If you had 5k to invest in shares....

sabretoothtigger

Fair enough I'll give it a read. He bought rbs in jan and sold it below his target and he has done the opposite here so obviously he has more then one exit strategy

My own mistake has been to hold on too long, I was long on the ftse with no profit taking (not even dividends) for 7 years which is stupidly too long and inattentive to the point of negligence.
If I do sell now then I dont expect to rebuy for many months even in a bear market.

Apart from halving ftse tracker exposure today Ive not made any dramatic movements recently, I mostly just buy and hold and trade the edges as I dont have much confidence even when it turns out Im right
I am surprised by the strength of this rally tbh but Im not complaining

I think barclays will pay a dividend of some sort in the autumn as they have never failed to pay a yearly dividend since the company was established and the directors will be too proud to be the first to fail there, I guess they could still leave it till next march though
Lloyds will want to pay a (cash) dividend also as it was a strong policy of theirs. Disposing the prefs lets them do this to some extent perhaps

clairbear_3

I think its important to note you will sometimes sell too early missing big gains and you will sometimes sell too late as shares fall off highs but you cant beat yourself up as long as you are consistently taking some profits.
Ive noticed most runs end at 50% this is usually a good time to lock in profit and perhaps buy in again at a lower price.
Regards PFD,it has had a good run after its recent RI so be careful
CNA and other Utilities are defensive and are being left alone at moment there is also the problem of debts and poss RI
CB

mrposhman

clairbear wrote: »

I think its important to note you will sometimes sell too early missing big gains and you will sometimes sell too late as shares fall off highs but you cant beat yourself up as long as you are consistently taking some profits.
Ive noticed most runs end at 50% this is usually a good time to lock in profit and perhaps buy in again at a lower price.
Regards PFD,it has had a good run after its recent RI so be careful
CNA and other Utilities are defensive and are being left alone at moment there is also the problem of debts and poss RI
CB

Thats probably about right but the average is probably 50% but all rallies are different. I'm in a stock which has risen around about 125% in 3 weeks and releases results on monday. They've been releasing a few bits of info all the time hence the large rally but I'm not selling yet. Hopefully the results will be good and I will hold, possibly selling at one point (hopefully into a dip) but then holding for the long term as they are fairly new.

I like PFD and the rise has been nice. Seems like a lot of institutions have come in in the last few weeks which is good to see and hopes look much better for the future now. The promotion to the FTSE 250 seems to have helped pull the price up but I'm mostly looking forward to the Q1 results. Since year end all the information looks towards a very good Q1 performance.

Not too sure about them owning cadburys though? Was that off their website? Maybe an April Fool that wasn't taken down?

mrposhman

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

There is also tail swallowing where you sell some of the shares to pay for the new ones at the lower price, hence limiting your exposure to any general fall in price

http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/citations/tail_swallowing_1/

Did this on PFD and will do it on LBG when I get the urge to sell. At the mo, I'm just enjoying watching it rise but may set a nice stop loss at double the amount of shares (around 76p mark)

sabretoothtigger

Cadburys is in the picture above, says 'our brands'
So they own, franchise or sell that brand I guess.

I dont know anything about the company but I think buffet had something to say about brand names and essentials.
I read a tip today on them if I remember right, roughly said they had run their course, take profits or basically neutral, etc


Posh if it was me with those results, I would probably jump the gun and sell on friday reckoning that markets always over speculate on good or bad news.
If I really liked the company I guess I would hold for the dividend and beyond till then reassessing it

http://www.fool.com/foolu/askfoolu/1999/askfoolu990901.htm

the facts rarely end up being as attractive as the upper limits of the rumor. Because all the best possibilities have already been "priced into" the stock before the real news breaks,

Taking a real world example from the recent past, consider what happened last year to Pixar Animation, the company that has produced the hit films Toy Story and A Bug's Life. Prior to the 1998 Thanksgiving release of A Bug's Life, rumor was spreading around about the potential for the film. Upon this speculation, Pixar's stock rose from a low of $20 a share at the beginning of 1998 to $53 right before the film opened.

When A Bug's Life did open, it broke all the box-office records for an animated film opening on Thanksgiving weekend. And yet the stock quickly lost about 40 percent of its value over the next month and is still substantially below its November 1998 price.

This was a classic "buy on the rumor, sell on the news" scenario. Although A Bug's Life was a very successful film, ultimately grossing more than $350 million worldwide, it was not nearly as big as the rumors would have had it being. To sustain the price that the rumors and speculation had created, A Bug's Life would have to have been as big as Disney's The Lion King, the most successful animated release of all time.


While A Bug's Life was as big a success as an investor could rationally have hoped for, it wasn't as big as the rumors -- because few things ever live up to those types of hopes. When a rumor becomes "news" and there are real numbers and real facts attached to it, a lot of short-term investors will find that a good time to sell, and over the short term that will affect the price of a stock.

In 1986, it bought various food businesses from Beechams[1] and in 1990 it acquired Premier Brands which included Typhoo and Cadbury's drinks.[1]

• March 2007 Completed the £1.2 billion acquisition of RHM along with many of the UK’s best known food brands including Hovis, Sharwoods, Cadbury cakes, Bisto and Mr Kipling.
• Cadbury's cakes and chocolate spread (manufactured under licence from Cadbury Schweppes)

http://www.premierfoods.co.uk/about-us/our-history/Timeline.cfm

clairbear_3

The last few weeks have seen an exceptional rally,theres talk of the economic crisis now over and understanderably investers have piled into downtrodden stocks,some have more than trebled,but where do we go from here.Is this just another sucker rally before we dive again,time will tell.Best to show some caution Personally I think it will be 2012 before things stabilise
CB