Member Info for Velo

Posting this because it highlights UK's own back-in-the-day Huawei -namely GEC (or in its final days then known as Marconi)

BT would have hired GEC to manufacture their 5G probably before the rest of the world would have even been aware of the term 5G - that's how advanced BT were back then.

So not strictly true that BT would make 5G - but they would commission it after issuing their specifications to GEC. So in a way, with patents and expertise would BT have been able to offer their own 5G through their supplier GEC?

Whatever the bare minimum without govt interference is that the UK would have had its very own 5G and stole a lead on the world.

BT mentioned as delivering the final nail in the coffin to GEC because by then they were but a pale shadow of their former selves, so BT was compelled to dump GEC for Huawei - read on -

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/08/britain-huawei-general-electric-company-thatcherism

(PART 1)
Chances are that you have learned rather a lot about Huawei. That the Chinese giant is one of the world’s most controversial companies. That security experts, those people we pay to be paranoid on our behalf, warn its telecoms kit could be used by Beijing to spy on us. That Theresa May was begged by cabinet colleagues to keep the firm well away from our 5G network – yet ignored them. And that one or more senior ministers were so eager to prove their concern for national security that they leaked details of their meeting, thus breaching national security.

So you can already guess what will happen when Donald Trump’s secretary of state, meets May and her foreign secretary on Wednesday. Once the pleasantries about Harry and Meghan’s baby are over, top of America’s agenda will be to warn No 10 of the threat Huawei poses to British privacy – and to restate that Washington may retaliate by freezing London out of its intelligence network.

Maybe you recall whistleblower Edward Snowden and his revelations, published in this paper, about how US surveillance services are themselves harvesting millions of people’s phone calls and internet usage. Or possibly you are too busy gasping at the haplessness with which a Conservative-run government has allowed itself to be dragged into an escalating trade war between Washington and Beijing. Many are the questions raised by this affair, but among the largest is one I have not seen asked. Namely, where is Britain’s Huawei? How does one of the world’s most advanced economies end up without any major telecoms equipment maker of its own, and having to buy the vital stuff from a company that enjoys, according to the FBI, strong links with both the Chinese Communist party and the People’s Liberation Army?

Well, the answer is that the UK did have one. It was one of the largest and most famous industrial companies in the world. And it was finally killed off within the lifetime of every person reading this article, just over a decade ago. It was called

(Contin

( Concludes )

New technologies, too, are hampered by low bandwidth, which has a direct effect on our ability to embrace revolutionary concepts. IBM's Watson, the learning super-computer that functions through the cloud and is able to give evidence-based medical diagnoses, will fail in the UK because a lack of bandwidth, according to Dr Cochrane:

"If you look at the story of IBM Watson, it's moving into the medical industry in the United States and you will be able soon to have an app with which you can configure Watson for your industry. It's going to change everything, from investment banking to the legal industry. That sort of service, being able to get remote diagnostics, can only occur if you've got bandwidth".

The future isn't so bright for the UK when it comes to broadband, and that's largely owing to an administration taking the wrong path 24 years ago. Unless there's massive investment in broadband infrastructure and a complete rethink at the highest levels of government, the UK will only fall further behind.

"The UK will be frozen out of cloud computing because we don't have bandwidth, worst of all we don't have symmetric bandwidth. And the UK network cannot support the population in the cloud. It will be OK if you're in a hotspot for bandwidth, and there are some hotspots of bandwidth in the UK, but for the most part the population will be frozen out.

"Ergo, this will hit the bottom line - it all comes down to GDP. If businesses can't operate, the UK won't generate money".

And there you have it. BT had the fast future all mapped out as early as back in the 70's, but were prevented from delivering because politicians wanted foreign competition to take part so BT were told to take a hike.
At that point in time they were amongst the world leaders in telecoms research and development etc.,

That article is half a dozen years old but it shows BT could have developed our own 5G but were prevented from doing so.
----------------

Next up is GEC because it's important to what could have been our own 5G manufacturer/supplier.
(BT are involved indirectly in their demise in caps towards the end).
If they had not fallen, the article claims they would have been today's Huwaei. And back in the day - they were - famed throughout the world as a latter day "Huwaei" and British to boot!

Part 2 of HOW THE UK LOST THE BROADBAND RACE IN 1990

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784/2

Immediately after that decision by Thatcher's government, the UK fell far behind in broadband speeds and, to this day, has never properly recovered. When the current government came to power it pledged that the UK would have the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015 and 90% of homes will be connected to superfast broadband by 2017.

But, as Dr Cochrane explains, there are two things wrong with this. Firstly, the government's definition of superfast broadband is 24Mbps. Secondly, comparing against Europe is pointless. "Western nations blindly compare with each other. There's no point in saying 'we're better than the French, we're better than the Germans' - that's not the point. Are we better than the Japanese, the Koreans and other competing nations?"

"[In Southeast Asia] they roared ahead. The Japanese in particular formulated a plan. While we were faffing about with half an Mbps 'being sufficient' the Japanese were rolling out 10Mbps. When we got to 2Mbps they were rolling out 100Mbps. Hong Kong in 2012 already had a gigabit both ways. In 1999 Japan already had 50Mbps universally and South Korea was comfortably using 4G by 2006. In the UK there's no vision, mission or plan, we're engaged in a random walk into the future".

It all comes down to bandwidthPLAY SOUND
Dr Cochrane explained: "Fibre To The Home gives you an infinity of bandwidth, both ways, that you can upgrade forever, and it's symmetric. If you go for Fibre To The Cabinet, you finish up with an asymmetric service. Now, this is really important. Why? How about the cloud, the cloud is not an asymmetric service, video conferencing is not an asymmetric service, so the whole ethos of the telecoms industry has been skewed by decision makers who think that the future of the internet is watching TV or movies, which it isn't".

"Businesses rely on symmetric bandwidth for cloud computing and video conferencing and this lack of bandwidth will put us slowly into a second world status.

"For example, I am sitting here, I work all over the world and say I want to upload a 350MB file. 350MB is not huge. With my old broadband, when I had less than 0.5Mbps upload you'd start in the morning and finish sometime in the middle of the night. Now I've got 32Mbps upload, I can actually watch it going. If I was in Hong Kong it would be instantaneous. Imagine having a discussion and putting a 10 second delay between each word, it wouldn't work."

New technologies, too, are hampered by low bandwidth, which has a direct effect on our ability to embrace revolutionary concepts. IBM's Watson, the learning super-computer that functions through the cloud and is able to give evidence-based medical diagnoses, will fail in the UK because a lack of bandwidth, according to Dr Cochrane:

Concludes next > > >

(Part One concludes)

"Unfortunately, the Thatcher government decided that it wanted the American cable companies providing the same service to increase competition. So the decision was made to close down the local loop roll out and in 1991 that roll out was stopped. The two factories that BT had built to build fibre related components were sold to Fujitsu and HP, the assets were stripped and the expertise was shipped out to South East Asia.
"Our colleagues in Korea and Japan, who were working with quite closely at the time, stood back and looked at what happened to us in amazement. What was pivotal was that they carried on with their respective fibre rollouts. And, well, the rest is history as they say.
"What is quite astonishing is that a very similar thing happened in the United States. The US, UK and Japan were leading the world. In the US, a judge was appointed by Congress to break up AT&T. And so AT&T became things like BellSouth and at that point, political decisions were made that crippled the roll out of optical fibre across the rest of the western world, because the rest of the countries just followed like sheep.
"This created a very stop-start roll-out which doesn't work with fibre optic - it needs to be done en masse. You needed economy of scale. You could not roll out fibre to the home for 1% of Europe and make it economic, you had to go whole hog.
"It's like everything else in the electronics world, if you make one laptop, it costs billions; if you make billions of laptops it costs a few quid".

)Part Two follows)

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784

As you sit on the phone to your ISP's customer service line, listening to half-baked excuses for why you've only got 0.5Mbps upload speed and why you "need" to upgrade to "superfast" fibre optic, it may be little comfort to know that in an alternate reality you'd already have it as standard.

In 1990, a single decision by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had a devastating effect on the UK's broadband deals infrastructure for the next 20 years and for the foreseeable future.

In a little known story about the UK's broadband history, Dr Peter Cochrane, former Chief Technology Officer at BT and all round tech guru, tells TechRadar how the UK lost the broadband race way back in the 90s.

The story actually begins in the 70s when Dr Cochrane was working as BT's Chief Technology Officer, a position he'd climbed up to from engineer some years earlier.

Dr Cochrane knew that Britain's tired copper network was insufficient: "In 1974 it was patently obvious that copper wire was unsuitable for digital communication in any form, and it could not afford the capacity we needed for the future."
He was asked to do a report on the UK's future of digital communication and what was needed to move forward.

"In 1979 I presented my results," he tells us, "and the conclusion was to forget about copper and get into fibre. So BT started a massive effort - that spanned in six years - involving thousands of people to both digitise the network and to put fibre everywhere. The country had more fibre per capita than any other nation.
"In 1986, I managed to get fibre to the home cheaper than copper and we started a programme where we built factories for manufacturing the system. By 1990, we had two factories, one in Ipswich and one in Birmingham, where were manufacturing components for systems to roll out to the local loop".

At that time, the UK, Japan and the United States were leading the way in fibre optic technology and roll-out. Indeed, the first wide area fibre optic network was set up in Hastings, UK. But, in 1990, then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided that BT's rapid and extensive rollout of fibre optic broadband was anti-competitive and held a monopoly on a technology and service that no other telecom company could do.

"Unfortunately, the Thatcher government decided that it wanted the American cable companies providing the same service to increase competition. So the decision was made to close down the local loop roll out and in 1991 that roll out was stopped. The two factories that BT had built to build fibre related components were sold to Fujitsu and HP, the assets were stripped and the expertise was shipped out to South East Asia.

( Part One continues) > > >

Yes GEC included tonight.

dsc1978 - Going to try and show why BT can never do that because we shot ourselves in the foot from a disastrous decision by Margret Thatcher back in the day. Do you know by 1986 via BT we had more fibre than any other nation on earth?
We were world leaders!

The story actually begins in the 70s when a Dr Cochrane was working as BT's Chief Technology Officer, he found a way to build and install fibre cheaper than copper! And did so by achieving that record of installing more fibre back in the day beyond that of any other country in the world at the time. If his work had not been scuppered by politicians it would be BT that would be installing 5G to the rest of the world today, not the other way round.

Was clearing out these old files to make room. So your post is timely for me to dump them here in reply to you.

So will post some large posts on here tonight where I will type out the full story as the links are some half a dozen years old, and may dissappear - so want to have it readable direct from here so that all interested in BT who ask that same question as you, can copy the info to their own files. If you're British, what you will read will make you weep.
There are times in our country's history when we are our own worst enemy.

Tonight then. It'll be a big read though, but you have to read it. HAVE TO! It's mandatory reading for all with holdings in BT. (Unless you out there are aware and are au fait with how we came to the current situation.

PS. I'm just the messenger not au fait myself with technological engineering issues.

US futures after a good day yesterday went into the red after hours last night, and have remained so all morning, and are looking likely to open down when they commence trading at 2:30pm our time.

Today's UK indices have followed suit taking their lead from the US Futures (as per usual) and they are all down too, so far.

On average I'm betting that everybody's watch list on the left of the screen have a heavy over representation in the red too. Stocks that are remaining in blue are less abundant today. SLP is one of them still lit up in blue.

Question: Will that remain the case from 2:30pm onwards into the final 2 hours before close?

If the SP remains up for the day then I will take that as another sign of returning bullishness to this stock.
But it's no disgrace if it doesn't today, as that's what stocks on UK indices are behaving like this lunchtime.

Not sure about the veracity of today's LSE's prices being displayed up there at the top of this page. I'm seeing 39.75 on my live prices (for some time now) and a day's high of 40p (HL quoting the day's high of 40.25p) but not here on LSE.

Anyway, if the US futures hold and they open down, then what a nice little test to see if SLP remains bullish for the remainder of the trading day. If it does I would personally read something positive into that.

Game on!

Was just about to post this late last night, to an earlier thread in the day, when I saw the yellow new posts strap line; so read first in case there were posts that duplicated or negated the content of this post and found instead it was 'that' troll that lives under the hump backed bridge who had been disturbed by some passing Billy goats. So postponed, and posting it today instead.
-------------------------------------------

" Indeed, the total Enterprise value for BT is assumed to be around £44 Billion, or 4 times the current Market Cap. "

- Far too high Fleccy.
Jansen would have had to stash away half again in net debt, for £44bn to be correct.
(Is that £44bn taken from an older media report when the SP was much higher, I wonder?)

All Enterprise value is - is the Mcap plus Net Debt and that's it more or less. Tonight the MCap for BT (with the SP at 109.5p) lies at £11bn.

The total Enterprise value therefore is given as £30bn (£30.2bn)

Deduct one from the other and you can see circa £19bn has been added to the MCap. The Net Debt showing on my screen for the year just ended is showing as £19.2bn.

Therefore, £30bn is the true, actual Enterprise Value as of tonight's close.

(Three figures for net debt were shown in the finals - that £19bn, as well as £17bn (which got quoted by Jansen and everywhere in the media) and £11bn.
My stuff is locked on to £19.2bn which the system was forecasting all year more or less (£19.6bn).

Here's the accepted textbook definition quote of how Enterprise Value is calculated:

=====
" Enterprise Value (EV) represents Market Capitalisation plus Net Debt, and is a truer reflection of the actual size of a company than Market Cap. More specifically Net Debt includes Total Debt, Minority Interest and Preferred Stock minus Cash and Short Term Investments. "
=====

So for EV to be £44bn with tonight's MCap at £11bn then my guess is it's either a report that's several months old, when the SP was much higher. Or if the report is current then the journo has used old figures.

Only explanation I can think of, for them quoting £44bn for EV.

Generally a good day on all the markets today, and at least a close in the right direction tonight for SLP.

A lot of the indicators for SLP (although still bearish) are at their extreme measurement, so dangerous to say what comes next in case it's just the larger market reflection action today, but for starters the Relative Strength Index has pulled back from RSi31 and tonight has moved back from the cliff edge and stands at RSi 35.

And well away from the 30 threshold that is the entrance into the heart of darkness.

And bullish volume was a cracker - at least 60% or so above the longer term average. So, meaningful. Very.
Nothing more devious than an SP rise on low volume as that's 100% pure unreliable when on low volume - But not today.

And what I was looking for in the accumulation metric. A sharp uptick tonight. Noticeably so, not seen such a sharp uptick in accumulation since late April!
However it must be said, such has been the fall, due to distribution in volume that it's still below the longer term average in the accumulation/distribution metric, so it's good - but caution required as still too early.

And if I'm not mistaken look at the candles tonight - Is that a bullish Harami? (Japanese for 'the pregnant lady' and very bullish when it appears at the foot of a downtrend).

Of late candlesticks have had a high unreliability performance so once again, I'm delighted to see it, but caution called for again as it has been an all-round bullish day on the markets today, anyway.

A slew of other indicators also twitching their whiskers but on the other hand some of the longer to respond indicators haven't budged an inch. So, pleasing to see some little improvement but not even the fastest of my trend lines have shown any support tonight; too early of course, but once the first of the trend lines turn bullish, I will undoubtedly become more animated as I am at heart a trend follower and my trend lines come first, last, and always in my investing/trading life - and rule the roost. I take all my cues from them, however they're still bearish; but I ask, do those early indicator twitchers have any legs as a precursor to the trend lines shifting off their Rrrsses too?

Could just all be a false positive - Whatever, an all round good day.

"... BT is one of the most overvalued stocks in UK..."

- Overvalued my Rrrrss !

Neah, not buying that as a causation, PDiddy.

For the last 4 years SLP's SP has rocketed - just rocketed.
Guess what the price of platinum has done in that exact time period?
- It's fallen year after year, non-stop.

Yes, it increased substantially from summer 2019 to Jan this year - (for half a year) but that only brought it back up to where it was at the beginning of 2018 and not the summer high of 2016.

So 4 years of unimpressive platinum price action, falling overall, from start to finish of that time period - yet simply stellar SP performance from SLP.

In fact the decline in platinum is far worse than just the last 4 years. It rose from the 1970's to finally peak at an all time high in 2008 - 12 years ago! At circa something well over $2,000+

Thereafter right to this day, it has not ceased falling. It has lots of little bullish rallies yes, but every single one has been short lived. Not one of those rallies since 2008 has ever climbed back to the 2008 price. Each time it fails to do so and ends with lower highs and lower lows.

Before 2008 the price had been on a 40 year tear, upwards. That came to a halt in 2008. That was it. It's been falling ever since. The rallies in platinum price are short lived and never rise back to previous highs, always peaking on lower highs, than that experienced before.

And yet despite all that - SLP has 10-bagged it's SP in 4 or 5 years when read from it's peak earlier this year. So don't think the current SP retrace can be laid at Platinum's door.

Also the chart of platinum price appears to be mirroring the FTSE so far - a sudden big fall to mid March and ever since has climbed half way back to the prices before the month of March.

So from mid March to currently, platinum has "overall" increased, not fallen. That just about describes most stocks performance this year.

Sorry, apologies; made an error - typed revenue instead of net profit.

So, this -
" Q1 coming up is one to skip over.
Gone is the usual circa +/- £500m *revenue* per quarter, with the first of the year Q1 expected to start with a "3" ! A THREE! Oh come on! "

Should have said:
" Q1 coming up is one to skip over.
Gone is the usual circa +/- £500m NET PROFIT per quarter, with the first of the year Q1 expected to start with a "3" ! A THREE! Oh come on! "

Been yet another analysts consensus update over the weekend. Came out Saturday morning, dated July 3rd. Not much ado, so ignored it.

Whatever, here it is -

https://www.bt.com/bt-plc/assets/documents/investors/financial-reporting-and-news/latest-consensus/bt-group-consensus-3-july-2020.pdf

It's not the actual figures that are of note that I'm seeking - it's if there is a discernable group-think consensual
increase in their updates, in comparison to what's gone before in previous updates.

That's what forms the initial change in market sentiment and thus SP change - a small cabal of people (20) they form market opinion guidance.
After that, it's up to company results.

However, nothing nice in revenue for the full year, little rise next year and back to a retrace downwards the year after. Same old, same . . . .

But net profit does have a small flicker of interest but comes with a caveat.
First, this current year the consensus has moved from coming in at £1.49bn net profit to just about £1.5bn average. Huh.

Then £1.6+bn next year and increasing again in the third year to £1.6++bn. Not by much but it does show they expect 3 years of increasing Net Profit results - one after the other, consecutively. Take your positives where you can.

And now that caveat:

The increases by year 3 only bring net profit up to £1.6bn++ whilst the full year just finished in March was £1.7bn net profit - which itself was disastrous fall from the previous year which was £2.1bn net profit!

So 3 full years of increasing net profit, but still less than the abysmally poor year just reported.

Q1 coming up is one to skip over.
Gone is the usual circa +/- £500m revenue per quarter, with the first of the year Q1 expected to start with a "3" ! A THREE! Oh come on!

There WILL come a time when things turn; but I'm being quite lazy in the meantime as no rush - the trends will dictate when time for me to become long.

-------------------------------------------------------------

BT currently -

Price to 200 day ma trend .= Bearish!
---------------------------------------------
Long term trends . . . . . . . . = Bearish
Medium term trend . . . . . .= Bearish
Intermediate trend . . . . . . = BULLISH
Short term trend . . . . . . . . = Bearish
Ultra-short term trend . . . .= Bearish

:(

I'm plum out of thoughts on what's the root cause of this current, notable retrace in the SP. Have ruled out insider trading whispers, winks and nods to the cognoscenti, that maybe a poor trading result coming up in circa a month and a half or so, is a concern.

Nothing approaching a profit warning in any previous RNS releases, just the expected usual all companies are issuing: That Covid is a factor going forward.

So have to agree with several comments over the weekend on perceptions that some institutions believe Covid could potentially now hit hard in South Africa, as it's mostly not been in the news like other hard hit countries.

One post mentioned checking the Johannesburg Stock Exchange but it had revealed nothing. Realised that for years I have never sorted out a source for instant access to ALL the world's exchanges in one click, so wanting to check out the JSE myself I Googled and came up with a smashing site

- tradingeconomics.com

Not only does it have charts on every exchange in the world (130 odd) but true to the second part of its moniker, it has a pack of economic stats on every country too. Number of infected patients, number of hospitals in each country, number of beds - for every country in the world, plus all the usual GDP per head/unemployment/interest/inflation figures plus a review of the next 2 or 3 years likely increase/decrease of every country's stock exchange.

So thanks for the mention of JSE - it got me doing what I've been meaning to do for years. Feel mightily empowered now. Got an opinion on every county in the world now LOL!

PS.
And I too, could see nothing of concern in the JSE stock market trends (as someone mentioned they'd checked too)
- in fact if you removed the exchange name at the top, it looked just like the FTSE chart! So nothing exceptionally bad occurring there, that might be impacting on SLP's current SP malaise.

Thanks, Stoodio.

- That's a lot of knob puns since your post on the SP "dickin' about".
Now the SP is in the 30's it's giving me the willies, so there'll be no John Thomas puns from me, especially whilst I'm waiting for a likely pin-prick visit only, by the SP into oversold condition :) :)

Yes, I've noticed a severe divergence between accumulation volume and price (whilst accumulation volume has done nothing but continue rising non-stop since the current SP retrace commenced in June (never falling below the uptrending average accumulation volume metric, that's been running in place since April) it only dropped through that uptrend from Thursday morning last week - and instantly converted into a downward distribution volume diving through the previous uptrend and caught up with the retracing price; so as from Thursday/Friday last week, they're now both singing from the same hymn sheet and are at last in synch. Strange. Unusual behaviour; took all of June to self-correct. (Price normally 'corrects' to volume - not the other way around).
ie., the old mantra of: " volume precedes price".

Wonder if it's been anything to do with the company, drip feed buying, it's own stock back, that has muddied the water of any notable seller in the background? Other than that - can't explain it. Then again it is AIM! :)

------------

And thank you too, Mjedwards. Much appreciated.
Only one thing - felt a little concerned when you posted:

". . . will now give it til Tuesday at least, based on your notes. "

So a word of warning called for here:

Do bare in mind my notes are based on my highly personal opinions; best guess "probabilities" - not certainties, and yes, I do make mistakes. So, no better and no worse than any other PI's opinionated comments.
Hope you've got your sceptical switch turned on (but not cynically) of online posters comments, and test them first for unintended owner-bias, against your own strategies.

I think the comment directly after my post, helps sum-up what I'm trying to allude to, namely:

" . . . your thoughts are certainly well appreciated by me, and as like any view, I’ll take it with a dab of salt and draw my own conclusions. . . "

:)

Well, must be nearly a year since I last visited here.

What's that clanking you ask? - Why it's the cell keys I'm carrying.

I'm unlocking all your cell doors as of mid July - you're all on bail from circa this month. That's the key (unintended pun) turning point after a profit warning is issued - one year - and your time's up!

A paucity of interim trading updates, so can't form any conclusions going forward.
Unfortunate for BAG to have a profit warning in which before the 12 months are up, a market crash happens followed by a worldwide Pandemic lockdown.

Last July at the time of the profit warning, the PE ratio was circa P/E25.

Tonight it's fwd P/E ratio is 19.7

So, although no longer at a premium to the industry it is nonetheless slap in the average of that industry - almost as if it never issued a profit warning. Most in that position suffer a below average P/E ratio. So even at this price it's no bargain. It's fair but not cheap. Could have done with the SP being at it's worst now rather than back in the March crash - as it would have been just the job for a shot in the arm upon receiving it's released-on-bail papers, but with a P/E still a decent 19.9 it shows -

a) The market doesn't hate BAG but then again it will

b) Deter bargain hunters from coming to the SP's rescue

- especially as the forecasts for the current year and next are distinctly uninspiring.

So I will continue to keep an eye on BAG but at this P/E level and the forecast trading over the next 2 years, I won't be buying just yet. But hey! It's bail time - Up to you now BAG. The stigma of a profit-warning-hit stock is over.

( Concludes: Part 2 of 2)

. . . I've made some nice plays on oversold conditions and intend carrying out more. So if and when the SP does retrace further and becomes oversold you can start counting the days to the SP terminating this retrace. IMO? - 80% to 90% certainty of that - should the SP continue down and cross over into oversold territory next week.

SLP was floated on the market back in spring of 2011.
It immediately sank all that year, continued sinking throughout 2012, and 2013, and hit the floor in 2014. And stayed there. In other words had you held SLP from when it floated, your investment would have been devastated over the 4 or 5 years and lost 90% of it's value!

However from 2014 to roughly the summer of 2016 you could have picked that SP floor low, almost at will, over those years as it trundled along the floor: Hence my curiosity of Stoodio's reasoning who bought in those years for mere single pence! It was a disaster area.

- and the perfect time to buy!

Contrast that to my trying out the CANSLIM strategy this year, that said buy SLP earlier this year at 57p! The reason I did, is because I could see the history of the SLP performance; one of a glorious explosion of non-stop growth since 2016 to date - a ten bagger in the SP, if the recent high before the March crash is used as a high marker from the lows of 2014/15 etc.,

So when you look at this 38p area in relation to all that, it sits quite 'normally' and doesn't look anything at all like the 2011 to 2014/15 years of non-stop decline!

PS. Ever heard of Fibonacci?
Just done a Fibonacci retrace from that 2014 low to the recent high and the 50% retracement level is coming out just 3p-ish below tonight's close.
Would all tie in nicely with the SP entering oversold condition from next week.

(However, my favourite is the 61.8% golden ratio which lies further south at a terrifying 28p-ish).

28p would mean I would top up again; I'm happy as Larry to get my average into the 40's, because if there is further trouble I can easily see an escape in the 40's where that trick would be much harder to pull of at my old 57p.

So, looking for an oversold condition to develop next week and then can say for certain that this bearish retrace has a visible use-by date on it.

Possible that it merely pin pricks RSi 30 on the day and doesn't enter oversold and bounces off that border quite quickly; as usually there's some public 'bad news' that propels stocks into oversold condition (some don't easily recover) and as there is no publicly known bad news about for SLP I'm placing some faith in the 50% retracement level of 35p-ish area - but not ruling out lower.

In fact why guess; just let it unfold. No specific poor results or bad news about so recent years history suggest this retrace could turn out to be nothing more than just - one of those things!

Long rumination post - so go get a cuppa first :)

(Part 1 of 2)
------------------

Not only has the SP sunk to close tonight on 38p - but all trend lines, all indicators, are resolutely and hellishly bearish without exception, and forecasting even worse to come.

So much for truly glorious fundamental balance sheet metrics eh? (And they are exemplary - so unless a bit of insider trading is going on with funds moving out before the finals are published in late Aug/early Sept now that the full 12 months trading year closed on Tuesday, it's fair to say that there's not a hint of a catastrophic failure in the trading year just finished; but maybe speculation going forward? Whatever, not a hint of balance sheet impropriety from any source).
So is this retrace just some sort of cyclical thing?

I must say, looking at the long term trends the current SP position doesn't look out of the ordinary - it's something that will only become apparent in hindsight, but right now (if it terminates in this vicinity) it feels quite disturbing for those living through it. All the previous sub 200 day averages mentioned further below, would have induced the same queasiness. No one could say with authority they knew for certain it would end those retraces - but they did end - and return to their previous upward trajectories.

The most important of the long term trend lines, the 200 day moving average now lies north of the SP. However IMO I think mean reversion will pull the SP back above it. As for several years now there has been no historic characteristic of a declining 200 day ma holding permanently. Tonight makes 3 full days where the SP opened below the 200day ma and closed below it. Not good.

But not yet the end of the world so to speak, as a bit of mean reversion may well pull it back as it did in April after the March crash,
then at the end of 2018
and before that as it did in the summer of 2017,
and the serious spell in Oct 2015 through to summer 2016.
All of them were hauled in, by mean reversion returning the SP to the 200 day average and then to continue its upward trajectory - but it would have been discomforting to live through on a day by day basis.

So recent years, supports the SP enjoying a return to living above the 200 day average price - should the finals, and the coming fwd year not disappoint.

The Relative Strength Index is sitting at the dangerous RSi 30 border tonight at RSi 31 - below which the gates of hell open up, but also can be quite cathartic.

In fact, despite my topping up the other day at 42.7p I quite hope it does descend down through the gates of hell and enters a true technical oversold condition - as it would signal:

A) Seller exhaustion

and

B) That a termination of the retrace was on the cards within days/week.

(Part 2 continues) > > >

The SP is at a critical point IMO. At currently 41p it has crossed Checkpoint Charlie and stepped clear over the 200 day MA!

I've taken a top-up today based on my expectations it will react like a scalded cat and bounce off the the 200 day MA.
For years SLP has mostly remained above it, sheer gold dust in SP terms. The last time it was below it, was mid March to late April. A rare occasion but caught in a marketwide crash.

If the SP sinks far deeper below 41p and remains there / getting worse, for an extended period and frightens women, horses and children, I too will stand in the corner with the horses, women and children like a big scaredy cat.

Historically SLP has no truck playing below the 200 day MA, so I'm of the opinion it will show the 200 day MA the door and gain ascendency above it.
(The 200 day MA is fluid; 41p-ish is only the current visual reincarnation, 41p in itself is of no importance as time moves on so will the 200 day MA)

Interesting.