UK Stockmarket 2009 and beyond

cashbackproblems

negs wrote: »

Hi, I have been reading this thread for past few months and have been really appreciating and sometimes do my reserach based upon things mentoned here. I had been investing in funds but recently switched to shares. More exciting i think.

Have recently sold IPF at 111 (bought at 82) and planning to reinvest.
Still holding yell (bought at 29.8)

Have been thinking about UUtilities (all time low now), Primear foods (Result next week), and WPP ? Have you been closely watching anything else

Can respected fellow investors share your views on the same?

Cheers
Negs

You wouldnt do badly with Unitied Utilities and they current pay a brilliant dividend, equally as good is national grid and you wont get huge increases/decreases with these two, but long term they will provide you with a much better return than any bank savings account, plus uv got the excitement which you dont get when its sitting in a bank!

However it also depends on the amount of risk your prepared to take as if you want to make a quick short term buck (more than UU/NG) and are willing to take a calculated punt, two i have been looking at are VOG and UCP (asian housing), Emed, all which could go up/down. With miners in general most you cant assess fundamentals in the conventional way otherwise you would never buy into them, as they are losing money UNTIL they have a big exploration find of coal/oil/gold when their sp's rocket.

Also with Unitied Utilities dont be fooled looking at the charts as the sp will never reach those dizy heights of 1/2yrs back, due to the ofwat regulations/potential price caps and as utility bills come down so does their profit.

negs

i do not know much about dividends? Do all shareholders get it irrespective of how long they have holded the shares ? For example if i buy 100 shares in UU today would i get 34 p per share irrespective of me holoding for a week, month etc ?

cashbackproblems

negs wrote: »

i do not know much about dividends? Do all shareholders get it irrespective of how long they have holded the shares ? For example if i buy 100 shares in UU today would i get 34 p per share irrespective of me holoding for a week, month etc ?

yes everyone gets the divi irrespective of how many you hold, the amount will be calculated as a proportion of your holding. Just done some research and UU pay divis in Feb and Aug, the ex divi date i.e. the date you have to buy the share by to qualify is December for the Feb dividend. Is there a minimum hold as per your question, i would have thought so but as i buy alot of shares for the increase in sp and not divi maybe someone else can clarify?

Youv obv missed the date for Augusts. Bad news however, UU are cutting their dividends by 30%, makes it abit more of a balanced buy between them and NG, personally i would edge towards NG if you want a safe utilities company, but everyones always gona need electricity/water etc!

sabretoothtigger

you have to hold it on certain days. Some shares its one single day a year, some two, some four days for four different dividends. The yield shown reflects the whole dividend but most split the payout and vary the amounts

None of them actually require you to hold it always but you never know when they'll be some news that'll make the price go up or down, that leads to speculation but you might find the price on dividend record date one year is pretty similar to the next year or not

uu. will pay out on monday but the actual record date was in june. Next date will be december.
Theres no great reason they cant just refuse to pay you dividends, shareholders are owners but its a bit like saying you can vote gordon brown out

lloyds used to pay 35p dividends, they were doing this last summer even. The spring payout was about 2p


http://www.digitallook.com/cgi-bin/dlmedia/security.cgi?username=&ac=&csi=10096


If you try to hold on one single day you will find the price rises and falls just after the record, you will lose in capital what you gain from income.

If you look at Tate it was possible to get a 'free' dividend by speculating their results (released around div record date usually) were good, their price now is far above what it was previous to the dividend.
uu didnt do this so I guess there was no nice results, its a gamble either way if you hold it short term

http://www.investorresearch.mdgms.com/factsheet/factsheet.html?ID_NOTATION=201123


There is no min hold for a div afaik.

negs

Thanks Cashback for the explanation. Did not buy anything today. Could'nt make up my mind. Was hovering between JRVS, UU, Premier foods, WPP and Xstrata.

Xstrata is quite a bumpy share keeps hovering between 700 and 775 in few days time. However quiet a major sells this evening. Tomorrow might be a doom day (-5 to -6%) for Xstrata.

sabretoothtigger

miners and jarvis already had their rise, they would have to be longer term buys to make sense I reckon unless you know something especially. What kind of trading are you aiming for, swing trading or investment or both even


If you cant descern between any of them then dont buy any. In theory it doesnt mater what stock you bought since july 13th since most have risen or done fine but really you'd want some special reason you think they are not valued properly by the market otherwise you should trade funds or etf instead because then you are saying you have confidence in a market or sector even if not sure of the details

tonygee_3

Sobering thought but FTSE 100 & 250 only gone up by 1.5% in the last 7 months!!!
Psycologically new cash input is needed or frustration will lead to withdrawals
Most cyclicals pumped up so Utilities may get some limited interest
Trouble is high debts and high dividends,so prob RI or div cuts

tonygee_3

Negs,agree with sabre,these shares esp mining are very volatile.
Unless you are experienced day trader avoid and wait till they fall
As I pointed out above the same money is going in and coming out so odds on a correction soon

negs

kind of both..few longer term holds to pay out my mortgage..
few which i can make some short money jumping in out fast..
xstrata is one share i have made few bucks going in at 710 and then coming out around 770 etc in around a week/10 days or so..then again buying back..

As everybody else trying to find that golden oversold share which has potential to recover..means mgmt having some interest by having their own big holding/motivation..

sabretoothtigger

In gold terms the sp500 is just about level for the year. Not worked out ftse yet




Ok just in case anyone beside me is bothered The ratio figures for ftse to correlate a comparison with above are 0,083 on Jan 2nd and 0,081 now which means the YTD performance of the Ftse in gold is -2.5%

The SP500 has lost 5% of its value in gold since year start.