The FTSE

[metalblue]

I once ran a seminar for Lloyds Bank staff. I spoke to one lady who had worked for the bank all her life, as had her husband. They had paid their £250 a month into sharesave accounts for around 10 years or so and the shares they held at one point were worth £250k with a 5% dividend. As the price fell, they held tight as they always had the “it cant fall any further it’s a blue chip bank” - they lost £225k of value during the banking crisis. It was a heartbreaking story as this was a couple who were not managers or anything, just savers who believed in their employer.

Painful story. Especially as they were already long Lloyds risk with their jobs.

 

[west didsblue]

Vanguard do active funds as well, one is managed by Baillie Gifford I believe.
The evidence for what it is worth actually points to active funds on average underperforming indices in down markets as well as up, though obviously some actives always beat the index.

Best to have a mix imo. US index trackers have been great the last few years, UK not so much. As you say though the trick is to find a good active manager and past performance doesn’t always mean they’re going to stay on their game.

 

[Millwallawayveteran1988]

Can't remember who gave the tip on Blackberry but thanks, 160% up.

Even they don’t know why it’s gone up so much !

Painful story. Especially as they were already long Lloyds risk with their jobs.

Yep. The Seminar was for staff being Tuped away from the bank to an outside contractor too! Double blow. It hit so many bank staff that one.

 

[Millwallawayveteran1988]

Best to have a mix imo. US index trackers have been great the last few years, UK not so much. As you say though the trick is to find a good active manager and past performance doesn’t always mean they’re going to stay on their game.

Have to watch index tracking in UK as pre pandemic, the top 10 holdings in the FTSE100 accounted for 45% of the index and Oil and Gas and Banking sectors which were hammered made up 37%.

 

[DenisLawBackHeel74]

Even they don’t know why it’s gone up so much !


Yep. The Seminar was for staff being Tuped away from the bank to an outside contractor too! Double blow. It hit so many bank staff that one.

apparently they don’t know why it’s gone up but I think it’s a mixture of a deal they’ve done with AWS (Amazon Web Services) for tech thought to be concerned with EV’s ....and the more widely publicised deal with Facebook to settle a financial claim.

 

[Skip Donoghue]

I don't know whether this is of any help (or hinderance) to others, but as I'm new to all this, the method I'm using to find some, let's say, interesting companies is as follows. As everybody says, please do you own research, but this seems to be working for me so far:-

1. First up, I invested in NIO, thanks to @SkipDonoghue, and Bushveld thanks to @Bovril on these forums.
2. I Googled "share chat" for NIO and Bushveld to see what was going on with these companies. The site that kept coming up was "Stocktwits".
3. The main issue with "Stocktwits" seems to be that everybody thinks that every stock ticker mentioned is going to make them millionaires, and admittedly 90% of the posts appear to be GIFs or videos of rockets going to the moon. However, in amongst all of this, you do pick up some interesting little asides.
4. For example, if you are looking at NIO on there, people often post comments and tag other stock tickers (a bit like twitter). This was how I found out about the CCIV/Lucid thing and ABML, which both seem to be doing OK and GAXY, which isn't doing OK yet but I'm happy to let my £60 ride and see how it plays out.

I'm not a member on Stocktwits, but it seems to be a useful site to keep an eye on (like I did on Blue Moon Forums for over 10 years before signing up this summer).

Stocktwits is OK if you can manage your way through the rubbish posts and rocket ship GIFs haha

 

[Skip Donoghue]

GameStop is so far disconnected from its fundamentals its crazy

Its turning into nothing more than a ponze scheme as the attack on short sellers and mainly Citron (who need a good kicking to be honest) needs new money constantly to keep the price high and its all dependant on everyone who buys holding to force the SP up(which won't happen)
There will be some poor sods left holding the bag there big time as inexperianced traders pile in thinking they're going to be rich

 

[Skip Donoghue]

Even they don’t know why it’s gone up so much !

I do, its fundamentals are good, it's reinvented itself from mobile phone manufacturer to cyber security (possibly the best in the world) and software company that hold close to 40k patents, which the likes of Facebook have been using for years without permission

their servers are used by most governments throughout the world, they have NSA Aproval, I could go on and on

Add to that the tie in with AWS and the QNX software used in almost everything from cars (175mn worldwide to date) to space x, tie Ins with many of the EV companies

then consider the market cap of some of its competitors and you can see it was only a matter of time before it was woken up

I did plenty of DD on Blackberry and what i found astounded me and I knew it was ready for take off, what I didn't know was when it would, but I would need a crystal ball for that

 

[M18CTID]

I do, its fundamentals are good, it's reinvented itself from mobile phone manufacturer to cyber security (possibly the best in the world) and software company that hold close to 40k patents, which the likes of Facebook have been using for years without permission

their servers are used by most governments throughout the world, they have NSA Aproval, I could go on and on

Add to that the tie in with AWS and the QNX software used in almost everything from cars (175mn worldwide to date) to space x, tie Ins with many of the EV companies

then consider the market cap of some of its competitors and you can see it was only a matter of time before it was woken up

I did plenty of DD on Blackberry and what i found astounded me and I knew it was ready for take off, what I didn't know was when it would, but I would need a crystal ball for that

Is it still worth getting into do you think? Looks like there could still be plenty of potential for it to rise further

 

[AlgarveBlu]

GameStop is so far disconnected from its fundamentals its crazy

Its turning into nothing more than a ponze scheme as the attack on short sellers and mainly Citron (who need a good kicking to be honest) needs new money constantly to keep the price high and its all dependant on everyone who buys holding to force the SP up(which won't happen)
There will be some poor sods left holding the bag there big time as inexperianced traders pile in thinking they're going to be rich

It’s just topped USD 300 on pre trading from an Elon musk tweet! Maybe we should just send Elon all our BM holdings and get him to tweet them out.