Trading the stockmarket (NO Referrals)
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Soldato
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Taking this from Interactive Investors as source material my initial thoughts are:
Plusses:
- Demographics: old people are a growing market and generally spending more
- Saga have a well recognised and trusted brand
Minuses:
- Only 25% is to be sold off, so the private equity firms will still call the shots.
- The float is being used to pay down debt, but it will still be £700m afterwards. With profits at £222m at end of Jan this year, I find that original debt level a bit high.
I'd want to look at the balance sheet to see what assets that debt is backed by, whether its short or long term debt and what the prospects for dividends are.
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I don't know how Twitter will do in the future but one thing is for sure - it's no Facebook. Don't expect anything similar to what happened to Facebook's share price.
I always find it difficult to read balance sheets of insurers.
I am also thinking about the SAGA IPO. I received details this morning after registering interest. Not a huge investment if I do go for it (£1000-£1500) but it will be my first dabble in this kind of thing.
Just not sure....
Just not sure....
Soldato
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I generally only invest in companies I use myself so I have a bit of consumer knowledge, so SAGA is out for me 
. Also have no interest in what they do or offer for the same reason.
On the same note I personally think Twitter will grow substantially but as I only spread bet at the moment their price and swing is out of my budget at the moment. The days are gone of bubbles bursting and new companies taking market share simply because penetration is so deep (giggidy). Taking Facebook as an example, back in the day lots of people were spread across Myspace/Friends Reunited etc, but nobody had a massive majority share. Facebook did one thing different (tagging photos) and now they're at a stage where everyone and their mum is on Facebook. Nobody's mum was on Myspace. Unless they do something to **** a LOT of people off they're not going anywhere. I also use them for business advertising and they're great, better even than Adwords due to the targeting, so there's plenty of growth there. They've also just announced their 3rd party advertising options, ie ads in other apps but based on that Facebook user specifically when people use Facebook to login to other services. Very clever idea really.
The same is true of Twitter I think just earlier stages. Massive market share and penetration, especially across celebrities and companies. Advertising is still early stages but massive potential based on keywords of users, which actually could be more specific than Facebook. As an example somebody might talk about The Avengers on Twitter, but they won't like that movie on Facebook (which at the moment would be the only way of targeting that person based on that like). There's also literally no alternative to Twitter (yet) whereas the same can't be said for Facebook (Google+ and even Myspace etc are still floating about).
Obviously just my opinion, but I can easily see Twitter at least doubling in a year or so.
. Also have no interest in what they do or offer for the same reason.On the same note I personally think Twitter will grow substantially but as I only spread bet at the moment their price and swing is out of my budget at the moment. The days are gone of bubbles bursting and new companies taking market share simply because penetration is so deep (giggidy). Taking Facebook as an example, back in the day lots of people were spread across Myspace/Friends Reunited etc, but nobody had a massive majority share. Facebook did one thing different (tagging photos) and now they're at a stage where everyone and their mum is on Facebook. Nobody's mum was on Myspace. Unless they do something to **** a LOT of people off they're not going anywhere. I also use them for business advertising and they're great, better even than Adwords due to the targeting, so there's plenty of growth there. They've also just announced their 3rd party advertising options, ie ads in other apps but based on that Facebook user specifically when people use Facebook to login to other services. Very clever idea really.
The same is true of Twitter I think just earlier stages. Massive market share and penetration, especially across celebrities and companies. Advertising is still early stages but massive potential based on keywords of users, which actually could be more specific than Facebook. As an example somebody might talk about The Avengers on Twitter, but they won't like that movie on Facebook (which at the moment would be the only way of targeting that person based on that like). There's also literally no alternative to Twitter (yet) whereas the same can't be said for Facebook (Google+ and even Myspace etc are still floating about).
Obviously just my opinion, but I can easily see Twitter at least doubling in a year or so.
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But many people have Facebook now and they shot up once mobile advertising was sorted, many of the Facebook users have zero interest in twitter.
In fact new users is slowing down. You should invest on what many people you know use rather than what you do. Naked trader book has a good example of this in Mulberry.
Twitter is a gamble and it looks like they are now trying to copy Facebook look and feel. Not idea as most people are general happy with Facebook so why move
In fact new users is slowing down. You should invest on what many people you know use rather than what you do. Naked trader book has a good example of this in Mulberry.
Twitter is a gamble and it looks like they are now trying to copy Facebook look and feel. Not idea as most people are general happy with Facebook so why move
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Soldato
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If they can get money from that, it does sound lucrative
For USA stocks you should probably follow some USA traders, these people put out a video every day and talk about Tesla most often and TWTR. mostly as a trade not an investment.
I dont see them as bargains anyhow but maybe Elon Musk is a smart guy and can one day justify the price
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz8Wdkp1I8o#t=429
probably the smartest thing to do and the comparable return is your mortgage rate divided by your rate of tax or 20% or so. Not many investments beats paying off debt for as little effort/risk
Soldato
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I've (only) read the NT guides so I know the example, but personally I prefer to stick to stocks that I'm a consumer of.
If you think Twitter are trying to get people to move to them from Facebook then you've got completely the wrong end of the stick. They're copying Facebook's general look with the new cover image because a) that's the general style (image heavy) and b) to make new users more familiar with it.
Twitter is a completely different business model and it's certainly not competing with Facebook, or visa versa, on a consumer-level anyway.
I managed to get a Level 2 trial from MoneyAM which included access to all of their other services so I'm currently making the most of their advanced market scan and stock screener.
I've also been offered a months free trial of any ADVFN package so I'll wait until MoneyAM expires then give ADVFN L2 a go and see which I prefer.
A share that's caught my attention is LMS capital [LMS].
It's a small-cap investment company and on the surface the fundamentals aren't that exciting.
However, on Friday they announced a tender offer to return £40m to shareholders (that's just short of 25% of the market cap).
Their AGM is on Tuesday 27th May and they will announce the results of the tender offer on the morning of Wednesday 28th.
Now, I know that share buybacks usually increase the SP, indeed LMS was up almost 3% on Friday and there's just under two weeks before the cut-off date (22nd) for more investors to buy in.
What I'm not sure about is the repercussions of their announcement planned for the morning of Wednesday 28th.
I'm only spread betting at the moment so I'm not actually interested in the buyback of shares. If I went long and held until Tuesday 27th would it make sense to sell on the 27th or hold over night and wait for the announcement on Wednesday morning.
Knowing my luck, if I sold on Tuesday the SP would rocket at open on Wednesday and equally if I held over the weekend I'd get burnt on Wednesday morning with a huge dip.
I'm still finding my way with this so just wondering what more experienced people would recommend.
Thanks for any advice in advance.
I've also been offered a months free trial of any ADVFN package so I'll wait until MoneyAM expires then give ADVFN L2 a go and see which I prefer.
A share that's caught my attention is LMS capital [LMS].
It's a small-cap investment company and on the surface the fundamentals aren't that exciting.
However, on Friday they announced a tender offer to return £40m to shareholders (that's just short of 25% of the market cap).
Their AGM is on Tuesday 27th May and they will announce the results of the tender offer on the morning of Wednesday 28th.
Now, I know that share buybacks usually increase the SP, indeed LMS was up almost 3% on Friday and there's just under two weeks before the cut-off date (22nd) for more investors to buy in.
What I'm not sure about is the repercussions of their announcement planned for the morning of Wednesday 28th.
I'm only spread betting at the moment so I'm not actually interested in the buyback of shares. If I went long and held until Tuesday 27th would it make sense to sell on the 27th or hold over night and wait for the announcement on Wednesday morning.
Knowing my luck, if I sold on Tuesday the SP would rocket at open on Wednesday and equally if I held over the weekend I'd get burnt on Wednesday morning with a huge dip.
I'm still finding my way with this so just wondering what more experienced people would recommend.
Thanks for any advice in advance.
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Soldato
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You dont know weds price but you know your gains on tues. Theres a general line, buy the rumour sell the news
Mostly if the market perceives a positive the price rises before it occurs, then it sells on the news.
So you say it'd rocket on weds but thats only true if the market is surprised otherwise its already in the price. Dividends and ex div is the most regular effect seen of this
Im not sure a tender offer raises the price. Doesnt that just reduce the size of the company and return money to investors.
Aggreko is doing similar and Cairn did in the past after a big asset sale
http://www.iii.co.uk/articles/164724/edmond-jacksons-stockwatch-quindell-worth-risk
If QPP issued 200m at 16p, thats a good point for it to reset to I guess
I thought Centrica was looking good short term at least for a boring utility but news says different, guess I should've stuck to buying 300 or lower. I think theres worse things to hold, BP, CNA and BG are the big energy I have now
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...tip-Centrica-dividend-looks-safe-for-now.html
Is BT a good sell now?
I'd say they are a quite unique and useful website but again its selling advertising for profits so similar challenges. Wish I'd bought those WPP shares years back, so much money in that business
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Thanks for the speedy reply Silversurfer, makes a lot of sense, especially the part about surprises otherwise the news is already in the price.
Maybe the news has already been absorbed and that 3% increase on Friday is all there is going to be.
I assumed investors would buy in leading up to the cut-off date in order to benefit from the buy back and push up the SP in the short term. I also thought that a buy back could increase the SP in the long term by improving the EPS once it has taken place.
I'll keep an eye on it over the next few weeks and see what happens, it will be interesting just to watch it even if I don't get involved.
Interesting article on QPP. I spent quite a bit of time watching L2 on Friday and there are still a lot more sellers than buyers. I can see it bouncing around the 18–20p area for a while yet until they release news relating to the FTSE250 listing or new contracts from the US roadshow.
Maybe the news has already been absorbed and that 3% increase on Friday is all there is going to be.
I assumed investors would buy in leading up to the cut-off date in order to benefit from the buy back and push up the SP in the short term. I also thought that a buy back could increase the SP in the long term by improving the EPS once it has taken place.
I'll keep an eye on it over the next few weeks and see what happens, it will be interesting just to watch it even if I don't get involved.
Interesting article on QPP. I spent quite a bit of time watching L2 on Friday and there are still a lot more sellers than buyers. I can see it bouncing around the 18–20p area for a while yet until they release news relating to the FTSE250 listing or new contracts from the US roadshow.
Soldato
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Trading volume points to more buys than sells though. I've scraped this off the "trades" screen of money am:
Date Buy Vol Sell Vol Total Vol
09/05/2014 58,213,629 39,979,122 98,192,751
08/05/2014 77,513,464 61,699,445 139,212,909
07/05/2014 69,232,196 38,939,942 108,172,138
06/05/2014 66,381,895 49,503,331 115,885,226
I think you're right on the price though. 9 director buys and also a positive RNS on new business in canada didn't move it up last week. Kind of wondering what it will take - umpteen billion profits, £10 a share dividend, peace in the middle east, Crewe Alexandra winning the FA cup, me beating 8-pack in a benching competition, a decent summer ....
Yeah, I can't quite get my head around it - maybe I'm not reading L2 correctly.
Around 16:00 on Friday the depth of sell orders on L2 was almost double the depth of buy orders. I read that as an indication that there was more supply than demand and therefore the SP was falling.
However, as you've shown with the recorded daily trading volumes, there were more buys than sells… I'm not entirely sure how they correlate.
I have been reading the BBs on III and ADVFN and there have been similar discussions - people are suggesting that the MMs are keeping the price suppressed for the benefit of the shorters but it all sounds too much like conspiracy theories to me.
Soldato
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I believe L2 is a snapshot of orders at any given time. If you were looking at 4pm on Friday, I'd speculate a lot of those sells were day traders closing their positions for the weekend.
Holding a spreadbet open over the weekend costs a bit in interest (I had £1.41 charged on positions I had open over the bank holiday weekend) - that adds up for the serious traders.
EDIT: A quick google found this quite useful summary of L2: http://www.londonstockexchange.com/prices-and-markets/stocks/tools-and-services/level2/level2guide.pdf
Holding a spreadbet open over the weekend costs a bit in interest (I had £1.41 charged on positions I had open over the bank holiday weekend) - that adds up for the serious traders.
EDIT: A quick google found this quite useful summary of L2: http://www.londonstockexchange.com/prices-and-markets/stocks/tools-and-services/level2/level2guide.pdf
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Don't like insurance business, can get hit hard by random events. Plus if you not already a customer, you'll be down the list when getting shares. Existing customers get extra shares + preference over non customer. And there are potentially lots of rich existing customers who will invest.
Thanks for the link Peter. I spent the weekend reading that link, watching YouTube videos and reading other websites and I think I've got it.
Just looking for a bit of a sense check using QPP as an example:
So on this screen you can currently sell 841,302 shares at 19.75 and buy 745,185 at 20.25.
Once these shares have been bought or sold you then buy or sell at the next best price (in this case 19.5 and 20.5).
If either side of the order book at 19.75/20.25 is depleted and the next-best price is used, the share price will move one way or the other as it's a mid-point between the bid and ask.
If we look at the depth of the market at the bottom — there are nearly twice as many sell orders (9.3 million shares) than there are buy orders (5.1 million).
All things being equal, it would take longer to deplete the sell order side than the buy order side and the share price should drop.
However, this doesn't take into account supply and demand…
As we can see from the current trades, there is twice as much buy volume as there is sell volume.
Under normal conditions you would expect the share price to rise because more people are buying (high demand).
However, because these buys are being supplied by the high number of sell orders on Level 2 the price is remaining relatively static, if not dropping.
It's dropping because even though there is less sell volume, there is also a thinner buy order book so each block of share price gets depleted quicker.
What's worse for QPP is that even after they clear the 750k sell orders at 20.25, there's another 500k waiting at 20.5 OR as I've noticed recently, when it starts to look like the sell orders at 20.25 are about to run out, a huge chunk more gets added.
==
Towards the end of the day yesterday the momentum shifted and the buy order side of L2 was stronger than the sell order side and there was more buying volume than selling volume so the share price jumped up a bit and it's happening again now around 14:00.
I appreciate L2 is just a snapshot of the present and L1 is a record of what's already happened.
Just because there are orders on the L2 books doesn't mean there is anyone to actually fill them so we can't predict what's going to happen, but L2 does give an idea of where the support and resistance is / should be at any given time.
Charts and TA suggest where the support and resistance has been in the past and 'could' be in the future.
Can someone confirm whether I've got that right or whether I'm talking ****.
Thanks!
Just looking for a bit of a sense check using QPP as an example:
So on this screen you can currently sell 841,302 shares at 19.75 and buy 745,185 at 20.25.
Once these shares have been bought or sold you then buy or sell at the next best price (in this case 19.5 and 20.5).
If either side of the order book at 19.75/20.25 is depleted and the next-best price is used, the share price will move one way or the other as it's a mid-point between the bid and ask.
If we look at the depth of the market at the bottom — there are nearly twice as many sell orders (9.3 million shares) than there are buy orders (5.1 million).
All things being equal, it would take longer to deplete the sell order side than the buy order side and the share price should drop.
However, this doesn't take into account supply and demand…
As we can see from the current trades, there is twice as much buy volume as there is sell volume.
Under normal conditions you would expect the share price to rise because more people are buying (high demand).
However, because these buys are being supplied by the high number of sell orders on Level 2 the price is remaining relatively static, if not dropping.
It's dropping because even though there is less sell volume, there is also a thinner buy order book so each block of share price gets depleted quicker.
What's worse for QPP is that even after they clear the 750k sell orders at 20.25, there's another 500k waiting at 20.5 OR as I've noticed recently, when it starts to look like the sell orders at 20.25 are about to run out, a huge chunk more gets added.
==
Towards the end of the day yesterday the momentum shifted and the buy order side of L2 was stronger than the sell order side and there was more buying volume than selling volume so the share price jumped up a bit and it's happening again now around 14:00.
I appreciate L2 is just a snapshot of the present and L1 is a record of what's already happened.
Just because there are orders on the L2 books doesn't mean there is anyone to actually fill them so we can't predict what's going to happen, but L2 does give an idea of where the support and resistance is / should be at any given time.
Charts and TA suggest where the support and resistance has been in the past and 'could' be in the future.
Can someone confirm whether I've got that right or whether I'm talking ****.
Thanks!
Soldato
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Thankyou irish_tom.
That is explaining a lot to me - now I see the extra value L2 is providing. I'll have to play with it if moneyam offers me a free go so I can tell whether I will use it enough to justify the extra. L2 is one of those things I was aware of, but hadn't dug into much as I still count myself as a learner.
Naked trader mentions that some spreadbet providers give it you free if you use them enough - but not seen anything like that from IG yet unless I start trading CFD's (which is a whole ball game I'm not getting into just yet!)
That is explaining a lot to me - now I see the extra value L2 is providing. I'll have to play with it if moneyam offers me a free go so I can tell whether I will use it enough to justify the extra. L2 is one of those things I was aware of, but hadn't dug into much as I still count myself as a learner.
Naked trader mentions that some spreadbet providers give it you free if you use them enough - but not seen anything like that from IG yet unless I start trading CFD's (which is a whole ball game I'm not getting into just yet!)
No worries - It's only any good to you if my understanding of it above is correct though! 
I'm on a week trial with Money AM using a promo code, I'll try and dig it out for you.
ADVFN also sent me an email saying if I called them I could have a month free trial of any service including L2 so I'm planning on doing that when this week is over.
I'm on a week trial with Money AM using a promo code, I'll try and dig it out for you.
ADVFN also sent me an email saying if I called them I could have a month free trial of any service including L2 so I'm planning on doing that when this week is over.