Member Info for Trouts

To be fair, I just looked back at the Q3 Trading Update from last year (9th March 2023) and it reads in a similar vein with no hard numbers given.

10th largest holder, not 10%! Legal & General Investment Management Limited hold 138,461,076 shares in Apple, which is around 0.9%.

There's a party going on all over, even Europe hitting all time highs... It's just the UK isn't invited. Our market is still stuck around the pre-covid level *sigh*.

Topped up at a tad over 93p after trimming yesterday. I want to be fully on board when the world wakes up to the immense value here!

Hmm, we've reached 97p again. Possibly time to take a little profit and wait for some pullback?

Try this... https://archive.is/nkioB

Interesting debate... I've always loved the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants", meaning we don't have to discover everything from scratch but can learn from our predecessors and build on that knowledge. That can be applied to all avenues of life, but in schools it seems to be done very badly. We chuck random facts at children with no context of the history of why it is relevant. Take a subject like trigonometry... how often have we heard the phrase "when will I ever get to use this in real life?" Whose maths teacher ever explained that trigonometry provides a perfect model for working our the best place to convert a rugby ball from? We bore our children with facts without teaching them how to think, by showing them how these principles were discovered in the first place.

I'm of an age where I got a grant to go to university, but I quit after a year because it was a worse quality than I had experienced in school and 6th form. Now I find myself as an employer being presented with CVs of graduates who simply don't know how to think! They tout their qualifications, but have no practical experience of using any of this knowledge. Give me a 22 year old with four years of work under their belt over a 1st class honours graduate any day. And don't get me started on the levels of entitlement and salary expectations of these graduates!

If I had had children (I managed to escape that burden) I would definitely have encouraged them to learn a trade and only take on years of debt for university if they showed massive aptitude and desire to follow that path.

A plumber with integrity is worth 100 accountants in my book!

Karlo, that's a very incongruous, off-topic post! It couldn't be that you have some kind of vested interest in XPP?

Obviously can't give "advice" but if it were me I'd be considering whether such a concentration in a single stock is wise. The company now is probably quite different to 10 years ago, and it's culture, practices and performance will likely change again after the merger/takeover. I'd be tempted to take the money and reinvest in either funds or index trackers (if you are risk averse), or a selection of mid to high yielders (as it sounds like the divi is what you're after). The likes of LGEN, PHNX, MNG keep cropping up on these boards as peoples favourite home for this kind of thing. Obviously, use up unused ISA allowances to keep any income tax free.

I guess in summary, I'm saying don't be wedded to the investment just because of some emotional attachment to the company you used to work for.

Good Luck in whatever you choose!

That was probably just Mary... Nothing to see here! ;-)

I've always taken the view that you have no profit or loss until it is crystalised, and once it is, that trade is over. If you happen to take out a new position in the same share, the whole process starts again. Using your previous figures to calculate an average might make you feel better, but doesn't really reflect your current position.

I have a note saying the 28th Feb is when we get results and divi announcement.

So, better than expected but still worse than the US figures which caused such a drop yesterday. It's still a tough fight, I hope Bailey and his MPC cronies learn from this and maybe react a little quicker next time. Transitory indeed!

So, buy housebuilders then?

I went to the pub at lunchtime and bought a pint of Peroni. I paid £7.35 for it on a credit card and was very happy with my purchase. Now I discover that the same pint of Peroni is available in a pub half a mile away for £6.95. This blatant profiteering is outrageous! Am I owed compensation?

It's crazy, isn't it? Look at a graph of FTSE100 from just before COVID plunge. We are pretty much back at that level today. Then look at a chart for the S&P500 for the same period. The difference is stark! We are floundering at the same level and the S&P has gone from 3,400 to 5,000. How dumb am I for scrabbling around in the dirt of the UK market to get a return when I could have just stuck it all in a US index tracker. Will there be a reversion in the UK at any stage? I can't see what will change in the near future to bring that about.

I've been adding here. Contrary to a lot of people commenting, I'm very happy to invest in an organisation described as "woke". This to me just means that the CEO has an awareness of the world we live in, values human capital and is kicking back against the old boys club that has been stuffing their pockets and periodically crashing the markets for the last 50 years. As Christine Lagarde said, if it had been Lehman Sisters rather than Lehman Brothers, maybe that particular institution would still be around!

Just grabbed a sneaky top up at a smidge over 234p. I haven't got millions to invest, but of the small amount I have I'm happy to build a solid position in LGEN. This should be in my retirement fund for years to come. It's currently around 6% of my portfolio and I'm happy to top up to around 10%.

I think your missing part of how this works. Look at the BDEV share price - the market has repriced it based on this new information, currently at 492p. 1.44 shares at 492p is only 708p per RDW share. Don't forget this deal doesn't bring any new money to the table - apart from in the medium term some cost savings. So logically any raise in RDW shares has to be paid for by a corresponding fall in BDEV shares. Redrow shareholders have got the better side of this deal and there is no guarantee the BDEV share price will even hold where it is (their results announcement today was NOT good).

So, you are at the whim of how the market now prices BDEV shares and if you hang on you are locked in for weeks until the new shares are issued. Maybe consider taking the money now and pat yourself in the back for being on the right side of this deal. You may well be able to buy back in at a lower price than this in the near future!

Here you go... direct link to the post:

https://twitter.com/Adam_Grant_Bell/status/1752693813007831101