Wednesday 28 October 2009

Sea of Red


My portfolio has been tanking this week, over 10% down in total so far and today is another bad day.
Not as bad as the FTSE this morning which is down nearly 2% as I write.
The expected September/October correction has been a long time coming. Share in the US and UK have moved sideways for 6 weeks and now appear to be falling again.
Poor economic news is still everywhere and although companies have beaten expectations on profits, the levels are too low to sustain what has been a huge rally from the March lows.
Noticeably the big gains of State owned Banks RBS and Lloyds are really taking a beating and leading the index down, along with over-bought commodities. Despite the falls, I am not selling out just yet, although stop-losses are in place - here are some of my still hopeful investments -
AST.L - Ascent resources, a small tiddler drilling for oil in Europe, down only a fraction today and lots of good news to come in the next few weeks. I can't see the price collapsing even in a rout.
EME.L - Very similar position to AST.L, but drilling for gas in the USA.
TLW.L - Tullow, a FTSE 100 major, is going to get a bid in when the sale of its Kosmos field partner in Uganda is completed. The Major oil companies will want a big slice of this success story and this will underpin the price (already up so much from its £6 low to £12).
MNR.L - The property company, one of my favourites, will no doubt announced tenants for its newly completed City offices in the near future and the share price will rocket on the news.

11 comments:

Steven_L said...

You should have taken your own advice and shorted Lloyds by the look of it.

I took your advice for once and have a spring in my step this week.

James Higham said...

Will the markets recover? Serious question here. What's the word in the City?

CityUnslicker said...

no one knows JH - really it is utterly unclear. QE has made the markets move more than they should have.

Budgie said...

It's a down hill roller coaster. I'm still in MXP, PPA, RPT, EMED & HOIL. Should I be?

James Higham said...

Which you said was not going to keep going - QE, I mean.

Anonymous said...

This

And

This

Cannot be good for markets!

They are constantly chipping away at the foundations of $ hegemony.

The world, and global finance, is fragmenting into bilateral deals, almost barter!

This does not look well for markets, economics, price discovery, and will probably create trade barriers and "preferred" customers/prices.

China pegged to a falling $ is a deliberate attempt to further hollow out european manufacturing.

There is a clear game of international chess going on here.

Steven_L said...

There's nothing new about international chess anon.

Interesting articles though, thanks for pointing them out.

Merceron said...

Asia tanked today and have put some shorts on with fairly close limits. Knowing my luck the S&P will bounce a little after the big drop yesterday.

CityUnslicker said...

Budgie - I sold MXP at a big loss yesterday, the warrants are wrecking the company. PPA will come good but I sold on the last spike and was going to go back in this week at .75 but am now gonna see what happens today and tomorrow. Still PPA is going to be fine as the quarry re-opens any day now.

I am holding HOIL at a loss, EMED at a good gain (in at 7.6 average). RPT I think is ok too. Just sell if you need the money anytime soon!

roym said...

funny, at the moment everything is green! as one of my holdings is rbs im amazed!

Merceron said...

That hurt.