the younger trendier set and the older set. The stores feel fresh and airy and more premium. MKS clothes feel a bit 'stack em high, sell em high'. M&S still appeal to those for pants, socks, ladies intimates, etc. However, to not just survive but thrive they need to make some fundamental changes to their model. Good Luck Everyone.

Dear Tom, I'm not sure that you can determine long term direction purely on intraday drops (or rises). To assist here I have consulted widely available TV charts and superimposed Bolinger Bands and their 'Technical Indicator' functions. MAs are indicating Buy to Strong Buy over various timeframes. Admittedly, oscillators do indicate sell. However, the overall rating is for Buy. Bollinger bands typically have a strong sell when we see a double crossover of the upper line. Despite double crossover of the upper line ITV has rejected the sell off which gives me confidence that we are about to enter a bull run. ITV is a share where I look at the charts from time to time to reinforce what I already feel and that is that it has a strong future and in the post-COVID world it is truly open for business. Good Luck Everyone.

I would like to see a period of steady growth in ITV as the economy comes back from COVID and confidence in premium advertising follows. Long established names like advertising on ITV such as JET2 holidays and Heinz. They wouldn't be putting their cash there if they were not realising revenue from it. I'll shoot from the hip and aim for 150p by end of 2022 which represents around a 25% gain on current levels. Good Luck Everyone.

Interesting strategy nomlungu. You need bottle to trade this way with MAFL. You would need a rise of around 20% though to break through the spread. We seem to have got 8.5% this morning so this strategy seems feasible however you might wait quite a while to accumulate a 20% rise. I regularly see 20% spikes on most of my other stocks in short order. Sometimes I hold if I think its going even higher but most times I settle for 20% and either drop the money elsewhere or wait for the dip again. e.g. I got 23% on JET2 yesterday (cashed in due to uncertainty over Ukraine situation). Good Luck Everyone

100% agree with you Brel, have recommeded you last post.

Hey Tom, Dancing on Ice brings back that memory of Todd Carty crashing into the set. Go watch it on YT you'll be in stiches. Have a Good Day.

The frustration I have is that MAFL seems to be sound and I still stand by that. JV is a steady guy who doesn't BS. I admire that BUT it's time that he and BOD were a bit more dynamic. They seem a bit stuck in a timewarp. The modern market demands and respects companies that promote themselves. The od school days of sticking a few thousand in, walking away and not expecting any visibility of the inner workings is over. The portfolio is sound, the speculative riskier parts of the portfolio seem to have great potential. But without the vision of what MAFL is going to look like when their ships come in, where is this going? I mean say ascendent starts producing, what will MAFL look like as a company? Are we still going to be talking divergence between NAV and SP, zero dividend, and huge spread. Come on JV and BOD give us a glimpse of the future here please....

The best way to appease Putin is to flood the front line with sausage rolls, steak slices and sticky buns. A full tummy is a happy tummy. He always looks so grumpy...

Hello Timmit. I've recommended your post and agree with many of your points. I'm rather disappointed that JV openly in an inteview 2 years ago stated that one of his key aims was to increase liquidity. This has not happened and will not happen until MAFL stops being a backwater investment and starts aligning NAV to its share price by canvassing some heavy investors. Yes, we risk MM manipulation but we also would start to have the chance to open up to smaller investors who follow the big money. Guess what, the increase in market cap that the increase in sp would generate would allow the BOD to invest and grow the portfolio further. Hollow marketing is against my principles, I'm not advocating that, but surely pushing MAFL as a credible investment has to be good for everyone. Not sure why JV and the BOD exercise such extreme caution. Sometimes you've just gotta go for it...

Been in since Jan 2020 and not made a bean, in fact the value of my holding has continued to fall away. I hold my hands up, I got trapped into believing that MAFL was on the up! 2 years with no change in the liquidity is not good enough IMO. I would expect more correlation between MAFL's investments and the share price. You can read the breakdown of their investment portfolio on the MAFL website. For example they are invested in Fresnillo (Mexican silver miner). FRES up today by 3.5% but MAFL static, no trades and huge spread. Everyone here seems to be hanging on for Ascendent and then what? Is MAFL going to suddenly transform itself? I'm interested in how MAFL will look IF and WHEN Ascendent comes online. Thoughts...

Has anyone here actually made any money from MAFL? Would be interested to know please...

Dreamin' of 10p this year. That would be sooo nice.

Dear Tom, what do the relatives in Liechtenstein tell you about ITV, please elaborate? Can they get ITV there? What is thier favourite programme? Are they part of the demographic of watchers that you mentioned yesterday were long term holders and shorters? ESp. since ITV is not showing any shorting activity at present.
Be careful to make an erroneous connection that the 100SMA has any bearing on when a stock is overvalued. This is not true and you must look to multiple indicators on multiple timeframe charts which will give you a better indication of a good entry point. Even then it is not an exact science and must be balanced with other social and political factors. Good Luck.