Trading the stockmarket (NO Referrals)

The bid price got to 7 by close with a tiny spread of 0.29% on the back of more then double volume.
It does appear to be bullish though its speculation, the price to book is very high on present declared assets ?



Surely that is a terrible way to measure your wealth and position, pretending that it is worth exactly what you put in at the start?
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not a loss till you sell, is fine so long as the company worth didnt actually go down. Sometimes the sale of a share may be forced by takeover or most often failure to roll over debts and the value is determined by the market though the share price is often way off

Probably applies best to big companies, shell was £16 recently but that didnt reflect any direction on the company prospects and its since bounced up. Aim tends to be more news driven and even more volatile in between ?

Its probably more realisitic to say, of no real worth till I can sell it
 
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silversurfer said:
not a loss till you sell
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If you pay £1000 for a share in a company, and then the market prices that company at £800 per share, you are at a £200 loss. You can work this out by looking at what went in and the value of what you have now.

In cash terms, the loss is not set in stone until you sell at a price under £1000, but you are still at a loss. You are down £200.

How can it be anything otherwise?

If you buy a car for £20,000, do you consider it to be worth £20,000 the next year because you haven't sold it yet?
 
Hatter The Mad said:
How can it be anything otherwise?

If you buy a car for £20,000, do you consider it to be worth £20,000 the next year because you haven't sold it yet?
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Because shares fluctuate in value. One of my shares is down £2k but if I wait till mid-August I'll be profit (fingers crossed), due to announcements etc

You do the maths.
 
smokedog said:
One of my shares is down £2k
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but if I wait till mid-August I'll be profit........
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........(fingers crossed)
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Key quote is the third one. It is not a certainty.

smokedog said:
You do the maths.
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Ok -you put £X in, and now you're worth £X-2000. There's the maths.

The hard fact remains; you are now at least £2000 poorer than what you were at the start. That might be different tomorrow, it might have been different yesterday, but there are no two ways about looking at it now.

All I am saying (to the first guy) is don't pretend like you're not at a loss. Don't approach every investment thinking "If it doesn't work out in the short term I'll make it a long term investment and hope for the best."

I recommend reading this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intelligent-Investor-Benjamin-Graham/dp/0060555661
 
Hatter The Mad said:
The hard fact remains; you are now at least £2000 poorer than what you were at the start. That might be different tomorrow, it might have been different yesterday, but there are no two ways about looking at it now.
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I know I'm £2k poorer on paper, its fact. But I also know that I'll at the very least break even. I have done my research into company and willing to sit it out. If the company showed no signs of immediate recovery, then I would have cashed out at a realised loss.
 
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Hatter The Mad said:
Surely that is a terrible way to measure your wealth and position, pretending that it is worth exactly what you put in at the start?

I have seen many hobby investors get burned VERY badly because they did this - anything that didn't "go well" suddenly became a "long term position" and could be forgotten about.

Don't do it!
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I'm not pretending it's worth what I paid in the beginning, i'm just not selling until I get a better price for my assets. It's like if you bought a house for 100k and the price fell by 20k, you can either sell and "realise" that loss, or you can hold on and hope for a recovery and then sell them to get back a better percentage of what you paid.

At the moment and I am in no rush to get the money out so I am happy to wait for better days, shares have good and bad runs as you well know, so at the moment they've had a bad run but at some point sentiment will change I hope :)
 
You are more then 2k poorer, you are worse off to the tune of the shares purchased. When you sell then you are better off by the amount you get back, in between apart from a dividend there is no worth only potential

Shares drop in value over night all the time, theres no definite chance to sell at a particular price
 
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This is the only thing that will move the markets today.

Like it or not, the UK stockmarket is driven by the US.

You lot are worrying me with your "it's not a loss until you sell" and "if it goes down I will hold longer". You do realise the only one you're fooling is yourself?

The critical factor in predicting where UK/US stockmarkets are headed is the unemployment rate. You also need to remember both the UK and US are currently employing a large number of people for the census, this is skewing the figures.
 
mcast123 said:
You lot are worrying me with your "it's not a loss until you sell" and "if it goes down I will hold longer". You do realise the only one you're fooling is yourself?
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it depends on the company and what they have in the pipeline.
i bought CHAR at 26p which then proceeded to fall to ~17p for a few months - had i sold and realised my loss i would have missed out on the rise - its now at 123p and will go much higher in the future imo.
other companies have gone down and not recovered - each case is different.
 
You could buy whatever you wanted. Whether or not it would be retarded... is not really for us to say. You need to do your own research and be very aware that you could make a loss. Might be an idea to start with smaller amounts and maybe not put all your eggs in one basket.
 
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