Suggestions for a speculative punt?

AnotherJoe

Username999 said:

I had a "punt" in 1988, I think it was originally Allied Dunbar, now it's Royal London With Profits Pen Plan.
Paid in about £4000.
Then forgot about it for 20 years.
It's worth about £91K now, 2175% ish.
It pays to have a poor memory sometimes

PETS.L has been a great share too, tripled from it's low, woof, woof.

(and it's Workhorse WKHS, workhouses went years ago!)

Don't worry only another 993 posts.

TBF, £4k in 1988 is about £10k in today's money, so perhaps not as good as it seems?

Username999

Actually I thought it was pretty good, my boss at the time suggested I do it, and as he was my boss I did without really thinking about it.

It was around that time that the same boss came into the office one day and said "has anyone heard of Microsoft", no one answered.
We were an IBM software house on 'Dumb Terminals'.
Pity I didn't put the £4K into that

bowlhead99

csgohan4 said:

bowlhead99 said:

123mat123 said:

Well, of the small punts I've made in last 6 months (in total less than 1% of total holdings...)
ITM power  -14%
Wisdom tree cloud -5%
Ceres Power +11%
Ishares gold  +10% (sold), gold went up with equities, disproving everything I thought I knew about gold
Nio Inc SPON  +2.75 %
overall result - no gain / no loss, but made life interesting, but still optimistic for longer term....

The ones I have at >50% over the last 6 months:

Harbourvest Global Private Equity HVPE 77% from 19 March and 60% from 23 March

William Hill WMH 90% from 23 March 

Restaurant Group RTN 126% from 23 March

Ocado OCDO 91% from 14 April

Playtech PTEC 62% from 1 May

Hochschild Mining HOC 64% from 12 May 

Dignity DTY 94% from 3 April and 104% from 11 May (though these are only topups to other purchases starting earlier in the year, my overall holding is only up 38%)

AA plc AA 53% from 13 May and 93% from 14 May
Workhouse Group  WKHS 70% from 26 August (after it was mentioned on this thread)

Dishonourable mention - bought £2k worth of Greggs on 24 June at £17/share, thought better of it and sold 5/6ths of it a few days later for £16/share and kept a small amount... which is now down to £12/share and showing a 30% loss.    

The positive from it was that the money I took back from Greggs went into NIO that week at just below $8, which is now at $19; bit of a fluke on the timing and I took all the cost back out when it reached a 75% profit, leaving a token hundred shares or so to run.

I'm considering perhaps a punt on Wandisco (WAND) who released their results yesterday causing the price to fall almost 30% since Wednesday and now half the June price (though no lower than it was in Feb-March). A few of the directors invested a token £20-30k each this morning, not really meaningful in the context of their overall holdings so seems a token gesture but I do like to see directors buying after a blackout restriction ends. 

I am surprised William hill has gone up, didn't think they had such as online presence.

Their overall net revenue for the first half of the year was down about a third from previous year with the collapse of sporting events and people not being able to go into shops for a bit, but online net revenue wasn't down at all, picking up some of the slack from the stores and more people gambling while bored in lockdown, so online revenue was 67% of the (reduced) total. They became Caesars' exclusive sports betting partner in the US within the last couple of months, and then announced a co-exclusivity deal with Caesars and ESPN this week.

The share price quartered from the beginning of the year to the March bottom so has quadrupled since then to get back up over 200p, and I invested about half way up. I realise I must have put the wrong date on my post above, accidentally the same as Restaurant Group, but can't check the date now as AJBell is down for maintenance this weekend.

Also surprised at the restaurant group given reduced diners 

It was priced for no diners at all and with no furlough announced and impossible-to-meet rent or debt commitments. When the price had dropped by two thirds, someone on this board said they thought it was worth a punt and I said it could easily go a lot lower - with a completely unknown time to recovery and failure a risk. A week or so later it had halved again, so I had a go. I sold most of my holding after it had gone back up 180% a while ago when announcing their CVA plan, and it's fallen back again since. City centre Wagamamas will be screwed with reduced office and shopping traffic, and 100+ Frankie & Bennies will never reopen, but they were able to get some of their rents down and exit a lot of the worst parts of the leisure estate when they got the CVA away, so the business will hopefully still survive.

I'm not so confident in what will happen next for the sector -it's hard to identify any businesses that are good but 'priced to fail', so bargain hunting is tougher than it was a few months ago. I have just left a few  hundred pounds in it now to see what happens, and am seeing my gain or loss figure twitch up or down by 5% a day.  It's a much lower share price than last year but a smaller company and the trading environment is terrible.

Thrugelmir

Username999 said:

Actually I thought it was pretty good, my boss at the time suggested I do it, and as he was my boss I did without really thinking about it.

It was around that time that the same boss came into the office one day and said "has anyone heard of Microsoft", no one answered.
We were an IBM software house on 'Dumb Terminals'.
Pity I didn't put the £4K into that

Once upon a time Micro Focus was a private limited company. Employees were allowed to subscribe for shares at £5 each.  Upon market listing the old company shares were converted at ratio of 1:240. Opening day closing price was £1.85p. 

Username999

With all these SPAC's and IPO's it's starting to look similar to the Dot Com bubble of the late 1990s.
They're all jumping on the EV band waggon.

Now Cornish Lithium are talking about an IPO: https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-8749009/Mining-company-Cornish-Lithium-planning-public-two-years.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490

Giga Metals spreading rumours around and Lithium Americas Corp 'LAC' is up from $1.92 to $10.31.

A lot of retail investors are going to get burnt IMHO. 

Deja Vu.

adindas

Username999 said:

With all these SPAC's and IPO's it's starting to look similar to the Dot Com bubble of the late 1990s.
They're all jumping on the EV band waggon.

Now Cornish Lithium are talking about an IPO: https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-8749009/Mining-company-Cornish-Lithium-planning-public-two-years.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490

Giga Metals spreading rumours around and Lithium Americas Corp 'LAC' is up from $1.92 to $10.31.

A lot of retail investors are going to get burnt IMHO. 

Deja Vu.

That is also what I believe. It might include EV stocks as well. So many EV companies you never heard of going public nowadays.

For that reason, unless you are pretty sure that the company you put your money in will have a very good chance to grow in the future, imo it is better to trade it rather than to invest  in these sort of companies.

Also from opportunity cost point of view you will not get the same return after they get merged, unless of course if there is another big catalysts yet to come. You could take your money somewhere else for a better return such as investing in a new SPAC is yet to merge.

WIth good exit strategy you are already out (or half out) when the bubble burst has finally happened. When you are already out (or half out where the money is no longer your original investment), it will not have impact on you at all.

If you want to reduce risk significantly, unless you know the company very well avoid to buy SPAC when they are newly launced and have not got defenitive company to merge with. Two years time waitng (It could be more with extention) is too much of risk. A lot of thing could happen during that period.

Apart from the opportunity cost parking your money for about two years doing almost nothing, the risk is actually very low if you manage to get hold of around US$10. There is a good article written about this where I have posted a link in the previous post. The share holder who have their money invested in this SPAC for US$10 a share will vote against merging if the valuation is below US$10 (loss for them) so the merge will fall through and they get their money back. Some people see this sort ot things similar to an arbitrage opportunity.

adindas

Thrugelmir said:

Current best smallish punt is Avon Rubber at 84% (of those at the March dip).  Worst is Exelon at -13%. Though much of this is an exchange rate loss. 

Well if you boughtt shares during the market crash around 3rd/4th weeks of March, 84% is not a good return. Unless they are directly effected by COVID-19 such as Cruises, Airlines, Travel Agents, Banks, most stocks will give you  a return of 50%+ to this date while they are recovering from the COVID-19 stock arket crash.

Prism

adindas said:

Thrugelmir said:

Current best smallish punt is Avon Rubber at 84% (of those at the March dip).  Worst is Exelon at -13%. Though much of this is an exchange rate loss. 

Well if you boughtt shares during the market crash around 3rd/4th weeks of March, 84% is not a good return. Unless they are directly effected by COVID-19 such as Cruises, Airlines, Travel Agents, Banks, most stocks will give you  a return of 50%+ to this date while they are recovering from the COVID-19 stock arket crash.

You are saying that most stocks from late March have returned 50%+ ? That is clearly not true as most stocks, although have recovered somewhat have returned much less than that. Some examples that have not are Apple, Microsoft and Amazon in GBP terms. The majority of UK stocks are nowhere near. 84% is a great return.

Malone2020

adindas 

That is also what I believe. It might include EV stocks as well. So many EV companies you never heard of going public nowadays.

For that reason, unless you are pretty sure that the company you put your money in will have a very good chance to grow in the future, imo it is better to trade it rather than to invest  in these sort of companies.

Also from opportunity cost point of view you will not get the same return after they get merged, unless of course if there is another big catalysts yet to come. You could take your money somewhere else for a better return such as investing in a new SPAC is yet to merge.

WIth good exit strategy you are already out (or half out) when the bubble burst has finally happened. When you are already out (or half out where the money is no longer your original investment), it will not have impact on you at all.

If you want to reduce risk significantly, unless you know the company very well avoid to buy SPAC when they are newly launced and have not got defenitive company to merge with. Two years time waitng (It could be more with extention) is too much of risk. A lot of thing could happen during that period.

Apart from the opportunity cost parking your money for about two years doing almost nothing, the risk is actually very low if you manage to get hold of around US$10. There is a good article written about this where I have posted a link in the previous post. The share holder who have their money invested in this SPAC for US$10 a share will vote against merging if the valuation is below US$10 (loss for them) so the merge will fall through and they get their money back. Some people see this sort ot things similar to an arbitrage opportunity.

I'd be inclined to see another window of opportunity with all these EV companies springing up and EV mania seeping into the market. I'd certainly try and play the trend but in a more tactical long term way. So instead of looking into the many EV options I'd ask myself 'what do all of these need even if they compete against each other'. After reflecting on this for a while I might conclude electricity and buy National Grid. I might also conclude that they'll all need certain components made of Lithium, and then invest in Lithium or a company that manufactures the components. 
Tapping into the supply chain often brings its own rewards. When many investors (and sadly to my eternal shame I was one of them!) were getting carried away with the projected growth rate cited for Canadian cannabis stocks and rushing out to take positions in a particular company (most of which are performing woefully and that was long before the pandemic) more discerning investors were buying into Scotts Miracle Grow, smaller companies that manufacture particular parts of equipment needed to farm the product and even some that held warehouses for growing it. They're probably sitting a lot prettier right now than me with me cannabis stocks... 😭

Username999

Malone2020 said:
I'd be inclined to see another window of opportunity with all these EV companies springing up and EV mania seeping into the market. I'd certainly try and play the trend but in a more tactical long term way. So instead of looking into the many EV options I'd ask myself 'what do all of these need even if they compete against each other'. After reflecting on this for a while I might conclude electricity and buy National Grid. I might also conclude that they'll all need certain components made of Lithium, and then invest in Lithium or a company that manufactures the components. 

Tapping into the supply chain often brings its own rewards. 

I agree that the supply chain is just/more important as the final product. I can't see how you remove Miners from the supply chain to anything! You'll always need metals going forward, Lithium, Iron, Nickel, Aluminum etc,.

I hold National Grid but maybe its future is not so rosy. Maybe we will all produce our own energy, Solar houses, factories all 'off the grid', V2G etc,.
And if every one worked 'from home' and Robots did the manual work why do we need any form of personal transport.

It's becoming like the Matrix! Where's me Red pills

Next revolution will be 3D Printers, printing buildings controlled by AI.