As I've mentioned in the past, on most weekends I like to pick up a copy of the FT. One of the highlights used to be the My Portfolio section. In particular I liked to read John Lee's column where he talked about the shares he currently held, had bought or sold.
However, not only has John Lee finished, but the whole My Portfolio page now appears to have been axed. What a pity. Whilst I don't ever recall buying any shares mentioned in their columns, it is interesting to read the thoughts of other private investors and hear their investing strategies.
We appear to be left with David Schwartz, a trader. Whilst it's interesting to hear him writing about some of the shares he is trading, over the past few weeks he has simply written a series of uninteresting articles pontificating on the next direction the markets will take. In summary, he's concluded that the markets will go up if they don't go down or if neither of these eventualties take place then the markets will go sideways. Brilliant! Well done, but perhaps instead of all that research into historical data about previous bull and bear markets, their durations etc, he might be better off admitting, just like everybody else, that guessing the future direction of stock markets is not worth the effort, because it nearly always takes you by surprise.
I do hope that in the future the My Portfolio section is re-introduced and that Schwartz gets back to talking about individual companies.
For balance, I might add that a good addition is the introduction of the small cap. section in the main paper.
Saturday, 25 May 2013
How to successfully alienate regular users...well done ADVFN!
It appears that I am unable to post website links on the ADVFN threads. From what I can gather, this isn't a temporary glitch, but a management decision to effectively ban non-subscribers from posting any links at all. Strange decision by the company if true.
I have enjoyed using their boards in the past and hopefully I've written some informative posts and added interesting links. I won't be using their boards in future though. I will continue to write my posts here and readers will be notified via my twitter account at the following link https://twitter.com/michae1mouse.
Rather than blanket banning all non-subscribers from posting links, perhaps they would have been better banning the cretins that spam the boards pumping up some worthless oil company in outer-mongolia or the dreadful idiots that are generally abusive and unpleasant.
Actually, whilst on the subject of ADVFN, they are an excellent illustration of a wildly over-valued company. When I last looked they have a market cap. of around £25m having never made a profit and with a pitiful tangible asset backing of around £0.7m. Even if the company had been listed for just a year or two, and had a great growth story to tell, the valuation would be stretched but ADVFN has been going for about 14 years. They don't appear to be able to make any money even during rampant bull markets.
If anybody truly believes that markets are efficient then just compare the valuations of Densitron, a company I mentioned earlier today, and ADVFN. One is profitable with a solid asset backing and pays a dividend, the other is loss making, has negligible tangible assets, doesn't and has never paid dividends. The former has a market cap. around £4m, the latter has a market cap. closer to £25m. Bizarre!
That doesn't suggest Densitron is under-valued, but let's just say I won't be rushing out to buy any shares in ADVFN.
As ever, no advice given or intended.
I have enjoyed using their boards in the past and hopefully I've written some informative posts and added interesting links. I won't be using their boards in future though. I will continue to write my posts here and readers will be notified via my twitter account at the following link https://twitter.com/michae1mouse.
Rather than blanket banning all non-subscribers from posting links, perhaps they would have been better banning the cretins that spam the boards pumping up some worthless oil company in outer-mongolia or the dreadful idiots that are generally abusive and unpleasant.
Actually, whilst on the subject of ADVFN, they are an excellent illustration of a wildly over-valued company. When I last looked they have a market cap. of around £25m having never made a profit and with a pitiful tangible asset backing of around £0.7m. Even if the company had been listed for just a year or two, and had a great growth story to tell, the valuation would be stretched but ADVFN has been going for about 14 years. They don't appear to be able to make any money even during rampant bull markets.
If anybody truly believes that markets are efficient then just compare the valuations of Densitron, a company I mentioned earlier today, and ADVFN. One is profitable with a solid asset backing and pays a dividend, the other is loss making, has negligible tangible assets, doesn't and has never paid dividends. The former has a market cap. around £4m, the latter has a market cap. closer to £25m. Bizarre!
That doesn't suggest Densitron is under-valued, but let's just say I won't be rushing out to buy any shares in ADVFN.
As ever, no advice given or intended.
Densitron - promising recovery play?
Densitron released their final results this week, a couple of weeks later than normal. Following my last blog, I was pleasantly surprised to read that there were no further nasty surprises given their trading update back in February. In fact the results were pretty much as expected following that particular update.
The headline figures give profit down to £0.6m, EPS at 0.36p, dividends down to 0.3p for the year (50% reduction from last year) but booked orders up by 9% to £23.1m.
Densitron's current market cap. is £4.3m which is supported by £3.2m of net tangible assets and a dividend yield of 4.8%. The company has little debt and £1.6m cash on it's balance sheet. Gross margin decreased from 29.6% to 28.6%.
So what are the pros and cons going forward?
On the negative side there is still a claim against the company in respect of unpaid rents on a property occupied by a former Group Company. It appears that they are trying to negotiate an out of court settlement but are unable to say at what level the settlement will be made.
On this year's earnings the company stands on a p/e of 16 and the dividend has been cut in half. They will pay a final dividend of 0.1p.
The share price has remained around current levels for some time now because, as I said in last week's blog, most of the bad news is already priced in.
Going forward, what are the bull points.
It's always easy to lose perspective. Firstly, Densitron is still profitable and, although current trading is mixed, the business should return to growth with a more favourable global economy and their introduction of internally developed products and additional services.
Their balance sheet is strong and certainly more than supports the current share price, and whilst the dividend has been reduced this year, they have clearly shown a willingnes in the past to return plenty of cash to shareholders when it is prudent.
Finally, they have a 1.25 acre strip of land in Blackheath, South East London which they wish to develop and are making slow but hopefully steady progress in their objective to do so. However, this is unlikely to be concluded this year.
Overall, the outlook statement is cautious (sensibly so following disappointments this year) but hints at optimism, "The pipeline of new business remains strong and we expect to see this being converted into new orders over the next few months."
I shall continue to hold , and would possibly add with any reasonable outcome to the rent claim made against them.
As ever, no advice is intended or given, and the blog remains an individual account of my personal experiences investing in the stock market.
The headline figures give profit down to £0.6m, EPS at 0.36p, dividends down to 0.3p for the year (50% reduction from last year) but booked orders up by 9% to £23.1m.
Densitron's current market cap. is £4.3m which is supported by £3.2m of net tangible assets and a dividend yield of 4.8%. The company has little debt and £1.6m cash on it's balance sheet. Gross margin decreased from 29.6% to 28.6%.
So what are the pros and cons going forward?
On the negative side there is still a claim against the company in respect of unpaid rents on a property occupied by a former Group Company. It appears that they are trying to negotiate an out of court settlement but are unable to say at what level the settlement will be made.
On this year's earnings the company stands on a p/e of 16 and the dividend has been cut in half. They will pay a final dividend of 0.1p.
The share price has remained around current levels for some time now because, as I said in last week's blog, most of the bad news is already priced in.
Going forward, what are the bull points.
It's always easy to lose perspective. Firstly, Densitron is still profitable and, although current trading is mixed, the business should return to growth with a more favourable global economy and their introduction of internally developed products and additional services.
Their balance sheet is strong and certainly more than supports the current share price, and whilst the dividend has been reduced this year, they have clearly shown a willingnes in the past to return plenty of cash to shareholders when it is prudent.
Finally, they have a 1.25 acre strip of land in Blackheath, South East London which they wish to develop and are making slow but hopefully steady progress in their objective to do so. However, this is unlikely to be concluded this year.
Overall, the outlook statement is cautious (sensibly so following disappointments this year) but hints at optimism, "The pipeline of new business remains strong and we expect to see this being converted into new orders over the next few months."
I shall continue to hold , and would possibly add with any reasonable outcome to the rent claim made against them.
As ever, no advice is intended or given, and the blog remains an individual account of my personal experiences investing in the stock market.
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