Member Info for Trent700

Just had a small cheeky top up for it.

@ Barchid.

As I say, I only have experience in lending to individuals and not commercial lending, so that's not really one of my areas of expertise.

Regarding food quality, I guess it depends from venue to venue how the food fayres.

I've only eaten in 2 Marston's pubs myself, one at The Greenfinch in Didsbury a few years ago & The Glassworks in Stourbridge a couple of times while visiting friends and found both to be very good. Doubtless there will be a few places that need improvement but that's just the way it can be sometimes I guess.

*well, I used to work lending to private individuals, and not in business lending so I know that it is possible to make overpayments on those types of loans. Not sure if you can or can't do that with business loans or not, but wouldn't have thought you couldn't.

@ Barchid.

Reducing the cost of their borrowing liabilities has to be a good thing. Maybe if he was to go that little step further by using those savings to help reduce the debt even further also makes sense to me if it is possible to make those overpayments.

I used to work for a bank on the lending team, so I do know a fair bit about this and it is possible to do this.

I understand that business lending works differently to lending to the general public but would have thought that the banks would welcome overpayments from all borrowers, so that they could get that money out working for them elsewhere.

Just my observation of course.

Toff, I agree with some of your points.

I worked within the banking sector when all of this "crisis" was going on. I'm not going to say which company I worked for, as that's a can of worms that it's probably best to stay away from .

I was just a low level grunt, just doing the job I was instructed/paid to do, and not involved in the decision making process into operational lending procedures, and that's that.

I believe that it was bad decision making and bad lending processing at the top that was responsible for the mess that resulted. Maybe those responsible for making the pigs ear of it should be brought to book for it harshly.

@ Toff.

Here's the thing though.

I do not call you a liar when you say you've been trading for quite some time.

This being true, then I would argue that Your point of bothering to do so, is to buy and sell your chosen shares at the best possible prices. That's fair enough. That's the nature of the beast of capitalism.

But then you say something like "The Uk need a generation of hardcore socialism", which is of course totally at odds with what you along with the rest of us that dabbles in this game is trying to do for ourselves. Very strange. It's like a turkey saying it's looking forward to seeing Bernard Matthews.

@ Bluedreamer

You know, I've been investing & swing trading for a good few years now,and have never seen any share literally double in value, ever. Not one.

I've seen shares go up 10 - 40p on the back of a good rns, or takeover bid or rumour, only to often retrace in a short space of time.

But for a share to double in value on the back of a Labour Government gaining power, as Tofappleton1 suggests seems ludicrous to say the least.

That said, I wouldn't put it past Corbyn to offer shareholders double Centrica's value to then go on to Nationalise it along with all the other utility and rail companies.

"As a novice trader who doesn’t know the dynamics of markets"you say.

I've been investing in shares long enough to understand several things.

1. A shareholder will not sell his or her holding for less than they bought them for, unless they needed their money for something more urgent or pressing. A government body or other entity would struggle to purchase this or any other share for less than the market value or for its current value if there was no real need to free up funds for something else, especially if their buy in was higher than the current sp. Their purchase price would have to put the seller in profit to make it worth their while.

2. You think that Centrica would double in value? Based on what? Even if it did, which is doubtful, that would mean that Corbyn would have to stump up North of £1.50 per share based on the current price to buy the Company from shareholders. Always assuming of course holders sell to this muppet. That being the case, where do you think that money would come from?

It would seem that this "Novice trader"knows more about the stock market dance than a seasoned pro like yourself does.

@ Toffappleton.

"Hopefully Corbyn will win the election and annihilate these horrible parasites that are raping uk investors."

And what do you think will happen to Centrica shareholders when this clown Corbyn re-nationalises Centrica, along with ever other plc utility/rail companies at great expense to the taxpayer, including yourself?

"The Uk need a generation of hardcore socialism".

Bear these points in mind.

The national economy develops relatively slowly;
There is an inability to obtain the upmost profit from the use of resources, labors and land;
Places that have a geographical advantage lose chances to develop better...
People lose initiative to work and enthusiasm to study as doing more isn’t rewarded.

As I say, I've not had a detailed read through all of it as yet, I had just had a read through some of the headline points while giving our boys their breakfast this morning. Probably not the best time to go through something as important as this. I'll go through it properly in more detail during the day to get the bigger picture.

I get the point about not being sure about where the £70m of disposals. Maybe they've identified a number of poor performing outlets to offload. If that is the case, then perhaps it might be sensible to get rid of them, as long as they can find someone to buy them and make these pubs pay their way for them.

As we all know, debt here is quite eye watering, but on a positive note, it does seem to be reasonably well managed, and Mars do seem to be reasonably smart enough to have come up with a strategy to chip away at it, and still be in a strong enough position to maintain divvi levels.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before at some point, but a good few years ago I was in PFD, and they have/had similar debt levels to ourselves, but they've not paid a divvi for years.

@ Bamps, RE: my bathroom, yes, I'm almost there with it now. Had the technical surveyor round on Sunday gone to price up how much I'm gonna get stung for fitting all the new stuff we had to buy. £9k in total for all the new stuff & fitting. Ouch!

I'm beginning to understand now how the fat kid at school used to feel when the bullies used to nick his sweets at play time now.

Not read all of it yet, but doesn't look too bad what I have read.

@ Dinoken.

Hard to say. It all depends on your investment strategy I suppose.

I'm not averse to a bit of swing trading myself Per Se, if any of my holdings are suddenly up by a hundred or so quid to buy back in again On the dips to get a few free shares, but of course that's just my strategy.

I only have a small holding in 2 Companies now, Mars & SGC as I am quite fond of both.

I had to sell my ITV holding recently (reluctantly) because we've had to shell out half the cost for a new bathroom as it was leaking.

So I'm recovering from open wallet surgery. Gutted.

Have you checked in on our little football league recently?

You're doing quite well in 3rd place at the moment.

Let's not dwell too much on the fact I'm languishing in 15th place too much though.

And of course, we have a peak trading period fast approaching too.

Yes, I hope it holds up for you all, especially those that have held for quite a while. You deserve some sustained recovery.

As I say, I'm not in as yet, but considering a small toe dip.

As it goes, and I'm not plugging anything, but I am in to Marston's, and as mentioned, a peak trading period is almost upon us so a good run up to Christmas would be good for all of us.

Fingers crossed.

@ Dogger.

Yes, you're quite right. It's always best to make sure that it is the right move.

Like everyone else, I've made plenty of errors of judgment, but you live and learn.

But got disillusioned by the company's lack of direction so sold out and moved on.
This was roughly 6 years ago, but that said I am considering coming back in with a small punt.

I haven't looked to see if there is any prospect of a dividend as yet but I will be looking to see if this is a possibility before I commit to anything as naturally I'm not too keen on selling some shares that are working and paying their way for one that isn't.

We do buy quite a few PFD products, as do many other people, but if I'm putting my money down, I'd like to see something come back.

No worries Jed.

I did think that 3 million did seem a little low over the total course of the run up to Christmas considering that we generally tend to see them on supermarket shelves from the 3rd & 4th week of November onwards.

Maybe in the last week or so to the big day, this figure sounds about right.

They are always a welcome guest in my house That's for sure. Mainly by me of course with a nice dollop of cream.

This will have been over the last few weeks in November, and the whole of December I would have thought.

I just did a quick search, and found that according to an item in the Independent, dated January 2018, Mr Kipling sold 220 Million Mince pies.

This will have been from 2017 one would assume, but my guess is that it would have been a very similar amount last year give or take.