Suggestions for a speculative punt?

Rolandtheroadie

Cus said:

Rolandtheroadie said:

Mentioned Alien Metals (UFO.L) when they were 0.4p, now 1.27p. Might still be worth a look.
 Bought Alba Minerals since then, another punt. 
 
 

Interesting one, upto 1.27, over 50% increase today. Was at 430 9 years ago. What went wrong?

 It all went pete tong. Thankfully I've a 0.21p average and not a 430 one. 
 I'd imagine there's a good few miners were in the same boat?

bowlhead99

pappadruid said:

Failing that, mainstream stocks such as BP and L&G, banks all very cheap at the moment.

I see Shell is around about where it was at the worst of March, while BP has fallen even lower despite having temporarily gone up 50% by June.  Instead of the ordinary equities I bought a couple of thousand of their 8% preference shares in mid to late March which are up 20% since then, plus the 4p dividend over the half year.

As the ordinaries are now lower than March's price I've put them back on my watch list, but wouldn't be a 'short term' speculative punt. There's unlikely to be a lot of short term news flow to drive BP higher until oil prices recover somewhat in the coming years - could take 2-3 years before we see $50 a barrel again.  Meanwhile the market didn't respond particularly favourably to the idea of cutting the dividend to invest in greener stuff. They have plans to increase their green investing from $0.5bn to $5bn over the next decade but the $0.5bn is just a fraction of their budget and so really it is uncharted territory for them, and they need oil to be flowing at good prices to be able to fund it if they don't want to cut the dividend further. While the long term doesn't bode well for a company too entrenched in 'old economy' oil, shares bought at £2 or so may be worth putting away for a few years.

Shell are faring a bit better perhaps and have seen a future in renewables ('the writing's on the wall') for some time. A contrast to Exxon who are basically sticking their head in the (oil and LNG) sands, and trying to make the most out of there existing expertise in hydrocarbon revenues as a cash cow while it lasts. There are certainly lots of different ways to play the sector, but for a 'speculative punt' thread you would normally expect to see explorers and miners etc with low chances to multi-bag, rather than multibillion behemoths which may be expected to take a while to release value.

Ciprico

bowlhead99 said:

pappadruid said:

Failing that, mainstream stocks such as BP and L&G, banks all very cheap at the moment.

I see Shell is around about where it was at the worst of March, while BP has fallen even lower despite having temporarily gone up 50% by June.  Instead of the ordinary equities I bought a couple of thousand of their 8% preference shares in mid to late March which are up 20% since then, plus the 4p dividend over the half year.

As the ordinaries are now lower than March's price I've put them back on my watch list, but wouldn't be a 'short term' speculative punt. There's unlikely to be a lot of short term news flow to drive BP higher until oil prices recover somewhat in the coming years - could take 2-3 years before we see $50 a barrel again.  Meanwhile the market didn't respond particularly favourably to the idea of cutting the dividend to invest in greener stuff. They have plans to increase their green investing from $0.5bn to $5bn over the next decade but the $0.5bn is just a fraction of their budget and so really it is uncharted territory for them, and they need oil to be flowing at good prices to be able to fund it if they don't want to cut the dividend further. While the long term doesn't bode well for a company too entrenched in 'old economy' oil, shares bought at £2 or so may be worth putting away for a few years.

Shell are faring a bit better perhaps and have seen a future in renewables ('the writing's on the wall') for some time. A contrast to Exxon who are basically sticking their head in the (oil and LNG) sands, and trying to make the most out of there existing expertise in hydrocarbon revenues as a cash cow while it lasts. There are certainly lots of different ways to play the sector, but for a 'speculative punt' thread you would normally expect to see explorers and miners etc with low chances to multi-bag, rather than multibillion behemoths which may be expected to take a while to release value.

Bowlhead,
What are your thoughts on BLACKROCK WORLD MINING TRUST PLC, I've been tracking them for a while but yet to pull the trigger, 11% discount & 5.3% yield look attractive, as does a connection to gold...

bowlhead99

123mat123 said:

What are your thoughts on BLACKROCK WORLD MINING TRUST PLC, I've been tracking them for a while but yet to pull the trigger, 11% discount & 5.3% yield look attractive, as does a connection to gold...

It depends whether you want exposure to a metals / mining fund or not. If you do, probably not a terrible choice. It holds several of the big names (like BHP, Rio, Anglo American, Vale) and a bunch of smaller ones too. It can be a volatile sector, and the fact it's gone up over 100% over five years is accounted for by the fact it fell over 60% from summer 2014 to the end of 2016.

If you're investing for income you will probably prefer to 'pick up assets on a discount' as you get more income for your money than buying the individual holdings direct. However, the discount has largely been at similar levels (5-15%) for a long time, with most of the last 5 years being higher than it is today, so it is not screaming 'bargain'. An investor in May 2013 got 10.88% discount and almost 90 months later it is still at 10.68% discount, so ir I was in the market to buy it I wouldn't count on significant discount narrowing as part of my investment strategy.

Based on their sector summary, over a third of its exposure is to gold (not counting further gold exposure within 'diversified' investees), and its holdings are nearly all equities. You'll have your own view on whether taking a lot of geared exposure to the price of gold is a good thing or not. If you'd decided to pile in during the March lows when all the markets were uncertain,  you would have almost doubled your money as the price of most stocks corrected back up while gold improved by abotu 25% in dollar terms. But if you instead decided to 'track them for a while', you'll have missed that boat. It would be ambitious to assume there is some catalyst to make them double again over the next six or seven months as they did over the last. As with the five year returns, the rapid rises from this sort of fund are usually following rapid declines. There is not much fun being seduced by a few percent income and then watching the price decline tens of percent.

The driver of growth for a bunch of metals equities is usually demand for things like manufacturing and construction along with general GDP growth .  Some of the fiscal stimulus spending to stave off /recover from recession will be putting billions or trillions into areas such as infrastructure and plenty of the high tech businesses along with 'themes' such as renewables  want batteries and lithium etc even if they don't want old fashioned boring iron and copper cables. So, I wouldn't avoid holding mining companies, though being diversified among them is important given it's tricky to guess which ones will benefit the most from the shape of demand that we end up seeing. So some people will want to buy a fund like the one you mention. Others will feel they have sufficient exposure to the metals and mining sector elsewhere in their portfolio, via more generalist funds. 

It doesn't seem to be a particularly obvious choice for OP who was looking to pile into a few 'punt' stocks for a succession of money-doublers, though I suppose anything is fair game if you have a longer term outlook and prefer funds and ITs to going all-in on something from within a speculative pot of money.

Thrugelmir

123mat123 said:

bowlhead99 said:

pappadruid said:

Failing that, mainstream stocks such as BP and L&G, banks all very cheap at the moment.

I see Shell is around about where it was at the worst of March, while BP has fallen even lower despite having temporarily gone up 50% by June.  Instead of the ordinary equities I bought a couple of thousand of their 8% preference shares in mid to late March which are up 20% since then, plus the 4p dividend over the half year.

As the ordinaries are now lower than March's price I've put them back on my watch list, but wouldn't be a 'short term' speculative punt. There's unlikely to be a lot of short term news flow to drive BP higher until oil prices recover somewhat in the coming years - could take 2-3 years before we see $50 a barrel again.  Meanwhile the market didn't respond particularly favourably to the idea of cutting the dividend to invest in greener stuff. They have plans to increase their green investing from $0.5bn to $5bn over the next decade but the $0.5bn is just a fraction of their budget and so really it is uncharted territory for them, and they need oil to be flowing at good prices to be able to fund it if they don't want to cut the dividend further. While the long term doesn't bode well for a company too entrenched in 'old economy' oil, shares bought at £2 or so may be worth putting away for a few years.

Shell are faring a bit better perhaps and have seen a future in renewables ('the writing's on the wall') for some time. A contrast to Exxon who are basically sticking their head in the (oil and LNG) sands, and trying to make the most out of there existing expertise in hydrocarbon revenues as a cash cow while it lasts. There are certainly lots of different ways to play the sector, but for a 'speculative punt' thread you would normally expect to see explorers and miners etc with low chances to multi-bag, rather than multibillion behemoths which may be expected to take a while to release value.

Bowlhead,
What are your thoughts on BLACKROCK WORLD MINING TRUST PLC, I've been tracking them for a while but yet to pull the trigger, 11% discount & 5.3% yield look attractive, as does a connection to gold...

CYN - CQS NATURAL RESOURCES GROWTH AND INCOME PLC.      Maybe of interest to you as well. 

csgohan4

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54613475

Good idea as Durex are on the 'up' it seems

quirkydeptless

How about a punt with an investment in...

e.g.

Legal & General Artificial Intelligence UCITS ETF (GBP) (AIAG)

bowlhead99

bowlhead99 said:

pappadruid said:

Failing that, mainstream stocks such as BP and L&G, banks all very cheap at the moment.

I see Shell is around about where it was at the worst of March, while BP has fallen even lower despite having temporarily gone up 50% by June.  Instead of the ordinary equities I bought a couple of thousand of their 8% preference shares in mid to late March which are up 20% since then, plus the 4p dividend over the half year.

As the ordinaries are now lower than March's price I've put them back on my watch list, but wouldn't be a 'short term' speculative punt. There's unlikely to be a lot of short term news flow to drive BP higher until oil prices recover somewhat in the coming years - could take 2-3 years before we see $50 a barrel again.  Meanwhile the market didn't respond particularly favourably to the idea of cutting the dividend to invest in greener stuff. They have plans to increase their green investing from $0.5bn to $5bn over the next decade but the $0.5bn is just a fraction of their budget and so really it is uncharted territory for them, and they need oil to be flowing at good prices to be able to fund it if they don't want to cut the dividend further. While the long term doesn't bode well for a company too entrenched in 'old economy' oil, shares bought at £2 or so may be worth putting away for a few years.

Shell are faring a bit better perhaps and have seen a future in renewables ('the writing's on the wall') for some time. A contrast to Exxon who are basically sticking their head in the (oil and LNG) sands, and trying to make the most out of there existing expertise in hydrocarbon revenues as a cash cow while it lasts. There are certainly lots of different ways to play the sector, but for a 'speculative punt' thread you would normally expect to see explorers and miners etc with low chances to multi-bag, rather than multibillion behemoths which may be expected to take a while to release value.

I see RDSB is now a full 70% below its all-time high £28 share price that was reached around a year and a half ago, so have had a 'punt' on them at least not having much further to fall this year, though I'm not expecting the gains to come overnight. One to tuck away at the back of the pension.

The AA share price is now back to where it was a few months ago before the potential private equity takeover was announced, with the deadline for a bid being extended a couple of times now, so perhaps it will never happen. In the hope of some short term upside I've put back in the profits that I'd taken out in August, no doubt it will fall if the bid goes away or is a lowball one, especially with the Covid situation not really receding as quickly as might have been hoped when the interest was first announced.

My other punt for the week is just a literal bet on Biden to win the election ; the bookies odds are not as long as they were a few months ago but  I've added a bit to my existing position. You can get a 50% gain if he wins vs a 100% loss if he doesn't.  I called it wrong last time when Clinton was the favourite so hopefully this time is different

In looking at what the bookies are offering, you can get 1 to 25 on Biden winning at least one state that Trump won last time around.  In these days of banks offering 1% interest for a fixed one year deposit, a 4% return in a week seems very attractive and surely he'll get one of them, right....?

adindas

Red days this week. Due to the possible another lockdown in Europe due to COVID-19 case increase. What is your plan ?. Wnat to hear and learn it.

I myself have sold some of my position which is currenlty green to prepare for cash and also releasing some cash from my saving ready to attack when I believe it is already around the bottom (moving avarage indicator). Those which is currently in red I am going to leave it, even it wil mean waiting for a few months as I hardly ever sell the stock when they are in red .

From firstt lock down it seems it might take about 3-4 weeks to reach the bottom. But this time might be shorter as it seems there are lot of resistance/movement to prevent the second lockdown and it seems they have found a way to reduce fatality rate. Also the good news of vaccine might already available early December.

With this sort of market crash, even if  you are relying on well known index fund/mutual fund it will have a great impact on your return as well.

I missed to take advantage of the first market crash in March 2020, I am not going to repeat the same mistale again this time.

Thrugelmir

Current plan. Do very little. As I totally realigned my portfolio earlier in the year.  Top slice the outperformers. Cull the disappointing underperformers . Sit on the cash generated and wait for buying opportunities (individual shares) to materialise. There's some companies/sectors that I'm more than happy to leave to the speculators.