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I was about to express my disappointment at another poor update, but SB has summed it up. I added to my holding late last year having developed faith on the return of Julian Baines. More fool me. They love to talk of their excellent cash generation and yet can't or won't resume divi payments - not even a small one. They talk of 'gross margin improvement' but won't tell us this year's (FY 2024) percentage in order for us to measure it. Disingenuous. And they never address shareholder value. Feel like I'm being taken for a mug here.

...with no prospect of trading improvement in 2025. Previously they said the N.I. rise announced in the budget last year would benefit their consultants as firms substituted full-time employees with part-time consultants to counter the cost increase. Yeah, right!

Divi sure to be cut. Appear to have picked a lemon here.

Breathless performance on my investment here, can barely keep up....

Interesting. I was thinking above 70p, but am beginning to wonder if I need to scale back my hopes on a lot of the shares I hold.

You want to be a buy & hold investor, but this level of volatility almost forces you to become a trader. Nothing is sticking.

Nasty drop this morning. Large seller(s) making their mind up over the weekend that they wanna bail?

As iliyanvelikov says. Posts crossed.

Ok, not entirely random. Renew Holdings, the Engineering Services Group, reported weakness in their Rail Sector business this morning and their sp is currently tanking.

The market sees a read-through for Costain. I'm not worried. Firstly, Renew reckon the situation will normalise for them in due course as the govt is fully committed to rail infrastructure spend and secondly Costain has fingers in many pies, not just rail and also is more focussed in consultancy services which I expect to be less affected.

Buy the dip I say, but we shall see...

There have been quite a lot of them of late, for no discernible reason.

Are Costain are about to announce they have another contract in trouble? I very much doubt it. I see opportunity, so I've added.

Right company in the right sector in the right country (yes, the UK will be the right place to be over the next 5 years in the world of civil engineering). All in my view.

By no means are these Results stellar, but the market, in its infinite stupidity, finally wakes up to the fact that this company is not going bust. No mention of resumption of divi and management not prepared to be scrutinised via an InvestorMeetCompany Q&A, as they were last year, so it's not all wonderful and rosy. Still, I can't complain about a 23% pop this morning. My average is double the current sp, so still a long way to go for me.

Fair dues to Rachel Reeves. She's rightly received a lot stick for her business unfriendly policies in the press and on these chatlines. Not this time. Go Rachel!

Someone sees value.

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/VLG/holdings-in-company-zzmqe3vqr6ligvc.html

Happy daze!

Cut your weeds, not your flowers.....

First pay down the debt in this era of 'higher for longer', would be my view.

Price-wise, back to square one, however, discount to NAV remains compelling and management are incentivised to do their best..... though I must admit it'll be a longer wait now for the jam to arrive.

Shore Capital expects the divi for 2024 to be circa 21.1p and 23.2p for 2025, per a post on the chatline. That's still a 9% yield, with, surely?, the prospect of capital appreciation.

Wow, this one is drifting and drifting and has been on quite a descent!

Divi yield at 14% tells us that either the divi at this rate is unsustainable and due a cut... or... that the share price is far too cheap. I'm thinking probably a bit of both.

So, should I average down or not? Hmmm...

You can't fight the weight of money exiting UK small & mid-cap stocks and it 's hard to see that turning around.

Mills is deffo a cagey type. He knows Vox is a PR outlet and so he'll say exactly what suits rather than what's necessarily unbiased and accurate, i.e. talk his own book. Am expecting him to go on about the new 'Active ETF' which Harwood recently set up. Incidentally, the CIO of Amati comes on Vox the following week, so there could be an opportunity for penetrating and searching questions of them both, but unfortunately Paul Hill doesn't go in for that sort of thing.

Re Shein, it's not a matter of correct or incorrect Reardon, there are pieces and views in both directions and it remains speculation until an announcement is finally made. My view is it'll happen. What is beyond doubt though is Shein have been eating our lunch and looking forward I'm not sure they're going to be reigned in by UK regulation.

In fairness, even former stock market darling JD Sports is racking up profit warnings - another one issued today. It's tough out there in consumer land. Add in the long-standing point that Shein has been, is, and will continue to eat our lunch in fast fashion. No doubt in my mind that they'll get a UK listing too. A positive piece on Shein was on BBC news yesterday where they said the company had had a 'positive' economic effect on the city of Guangzhou. UK listing nailed on.

The good days for BOO are well and truly over and we're all (or most of us) just looking for an exit at a tad better price than 28p!