Member Info for tomglan

Overnight charges, essentially the interest rate to keep the position open... which will eat into your returns.

I never said you should be pleased with anything, I'm underwater here myself. My first purchase was when it dropped through the £30 barrier, I have since averaged down and re-invested the dividends to give me a rebased cost price of around £19. That's just over a 7% div yield that has been paid without fail during a period of significant turmoil - a lot of companies knocked the dividend on the head completely! These funds have proved very useful in giving me cashflow to see my household through these difficult times as well as purchase other securities that have taken more of a beating. I guess we want different things from our investments but for me, my tobacco holdings did what they said on the tin. Tom

Baxter, I think there are other UK high yield stocks worthy of consideration too. You could take a look at BATS (8.16% div yield, recently hiked by 2.5%), Legal and General (6.66% div yield, recently committed to 3-6% annual div growth to 2024), Direct Line (6.94% div yield with chance of supplemental specials or buybacks), Chesnara (7.56% div yield, possibility of 2-3% increases). There are others as well but my point being is that for a small reduction in yield, you can split your eggs among more baskets. Sorry to hear the lockdown impacted you harshly. Good luck

Never quite understood why people complain about a share they like getting cheaper, especially when the return for companies like Imperial is via dividends rather than capital gains. When my div clears next month I'd prefer the price to be closer to £10 than to £20. If you look to the market to tell you what's something is worth you are in for a bumpy ride... the central banks will see to that. ATB

If that trend continues one of us will eventually be able to buy the entire company for a quid. The last 5 years have been really poor for all tobacco and value stocks generally. If you bought this 5 years ago you got more debt, a 4-5% div yield and a higher payout ratio. Now you are getting a yield of over 9%, lower payout ratio, less debt and surplus cash to reduce leverage quite rapidly. You also have a bloke in charge that seems to have somewhat of a plan, which is a welcome change around these parts. I think the chances of a good outcome are higher now than they were in 2016, however I could be proven wrong. Time will tell.

Just to get back to fundamentals here. What are peoples views on options regulation going forward in the US? Retail investors have managed to blow a hole in various hedge funds using them - will they still have this ability when the dust settles? The timing on IG buying a company that enables new traders to "learn how to trade options" may not have been ideal in hindsight.

They didn't just stop shorts though, they have stopped all new positions. How is allowing long positions that IG hedges with real shares a risk to their exposure model? I understand it's different from their usual internal flow model, however, they have prevented traders from taking part in a unique, one-off black swan event. Having said that I didn't agree when Robinhood only allowed one side of a trade (selling) so not sure how I'd feel if IG did the opposite (buy only). There is likely no grand conspiracy here, that wasn't the point I intended and I thank you for explaining the mechanics in more detail. What I wanted to get across was that as soon as retail investors are winning it seems areas of the market get switched off and it doesn't feel right.

The fallout from this will definitely impact IG going forward, people are already compiling lists of the firms that 'sold out' and prevented their customers from trading (namely buying) and those that did not. This is just one website I came across during my research into this: https://www.wherecanibuygme.com/
A lot of people won't forget this, when it really counted who this company supported. I will be closing my account with IG after this, never to return.

Can't have hedge funds on the wrong side of a trade lose money, can they? Scum IG

sufc, you do realise that Blackrock owns shares on behalf of their customers who are invested in their funds right? They own a bit of everything so they can sell customers exposure to the market via index funds etc. They are not in the insurance business.

Dean, if you search 'imperial brands financial calendar' you'll be taken to a page with the dates on for upcoming events. From there it states ex-div is 18th Feb and payment is 31st Mar. Capital Markets event next Weds should be interesting though.

thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/insurer-lined-up-as-target-after-confused-deal-srv8ds2hb

From the press release dated less than a month ago: "As 2020 is a pause year, the Board’s current intention is to keep the final 2020 dividend flat. From 2021 the Board intends to grow the dividend at low to mid-single digits." The info is there for those that care to look.

As per 12th Nov Capital Markets event, the dividend will be kept flat for 2020 which equals a final payment of 12.64p early next year. It should then rise progressively at 3-6% from there. EPS is expected to grow faster than div payments.

Rising from £12 to nearly £15 in less than a month is pretty good in my book. There will always be a market-wide discount due to the nature of the business. BATS is sitting on a yield of almost 8%, so IMB sitting on 9% doesn't seem too farfetched.

For me it would be Legal & General, no debt, div yield 6.8%, double-digit profit and div growth over recent history, no impact to profit this year from COVID and management have just committed to low-mid div growth over the medium term.

Gender balance, race balance... why not simply hire the most competent person for the job regardless of other factors? The police officers that stood around whilst George Floyd was suffocated were all from different backgrounds and look how that ended. Personally, I think LGEN and other asset managers should do more to curtail the excessive executive remuneration that has resulted in huge inequality and which is causing society as a whole to destabilise. That and climate change strike me as two big impact areas to focus on.

It's Legal & General Assurance (Pensions Management) Limited (PMC) that has been making the sales, looks like it is selling client pension assets so I'd guess they might have recently lost a large client. Have asked IR to confirm.

From Aviva website: "we have decided to take the opportunity to review our longer term dividend policy, in light of our strategic priorities and the future shape of the group, with the objective of a sustainable pay-out". Sounds like COVID provided good cover to reset an unaffordable dividend to me, good luck with your investment.

If Aviva is swimming in cash why did they ditch the final dividend and then cut the interim from 9.5p down to 6p? The dividend only costs them £1.2bn a year so you'd think they could have dipped into that £13 billion? Something doesn't quite add up there.