Royal Mail Shares

cashvoid121

Anybody know how long it takes the automated system to sell shares?

tuk

Jennifer_Jane wrote: »

.... Does anyone think that this is because of the planned strike, or just a normal calming down of things?

The price had already dipped before the announcement & its only 1x24hr strike in November...although it doesn't help the price, I'm guessing its more just the normal calming down that happens after Day 1.

Mikey17

Just in case anyone is worried, I rang Equiniti today. They confirmed that i opted for electronic storage of my shares, and not a certificate.
Other than that phone call, i have had absolutely no contact from them whatsoever.
I am still waiting for my email ( my wife too )
I will ring again tomorrow. I doubt i will be so polite next time. I am in no rush to sell, i just think, when a £1000 cheque was cashed over a week ago, some correspondence would be appropriate

cashvoid121

There is more action planned apart from the strike. I don't see them getting up to the Tuesday high again for a good while.

Jennifer_Jane

brasso wrote: »

Here's how I see it:

• Because the shares were valued too low, the demand has been high.
• Because the demand has been high, a decision was made to favour the 'small investors'.
• This meant far more shareholders than initially envisaged.
• Because the shares were valued too low, the price has risen higher than expected.
• Because the price has risen higher than expected, a lot of these small investors are now desperate to claim their winnings.
• Because a lot of these small investors are all now desperate to claim their winnings at the same moment, the infrastructure can't cope.

So the root cause of this issue is the stupidly low offer price of the shares, which has created more shareholders than envisaged. But a secondary problem is the failure of the authorities to predict that in the Betfair / National Lottery age, a lot of these first-timers have treated the privatisation of the Royal Mail as nothing more than a very short term lottery ticket.

It's being treated a bit like a legal scam, like those situations where people are happy to flood websites to buy goods that have been priced down in error. They know they've hit lucky but still moan like hell when they don't instantly get the goods, and talk about taking legal action.

It's been a disaster for the Tories, who wanted this to be 'popular capitalism' with a new generation of people being introduced to the world of investment and shareholding. But in this instant gratification age, they didn't predict that people don't care about dividends and long term wealth building.

Just gimme the money -- and quick.

Depressing really.

Agree with most of this, except where you say the share was priced too low so that created demand. I didn't know what the share price was, I just applied for £2,000 worth as an affordable amount to gamble with. We didn't really know what the share price was did we?

Perhaps the Government should rather have said that they would only accept a minimum of £1500 rather than the £750 to exclude thousands of people. And we all know that there would have been grumbles with that. We all know that the Government had to:

a) Have a successful sell-off
b) Received advice from experts in this kind of thing.

The problem really is not that the share was priced too low, but that too many people for the systems wanted to sell immediately. When I was working (a few years ago now), if my Company wanted to send out a general e-mail to people, they would have to stagger them otherwise their systems would definitely crash. If you think that there were only 55,000 employees, and this has attracted millions of people, I can understand that the e-mails would take two days to be sent out - if not longer.

I don't think it's been a shambles, but I do realise that people who haven't yet had their e-mail must be anxious, and rightly so. I hope nothing has gone wrong for them.

Yes, there do seem to be a number of people who are adamant they ticked the nominee box, and I am sure they did, but to me that is the only bit that could be described as a glitch.

metrobus

John1993 wrote: »

Sadly it's not legal to sack people for going on strike, as long as the necessary ballot was held, right notice given, and so on.

Hopefully this anachronistic law will disappear one day, but for the moment staff can withdraw their labour with not consequences, but employers can't do the same with jobs.

Never heard of zero hour contracts have you?

Steve10086

wolftastic wrote: »

Who do you phone Steve?

01214157086 (option 4)

Jennifer_Jane

DominicH wrote: »

I don't think it's anything to do with the "Betfair age". People have always been interested in turning a quick profit. Much the same comments were made in earlier privatisations. And it wasn't new then. South Sea Bubble, anyone?

Anyway, a few weeks ago people were wondering if the Royal Mail sale would flop. It's really hard to price these things. Only a little bit higher and people might have hesitated, and it's a very fine line between a flop and a stampede. From what I remember of the '80s privatisations, this one has been quite sedate. Back then, your granny who wouldn't know a share certificate from a tea-towel would be discussing the offer price with her friends at the bingo.

(Apologies for the granny stereotype . I'm sure there are plenty of savvy investors on here who happen to also be grandparents.)

Indeed - I learnt my sharedealing (lack of) skills in 2000 with the dot com bubble! 13 years ago.

mcscoty1973

Jennifer.

You ticked one box for nominee makes me think like me you were selecting the nominee account but actually you were asking for share certificate. The text read along the lines, your shares will be in a nominee account, select this option if you want a share certificate. So in fact the exact opposite of what you wanted. Extremely badly worded.

Jennifer_Jane wrote: »

Yes, agree with you here. I did read the Prospectus, but I think my eyes glazed over after a bit.

But I am used to buying and selling shares, so when someone said that the £17.50 selling fee was a "scam", I had to wonder if they'd ever traded a share before: and if not, how could they be accusing Equiniti of a "scam". How do people think these sharedealers make money!

I agree that there were two boxes, and I know for definite that I ticked the nominee box because I spent time going very slowly and carefully through the form. The reason being that I didn't want the physical share, as that's like having cash floating about.

I was hoping that the share might have increased again today, but it's down a bit. Does anyone think that this is because of the planned strike, or just a normal calming down of things?

swardean

I sold my shares at 4.29pm yesterday using the equiniti share view website, no account needed. This morning I had the share dealing invoice in the post confirming the sales and telling me my cheque would be sent out tomorrow, 17th.

So overall pretty impressed and efficient, will let you know if the cheque arrives on Friday.