Member Info for ToffAppleton1

HSBC downgraded their price target for BT from 135 to 125 today. I think that’s the reason for today’s plunge. Bt in a severe downtrend now. I think it’ll test 130 before the month’s out.

Or it could be scammers.
Vodafone would be an obvious target because they’re commonly owned.

You simply sign the shares over
And they send a cheque or promise to wire the balance.

Except the cheque never comes.
And you realize you’ve gifted your Vodafone shares to some anonymous personage in Nigeria.

:o))))

Eviking

I find it odd that a corporation would solicit Fleecy to sell his Vodafone shares when there’re billions of them for sale on the market. Maybe they really are worth a premium because they belong to Fleecy.

:-)))

Eileen

Quite a fall recently in BT.
Manipulation ?
Thoughts anyone ?

The fall is down to competition worries.
With a powerhouse like Comcast out to grab market share BT could come under serious pressure. The market is bearish on BT at the best of times. So when real negative news breaks it gets baked into the shareprice 3/4 times.

“BT’s hopes for UK broadband domination may face serious U.S. competition. The telecommunications operator’s shares fell 7% on Monday after the Sunday Telegraph reported https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/10/03/sky-closes-broadband-investment-deal-virgin-media-o2 that pay-TV operator Sky, owned by $263 billion Comcast , wants to invest in Virgin Media O2, the closest rival to BT’s Openreach network .

Even if a deal happens, Sky would remain a big Openreach customer. BT’s fibre network, which should stretch to 25 million of Britain’s 30 million homes by around 2027, is simply too big to ignore. More worrying for BT Chief Executive Philip Jansen is the need to generate a decent return on the 15 billion pounds he’s going to spend digging up Britain’s roads. Liberty Global-backed Virgin wants to have 14 million homes on ultra-fast broadband by 2028. With support from a giant like Comcast, that target could get bigger and arrive faster.”

Just like to add.

Russian Roulette is the closest analogy to cryptocurrencies I can think of.

And when that loaded chamber goes off.

It’s Game Over!

Skier

“people have been forecasting the end of crypto for a decade... and it keeps on going up and up and up!”

No crypto goes up and down.
Cryptocurrencies are driven up primarily by hedge funds playing fast and loose with other people’s money. As with any bubble word gets around and the proles jump on the bandwagon en masse.

Like they did with the tulips.
And the south sea bubble.

But eventually all bubbles burst when there are no bigger fools to sell to.
Bubbles depend on new mugs willing to buy in at incrementally higher and higher prices.

When the bubble finally bursts, it will go the way of all previous ones where the asset had no intrinsic value.

To Nothing!

I’m going to write a short story.
The title is going to be called ‘Bitcoin Apocalypse’
A definitive story of human nature and the madness of crowds.

And when cryptos do blow up the shockwaves will he felt around the world. The social cost will be high, bearing in mind that many of the herd have borrowed to gamble on them.

Headlines not for days or weeks - but for months.
The fallout will be enormous.

Because when a trillion dollar asset becomes worthless overnight there’re a lot of casualties.
And cryptos are the biggest Ponzi scheme in history by light years.

Prediction by ToffAppleton

And I am rarely wrong.

Totally anti-Brexit myself…
But did anyone predict Brexit would open the floodgates to overseas corporate takeovers at rock-bottom prices.

And the Europeans who built our economy have left are being replaced by thousands of third world citizens who wash up on our shores everyday. Isn’t that what the Brexiteers promised to end post-Brexit?

I’d just like to add, the cheap £ has encouraged overseas predators to takeover British companies
I think it’s something like 48 UK companies(listed in the main indexes) been taken over (or bid for) in 2021

And that’s down to them being undervalued in a nutshell.

Fleecy

“Possibly partly to do with sterling outperforming against the dollar, not sure why Telecom stocks took such a hit today”

It’s plain pedantic to read hefty shareprice drops into minuscule currency movements.

Like BT, the £ is undervalued. Fair value for £/$ is said to be $1.58 for £1

The £ is cheap. The £’s value has never recovered since the Brexit referendum in 2016. It trades at about a 15/20 percent discount to its intrinsic value.

I mean - you’re well into your sixties. You must remember the £ at over $2 to a £

And contrary to conventional wisdom.
Just because an asset is undervalued/ overvalued doesn’t mean it’s going to change any time soon. Valuation anomalies can last for DECADES.

Valley

“There is a trend in the last three weeks after hours
Theres been plenty of buying especially on low trading days.”

If I were you I wouldn’t fixate on individual trades. The only number that matters is the present Share-price. You have to assume that every known known and known unknown is factored into that number. To believe otherwise is clutching at straws. Remember - there is only ONE reality in shares - and that is the price in any given time in the present.

Nige

“Maybe to do with talk of an October Covid lockdown? Denied of course.”

In the nanny-state universe in which we live, always take statements of denial by slimy politicians as a probable eventuality.

Especially where Johnson is concerned; where nothing exists except the endless present where he is always right.

And when the next lockdown is announced it will be justified by unquestionable dogma that the brain dead sheeple will accept without unquestionably.

Because the nanny -state demands absolute obedience from its subjects in return for dictatorship “without” tears And to make that scenario a reality the Tory’s have invented a world where black might become white and yesterday’s bleak weather might be rewritten as fine and sunny tomorrow.

I’d say another lengthy autumn lockdown is extremely likely.

In the age of artificial intelligence inhumane politicians have developed a wicked habit of weaponizing reality to control their citizens.

Rage Against The Machine!

Unsurprisingly the Permabear 100 plunged on the news of US job data. And even more unsurprisingly the Permabear fell more than the Dow, even though the news was all about America.

The Permabear has been reacting in this way for over 20 years now. It factors EVERY grain of negative news from around the globe into the index.

That’s why the Permabear 100 is only marginally higher than in 1999.
While the Dow has Quadrupled
And the Dax has Tripled.

And it’s not because of the constituents
There’re some great companies in the Permabear

Which would be valued at 2/3 their current value if they belonged to a decent stock market.

Good to see BHP leaving the Permabear. It trades at a twenty percent premium in Australia. Like losing Messi in his prime. And Rio Tinto could well do the same.

Do the market makers really trash our most valuable companies into the dirt for good reason or are they just using any old pretext to determine market direction so most of us lose.

I can’t see how London can remain a financial centre of any significance when it’s primary index has stagnated for the past twenty years.

p.s. the past 20 years is just one example (timeframe)
Since 2009 it has performed even worse against global markets.

Fleecy

“I'm so used to watching BT's historic price movements 20% drop doesn't even phase me these days.”

And I shouldn’t think so either. You must be fully conditioned to losing by now. Catastrophic investments in Vodafone BT & Lloyds have left you a much poorer man. I really believe you’re one of the very few people on here who has no idea what it feels like to win;)

Fleecy

“At least I've got money to invest Toff, unlike you who just pretends to invest.”

I’ve told you countless times - I don’t invest - I trade.

Subtle difference.

Fleecy

“I can't find any reasons for the current downward trend, but it's only a concern for those desperate to sell. I think of it as testing the weak.”

What amazes me most about you is the way you transform catastrophic investments and eye-watering losses into a virtue.

Let me guess - you invested in BT Vodafone & Lloyds to make money. But when that didn’t happen you used this board as a purgative to paint yourself as a saintly crusader.

Or unlike other people did you invest because you believed the shareprice was going to fall?

Since covid first hit the markets you’ve missed out on the opportunity to make tens of thousands. Does that make your sanctimonious ‘investment’ sermons worth listening to?

I think the answer to that is a resounding NO!

You talk about testing the weak.
But you test my patience (and intelligence)

Fats

“Toff, I would not be surprised if there is an FY margin guidance cut,”

You’re behind the curve. Unilever flagged the nagin issue in their July 22 trading update. It’s a known known.

“Consumer goods conglomerate Unilever reported higher-than-expected underlying sales growth for the second quarter but cut full-year operating margin forecasts due to rising costs.

Underlying sales rose 5% in the three months to June 30, beating the 4.8% forecast, according to a company-supplied consensus.

First half turnover was flat at €25.8bn, while underlying operating profit fell to €4.8bn from €5.08bn. Underlying first-half margins fell to 18.8% from 19.8%.“

That looks transparent enough to me.

Fats

“And everything to do with surging input and labour cost
plus weakness in some EM currencies.”

Any surge in input and labor cost will be passed onto the consumer. So the eventual net difference will be zero.

You read a lot into minuscule currency fluctuations. Obsessed? over focused? pedantic? Or all three?

Unilever is a multinational with markets in every part of the world. It trades with a basket of currencies and keeps those currencies in its float.
So any minuscule movement in any currency is going to have a Zero Net Effect.

Unilever pays a very modest dividend which is comfortably covered by earnings.

Which allow it to buy a massive £3 billion of its own shares back before December 2021.

Which boosts the earnings per share
Lowers the total dividend payment (less share to payout)
And supports the shareprice.

And when that share buyback program is complete.
They will announce another.

What’s not to like?

JPM downgrade from neutral to underweight is the reason for today’s plunge.

Positives:
1) it’s created a buying opportunity
2) Unilever are currently buying back nearly half a million of their shares everyday. About 20 percent of the average daily volume. The price drop will mean more shares cancelled for less money.

Unilever will be accepting tentative bids for its tea business this month. Several interested parties. If the price is right they will sell raising about £4 billion. Or they may float the tea business off as an IPO.

Donavan

“My personal view is that the low price reflects more on CityFibre's long term risk profile in the face of ongoing and intensifying competition from BT.”

Or more likely BT is ‘mispriced’ by a market that is incapable of valuing shares fairly.

The ftse 100 is an appalling index, it’s been stagnant for 21 years. You only have to look at the amount of uk companies which have fallen prey to predators over the past eight months to see that the market has no idea how to value shares.

Bt is grossly undervalued. If it belonged to another global index it would trade at double the current value. That’s the Permabear factor BT trades on a Permabear 100 valuation.

That’s why BT attracted a lot of suitors when it fell to £1. If it had been a normal business it would have been taken over. But the quagmire of red tape and regulations imposed by slimy politicians made a takeover unviable. As with Lloyds and Centrica, BT has been politicized and once that happens it will always suppress the shareprice. I wouldn’t buy BT for that reason alone. I avoid all politicized stocks

Interesting to note that BT has fallen nine times out of the last ten trading updates. I don’t think there was anything in yesterday’s results to warrant the drop - it just seems to have become a market tradition to hammer BT on results day.

And as with the last trading update the shareprice has risen the next day. My view - a gradual climb towards £2 from here.