What is the riskiest share you have bought?

k-hkr

Great thread.

I turned £1500 into £50 a few yrs ago. Bought KCOM on the tech bubble on way down beleiving they would recover! Bought at £9 sold at £4. Then bought (and still hold, somewhere) TRK - torotrak for £2.50 and they are around 20p now and instead of selling licences for their 'infinitely variable transmission' to the major car manufacturers they have only managed a couple of tractor manufacturers! Proven to work as well and deliver 25% fuel efficiency savings!

Recently bought a lot of DES - desire petroleum, and some RKH - Rockhopper petroleum to get in early with the Falklands oilies. Time will tell but massively derisked with RKH actually finding oil. Desire have more acreage than RKH but have yet to drill their main campaign. DES potential is 20 to 30x current sp. RKH around 10x imho.

The biggy in terms of cash though is BP. Only wanted a quick 5% as it was going up 1% a day at the time as the top kill was looking good. Since getting in at £4.16 it has retraced somewhat so am a little stuck now but am outta there when at 4.50 - 5.00.

My fave though is ENK - European Nickel. What a rollercoaster! They have proven nickel in the ground in a mine in Turkey. They had all permits and were arranging finance (China) for the mine and I got in at 10p expecting 100% profit on finance news with £2.00 to £3.00 in 3-5 yrs when all up and running with others projects lined up for after Caldag (the turkish mine). Well, the finance deal went on and on and then they (ENK) pulled the plug and have gone back to Western banks for finance. Then Turkey pulled the forrestry permit on a technicality as two of their laws clashed. They have passed new laws and are re-issuing permits on a sounder footing (many companies involved). The permits are anytime soon and finance is expected from a Western consortium 4th quarter. SP should be back up to pre permit problem levels once they re-issued which will be 100% up on today and then once finance is sorted we are looking at another doubling with a slow rise up to £2 - £3 on mine construction/production. Hunter Dickinson recently bought in at 32p and another tranche at 44p on finance completion so they are confidentenough and are big hitters in Canada mining. This co. was founded in conjunction with BHP and they invented new technology for extraction of nickel from nickel laterites which gives them an advantage when nickel prices are low and other mines are not profitable as this 'heap leach' system is alot cheaper.

The one which worries me the most is actually BP!!

Jake'sGran

Just can't bear to talk about it. I was determined to get the money back and went to town depositing £100 in all the likely building societies and felt better when some came good, even very good like Alliance & Leicester and Northern Rock:mad: You know the rest! Taught me a lesson.

Last year bought BP - now.. how could that go wrong? and Lloyds TSB for the dividend. Time to give up?? No, the portfolio still looks good!

sabretoothtigger

Owch, thats alot of bad luck though you have to say the bs shares were free so no risk really and they gave some divs for a while ?

A&L are santander now who give a good dividend and should grow as they have so much foreign income it seems like


Theres alot more risk takers here then I thought, buying risky brand name shares is a fallacy I share unfortunately.

Another risky one I have is Eredene which is 38m big but they invest in indian infrastructure so hopefully a pound goes a long way out there, seems very risky to me as india is full of chaos and some corruption but also crying out for proper support for people and business to grow.

I dont hear much on this, I probably should have just got JII instead which is just normal big indian shares. ERE went down over the last year before rising big (im still down) on general india exuberance, the country in theory is moving from away nationalistic bloated failed government towards proper capitalism, in theory anyway

Masomnia

I'll admit I'm tempted by HMV!

I was wondering if the dividend could yet be cut but it looks to be all confirmed, at least for the time being. So the business is profitable, the earnings per share have grown year on year. Net debt may be fairly high but that's because they've spent money diversifying the group and expanding into new sectors, seem to be realistic about the sectors they're already in.

Seems a no-brainer to me at the price at which it is trading.

Now just need to work out where I'm going to get some money from...

Reaper

Masomnia wrote: »

Now just need to work out where I'm going to get some money from...

If you are short of cash (+ have a large student debt) then are you sure you want to go ahead? Everything in this thread is high risk punts to spend spare cash on. I would feel very bad if anybody used money they could not afford to lose on my investment whims.

Masomnia

Reaper wrote: »

If you are short of cash (+ have a large student debt) then are you sure you want to go ahead? Everything in this thread is high risk punts to spend spare cash on. I would feel very bad if anybody used money they could not afford to lose on my investment whims.

Oh don't worry I'm not short of cash, have savings as well and a job.

I'm thinking of financing it by selling another investment that feels as though it's lost steam (Reed Elsevier), so I'm thinking of taking my profit there and risking a bit here and banking the rest.

As I said I fancy something a bit riskier!

I don't think it's a whim, I think it's a very good spot! It fits exactly with what I try to look for in a share, profitable companies that are seemingly undervalued, and that yield is mouth-watering

Reaper

Masomnia wrote: »

Oh don't worry I'm not short of cash, have savings as well and a job.

Thanks for putting my mind at rest. I hesitated before creating this thread as I didn't want to lead anybody astray, but I think it is an interesting read, particularly when people explain their reasoning whether it turned out to be right or wrong so we can learn from it.

You will probably do slightly better than me as I bought HMV at 61p so have a small loss, but that's irrelevant to me as I did not buy them for capital gain, this is a pure income play.

The one in my risky portfoloio that has done the best in the short time since I started is the one I mentioned in Post 1 - Alpha Pyrennes Trust. I bought that for income in the short/medium term and growth in the long term. However moving to a (small) profit plus renewed confidence in the French economy has meant they have risen 30% already so it looks like I'm on for both growth + 13% income . I wonder if anybody else followed me in to that one?

Jake'sGran

No, but I will go and have a look!

Two I bought last year are perhaps more well known but are doing quite well so far i.e. Dragon Oil and Rexam.

Masomnia

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11209317

It's looking iffy for Connaught to say the least.

I didn't buy today! Wasn't up in time to catch the climb through the day as I've been working late so been sleeping through the mornings. Gutted. Might see what happens later today, yield is still looking tempting as I'd be looking for income too.

Decisions, decisions...

rockitup

Masomnia wrote: »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11209317

It's looking iffy for Connaught to say the least.

I didn't buy today! Wasn't up in time to catch the climb through the day as I've been working late so been sleeping through the mornings. Gutted. Might see what happens later today, yield is still looking tempting as I'd be looking for income too.

Decisions, decisions...

I only had a Tenner a point on my spread bet on Connaught and took 3 points profit but could have only got hit for £130 if the worst happened before I jumped ship.

It's a shame though if the banks force it into administration now without giving Roy Gardner a chance to turn it round. Compass have done well in the last few years anyway.