General chat and market turbulence March 2018

[rimmy2000]

How is everyone getting on?

 

Its turned into a pretty horrid time for me! I was fortunate enough to sell quite a lot of low conviction shares and also to free up some cash by selling some parts of my larger gainers (eg WMH) but blimey, its been a rough ride since then.

 

Twitter I think is down abut 15-20%, a huge sell of caused by general market weakness and exacerbated (I believe) by Cambridge Analytica fallout/read across.

My Spreadbet portfolio is taking a hammering due to holding more speculative stocks (BOO and SOS) and I need to shore up the account here to ensure I am not too leveraged, and also because IG recently released an email responding to 'New ESMA rules come into effect from early July' (in a word, Shares margins will rise from 7.5% to 20%. I suppose this could in part be related to general market choppiness if larger positions are being sold down/scaled out of in anticipation of such measures. Any thoughts.

 

On the converse, I noted that CRAW, which I held, then sold for a 40% loss, is today up almost 50%! The market is perhaps still throwing up opportunities, it appears.. This is now selling for a market cap of about £4m IIRC, and booted out the CEO for doing what can only be described as an atrocious job. However the shares have been getting hoovered up. Almost worth a punt at these levels but I have an aversion of buying back into failed stocks! Anyone else get that..

 

WMH continues to hold up, and will no doubt be a Make Or Break point once the government finally announce the plans on gambling imposition/regs. Personally I think the resilience it has shown demonstrates inherent value, and that waiting long enough will see it swallowed up by some other larger conglomerate.

NXR - of which I have written extensively on here, has pulled back further. I think I may have topped up but cannot actually remember if I did(!) I will need to go back and check.

 

I see Bitcoin has dropped further. Who knows what is going on there. I spoke to a colleague the other day who was at a recent Robbie Burns seminar, and apparently a woman there had made £100k on Bitcoin on the way up. I hope she was able to call the top at £20k If she is still holding on, then if it were me I'd be getting very sweaty.

 

The market is chopping around a fair bit and the FTSE100 made it back into sub 7000 levels, and if I am honest I have been too busy (day job *groans*) to monitor it closely or take a position in it. It does seem like a bit of buying is coming back into the market though, and certain stocks have piqued in the last day or two. SHP and SBRY are two I have in mind  right now. A tough question is whether to use this sell off to buy back in or continue to wait on the sidelines. I get the impression it will be one of those years that whatever you choose to do the market will do the opposite. Interesting times indeed.

 

So how are people on here faring up?  Be good to hear how others are doing in these times.

 

I am not going to plug it too much but a really exciting investor conference is coming up soon in Derby, go to Mello2018 to get tickets. I will be there for the whole period and be good to meet anyone who fancies coming along. Message me if you want discount tickets as I may be able to help in that regard.

 

Have a great Easter everyone!