As featured in this month’s Master Investor Magazine. There’s been a whole spate of bids for small cap shares in the last month. Anite (AIE) and Thorntons (THT), for example, and one I had only recently bought in the expectation of a bid – Aga (AGA). Aga bagged me a 50% profit, which was very…
Stories on the markets, in general, usually unfold very slowly and in plain sight. Before all the great crashes there was ample warning from the technical trader. I wrote recently about signs that we might be seeing the 6 year rally running out of steam. The worrying thing with that is that the companies who…
I’m moving soon so I’m having a bit of clean out. I think it’s far more tempting to keep financial stuff for years on end than most documents. If you’ve ever worked in corporate accounting, then there’s almost an unwritten rule to keep things for seven tax years. Actually for companies it is written! So…
I think the British love affair with home ownership really started with a vengeance in the ‘70s. The rampant inflation was kick started by decimalisation. In February 1971 when it came in a loaf was around 7p. In old money that would have been 1/5d (or 17 old pence). The smallest price increase in old…
The shares “technically” may have some downside but they are now arguably good value, taking more things than one into account. I had just turned down Old Broad Street past the City of London Club (once, most appropriately, the site of the ill fated South Sea Company of bubble fame) when I thought I heard…
Lots of people trade news. In fact many companies, the ones that make money from the number of trades you place, encourage you to. And why shouldn’t they? It can be demonstrated that there is enough volatility at such times to make money. What is not illustrated is how unpredictable news can make markets, nor…
Nowadays you don’t have to join the Navy to see the world. In fact joining the Navy might never have been such a great way to see the world, unless you wanted to see exotic places before they got blown to smithereens. Or you enjoyed seeing native peoples being subjugated. Now, of course, that’s all…
After another dramatic week, Greece is still standing… just. Markets opened on Monday with a huge opening gap lower in response to the surprise call for a referendum by the Tsipras government. Quite what this bailout is actually about is confusing for most people across Europe, especially Greek citizens. As the FT has been keen…
Just to re-cap on my positons since last Friday’s post. I’m still long BHP Billiton (BLT) at 1,334p. It rose to 1,380p and backed down with the markets, yet I still feel that around the 1,300p mark is the bottom for this stock and my target is 1,500/1,600p in the medium term and 2,000p plus…
Just a few weeks ago I wrote a piece about the likely effect of the General Election on the FTSE 100 (MI Mag issue 2 pp.84-86). Looking back over the last 18 elections, I discovered that in a vast majority of the 18 post-war elections, the markets just resumed the path they were on before…
