Member Info for ToffAppleton1

Greg

“Personally - would not want to be short at 220.. :D”

Right - but you must remember this is institutional shorting not retail shorting. Coke-snorting junkies playing fast & lose with other people’s money from a basement boiler room in Lewisham.

But seriously…

Mass shorted companies in rude financial health are ripe for the picking (for those of us that know)

Have we seen Vistry bottom out today?

Maybe

One guess is as good as another when predicting SP movement.

In my view shorts can only succeed when there is collusion amongst multiple players - and that’s what we’re seeing now.

Svend

Good informative post.

The only flaw I can see in your reasoning is your belief the market values shares rationally.

One only has to take a look at Space X to see that’s not true. And cryptos - assets with zero intrinsic value that trade at obscene levels. We are living in the biggest bubble mankind has ever created. Which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to burst anytime soon. But history has taught us all bubbles always burst eventually.

It’s as though all the money is being placed on a handful of meme stocks while many with real value are being beaten down. Asymmetry in markets is a regular feature, but never at these levels.

As with all mass shorted shares there is tremendous upside for those brave enough to buy, but you have to sort the wheat from the chaff - distinguish between companies in dire financial straits and those that have fallen victim to bear attacks for no reason other than to drive the SP down. I believe Vistry belongs to the latter.

All shares fluctuate to varying degrees, but one only needs glance over the charts to see the housing sector fluctuates more than any other sector. Cyclical stocks which ebb and flow with housing market fortunes.

I believe the last time Vistry traded at these levels was in 1999. What one must remember when trading is that markets have always been irrational and irrationality can endure longer than liquidity. Assets can remain undervalued/overvalued for years. My concern is that AI is being used (misused) to a much greater extent in global markets, exacerbating dubious valuations. In short I believe AI has been weaponised to determine shareprice movement by bad actors.

Buying into a mass shorted shares can have enormous upside potential on the issuance of positive news. A takeover bid, an institutional investor taking a big position, or even a positive trading update exceeding market expectations can send a stock soaring. Supply and demand takes hold - a short squeeze occurs - shorters get decimated in their rush to the exit.

I have raised the issue of complicit mass shorting on these boards before. Anyone wishing to look at my posting history will see that. Such as when Shadowfall (a boiler-room shorting outfit) were fabricating false stories about Darktrace while simultaneously shorting them. I made a killing when Darktrace got taken over and Shadowfall got smashed. They bought my shares off me for nearly three times more than I paid.

I have a small position 475 shares @450

I’m 50 percent down

But I couldn’t care less

I will continue adding

I actively seek out mass shorted shares to buy - although most of them are mass shorted for good reason, there are always a few which are not.

The shareprice plunge is more to do with mass shorting than the company’s financial health. All mass shorted shares enter a death spiral - an irrefutable fact. Hedge funds and their affiliated boiler-room operations collude to mass short companies which have issued negative trading updates. Vistry is near the top of the list - with 13.1 percent of its shares out on declared shorts, the total is probably nearer 20 percent once short positions of less than 0.5 are factored in.

I may be wrong but from all available information Vistry has fallen foul of bad actors. There is no correlation between the company’s fundamentals and the absurdly low share price. As always, when a share is mass shorted, a declining SP becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Buyers are scared away by the spiralling price action and the narrative is controlled solely by those shorting it. Unethical, but a guaranteed way of making money. Mass shorting collusion determines share price movement. In truth, it is nothing more than cheating.

Any prospective buyers should be aware if Vistry’s financial situation is as precarious as the SP suggests a rights issue/cash call is highly likely. But I don’t believe that will happen - why would they buy millions of shares back at a much higher price if they were really strapped for cash?

The buyback has been cancelled now to conserve cash which is prudent. No dividend is paid, further conserving liquidity. My view is the board are reacting to a housing sector slump. The narrative has been twisted by those behind the mass shorting.

Having worked in the financial sector I know all about market mechanisms. I have nothing against ordinary shorting, but I take exception to mass collusion amongst rogue financial players who conspire to fabricate scare stories while simultaneously shorting a stock. Brokers are sometimes complicit in the fraud, evident in downgrades and issuance of absurd price targets as exemplified yesterday by JPM. Illegal? Most definitely. But proving it would be extremely difficult. Also beancounters follow the SP, the SP doesn't follow the beancounters. (That’s brokers in a nutshell)

A simple google search is all you need

Raspberry Pi is heavily involved in designing and enabling AI, not just as a platform for building AI projects but also through dedicated kits and partnerships, making AI accessible for education, hobbyists, and developers with tools like their AI Kit and AI Camera for computer vision and machine learning. They offer hardware accelerators (AI HATs) and software support for local AI processing, allowing complex tasks like object detection and voice commands to run directly on the device (edge AI).

Waccy

Dear me. Do you really believe Raspberry Pi is independent of AI

AI defines every tech company in existence today.

“Raspberry Pi uses AI, especially the newer models like the Pi 5, which are powerful enough for AI/ML tasks and officially supported with the Raspberry Pi AI Kit, featuring a Hailo neural processing unit (NPU) for acceleration, making it a popular platform for budget-friendly machine learning, computer vision, and running AI models locally.”

But I think you’re okay

Thanks for joining the debate

Who knows?

Maybe we can bring some life to this board

“It really is/was massively overvalued unfortunately and I myself was taken away by this excitement. :-(“

Massively overvalued - says who!

A nowhere nobody who constantly makes ultra-assertive posts as though he’s a globally recognised market sage. 😂😂😂

My advice to others, and I know, is not to listen to ignoramuses posting absurd predictions based on their imaginations.

You cannot - repeat CANNOT value ALL shares on p/e alone.

Growth shares, especially in the era of AI, cannot be measured by one simple metric (often spouted by the simple-minded)

My view is Raspberry is an imminent takeover target by an AI major. At £5/6 it would cost pocket change for one of those behemoths. Who could then invest hundreds of millions in the products.

I predicted the same for Darktrace.

And I am rarely wrong!

Diageo has never been a high yield stock. The company has always retained a lot of its profits for expansionism and cash flow.

Highly unlikely they’ll cut the dividend now. Diageo easily makes more than enough to cover the current dividend. And Lewis will be aware a dividend cut wouldn't go down well will institutional investors and retail investors who bought in much higher.

I cannot see a dividend cut.

And I am rarely wrong.

In my view Diageo is a compelling buy at these levels. The Sp has more than halved over the past two years.

I note there’re the usual bottom feeders on this board who are terrified about not getting in at rock bottom. Bottom feeders almost always lose out because they are too fearful. Buying at bombed out prices, even if you don’t catch the bottom, is preferable to not buying at all. Out of all the thousands of trades I have executed I have only caught tops and bottoms a handful of times.

Diageo has been around since the 18th century and will still be around hundreds of years from now. Shares in this sector usually trade on a relatively high p/e of about 18 because they are solid cash cows. Diageo is substantially undervalued , so anyone buying now would be buying at a hefty discount.

Of course it could go lower, and it could remain undervalued for a long time. But I know from experience bottom feeders become hindsight traders when the SP eventually soars. They always miss out. Fearful dispositions are ill suited to stock trading.

As of now 251,000 shares traded. 0.1488 percent of existing shares to be exact. A minuscule fraction of the 168 million shares in issue. Yet the market makers have still conspired to mark the shareprice down 1.6 percent - in whose world does that make sense?

Once the hard cash for the asset disposal is deducted the business is valued at less than one billion; placing it in small-cap territory. There is no other market on earth that values stocks in the same twisted way as uk markets.

JMAT would have served shareholders better if they’d allocated the entire £1.4 billion they intend to return to shareholders, and used it to buy back shares. At current SP they would be buying back shares at about 50 percent discount to intrinsic value. And share buybacks would smash market makers and their brokers (quite often one and the same) and prevent them rigging the price to profit themselves. The uk market is akin to a casino that’s allowed to choose its own card to ensure they never lose. At the expense of investors.

I am going to send this suggestion to the investor relations and I suggest other shareholders do the same. The only reason the government refuses to endorse an inquest into market maker/broker collusion is because it would destroy all confidence in uk markets.

Rugs

Not against shorting on an individual basis. What I do object to is massive funds like Blackrock and their boiler room affiliates collectively targeting a share for to create massive downward pressure on the price. Smells too much like organized crime for my liking. And, don’t forget, shorters are buyers too - they merely complete the transaction in reverse (sell first buy later)

I suspect there were a lot of short positions closed yesterday at eye watering losses. Blackrock & Co became forced buyers at unfavorable prices.

I often go long on heavily shorted shares in the knowledge they will soar on short covering, on the issuance of positive news. Vistry being a case in point amongst others.

Today’s shareprice action is disappointing. Perhaps someone should tell the market makers Jmats disposal is a done deal, not speculation. Current price is comparable to selling £5 notes for £3.75. I’ve been involved in markets for decades and have often lobbied for an inquest into market pricing practices. But it seems the regularity bodies are terrified by the prospect.

Blackrock U.K. had a sizeable short out on JMAT. 1.6 percent of their shares to be precise. A trade like that calls into question the competence of the investment outfit. JMAT’s sum of all its parts was quite obviously worth a lot more than the grievously low shareprice before the asset disposal. Any novice could see that so why did Blackrock short it?

The answer to that is in the U.K. vulture and rogue hedge funds can hijack stocks, no matter how healthy and robust they are, and collude in driving the SP down. I know of no other market in the world that allows that to happen. I’ve often questioned the structure of U.K. markets and their constituents propensity to collapse under shorting pressure. In my view market makers are to blame because they comply with these boiler room outfits by drastically marking the SP down on wafer thin volumes.

To put it in perspective, the asset sale proceeds was only marginally lower than the total market capital value of the company. There’s an old cliche, that says the market is always right. Well I beg to differ, it may apply to some markets, but U.K. markets get valuations spectacularly wrong all the time. Is it the way the pricing mechanisms are structured or is it because uk investors have a massive intelligence deficit with the rest of the developed world?

PRK

“So why can't they attract the same level of interest?”

May have something to do with the gargantuan debt pile.

And selling off all their best assets to fund dividends they can’t afford.

Verizon jumps to mind. Vodafone’s most precious asset. Responsible for a huge amount of its annual profits.

Or the catastrophic investment in the Indian mobile market, where corrupt Indian politicians attempted to extort £5 billion in taxes from Voda for five years before they arrived. International courts ruled against it, but its Indian assets are now worthless. Doing business in India is the surest way to lose billions.

Vodafone is a company that asset-strips itself.

Avocet

“I see, so you are some kind of knight in shining armor“

I am still waiting for some constructive arguments to counter the issues I’ve raised pertaining to Vodafone?

But unfortunately I seem to be screaming into the void. But you do have a valid point - I’m not a knight in shining armor - I’m indifferent to whether anyone wins or loses.

So maybe I’d do better to find another board with intelligent life rather than waste my time here.

If you’re right you will make money

If you’re wrong you will lose money

Irrespective of my factual statements/opinions.

It’s no concern of mine…

Avocet

“Toff, more of your own time wasted posting on the board.”

Rather than make personal attacks, wouldn’t it be better to address/dismiss/disprove the issues I am raising.

One thing I’d like to get straight is my criticism of Voda is not directed at anyone on these boards. I am merely stating opinions supported by facts. More for the benefit of those who may be thinking of buying in rather than those that have already committed.

Can’t post the link, but this is off Wikipedia.

“Total debt on the balance sheet as of March 2024 : $58.70 Billion USD

« According to Vodafone's latest financial reports the company's total debt is $58.70 Billion USD. A company’s total debt is the sum of all current and non-current debts. »

Debt should always be a major consideration when investing in a company. Although debt is a normal part of corporate life, a red flag for me is when the debt grows to unmanageable proportions, which dwarf the MC value of a company.

Bearing in mind, that almost all companies that go bankrupt do so because they can no longer service their debt burden, I would avoid Vodafone for that reason alone. Skyrocketing debt combined with a plunging shareprice rarely has a happy ending.

It’s true, a company can sell assets to pay down debt, as Voda are doing, but asset sales erode revenue, profits and the MC of the company.

Beats me how Vodafone can afford to pay dividends given its enormous debt.

With the SP near its all time low there couldn’t be many investors who are in the blue. Hold and hope is never a good investment strategy.

PRK

“Toff Appleton why are you still here? You have no Vodafone shares, “

Sorry to see you’ve made the novice’s error of getting emotionally attached to an inanimate entity which doesn’t know you exist.

But let me remind you anyone can post on any board here, there is no prerequisite to own shares in a company before one can post on a board.

Vodafone isn’t your wife, so if I voice negative opinions about voda don’t get hyper-emotional and fly into hysterics. Falling prey to emotional is the surest way of losing your reason and making one bad call after another. It’s a loser’s game.

And if you read my posts without prejudice, you will see I am just stating what’s obvious to those of us who aren’t emotionally tangled up in a losing investment. I am not advising anyone to buy or sell. Let them read posts - both negative and positive, then make up their own minds.

If you have an issue with me posting on this board and not owning Vodafone shares, I suggest you take it up with the moderators.

See what they make of your emotionally charged rants :)

And finally - if you’re ever going to learn how to trade successfully you must first learn not to block out negative information - by doing so you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage.

Fleecy

I guess another consideration people should make is the capital value of their holding compared to what they paid for it. For example if you paid £2 a share for Vodafone and it is now 69p you are looking at substantial capital erosion. Irrespective of dividends and dividend reinvestments. Dividend reinvestments only add to compound losses when the shareprice continues to plunge.

Gordon

I didn’t said predict Vodafone will fail. I said the market is pricing it to fail. As toxic U.K. markets does with many stocks.

Dowlais being another example. Smashed downs to 47p. Even after beating market expectations today’s it only made a tiny gain after being beating back down. U.K. markets are unfit for purpose. They have a huge intelligence deficit with the rest of the world. And those responsible for valuing shares are incapable of valuing them fairly. A mirror image of post Brexit Britain, sadly. The ftse isn’t known as the Permabear for no good reason.

Temple Bar fund manager Nick Purves shows how UK shares trade at a 40% discount to world markets, double the 20% historic average.

If you buy into this idea that lowly valued stocks deliver higher returns over the longer-term, where’s the value today? Your listeners will have heard many fund managers, perhaps say, that actually the UK stock market, not everywhere, but in many parts of the UK stock market and the market overall, offers significant undervaluation or is much lowlier valued than some other stock markets of the world.

Concentrate on the left-hand chart on this page. This compares the valuation of the UK market to global markets, generally. Bearing in mind this is a 50-year chart. You can see that today the UK stock market stands at between a 40% and a 45% discount to stock markets globally. An understandable riposte might be, the UK market is populated by some quite capital-intensive industries with not particularly exciting growth dynamics. Shouldn’t the UK market stand at a discount?

Yes, it should. That point is absolutely correct. You can see the bold line there, at around a 20% discount is where the UK market has, on average, traded over time. That’s fine. That’s where you would normally expect to trade, at around about 20% discount. Today, we’re between 40% to 45%. UK stocks are looking generally, not in all cases, particularly attractively priced. Our job, of course, is to cherry pick the ones from the UK market that do look particularly attractively priced.

Recent excerpt from a City Wire article.

It tells me uk shares are uninvestable in the current crazed Trump trade environment.