Originally Posted by Storeman Norman

Originally Posted by Litotes

Originally Posted by Storeman Norman

Some good stuff here.

Anyone found a UK based broker willing to deal in shares listed on foreign exchanges?

I use tdwaterhouse.co.uk at the moment.

Remember the currency risk!

Litotes

Thanks Mr L. However, I am the proud owner of some dodgy Bank of Cyprus gear (no, no, seriously!) and as well as being listed on the thriving Nicosia exchange, I think they're also listed in Athens. Impressed? No, nor am I, unfortunately neither it seems are tdwaterhouse! Any other ideas?

Hell's teeth, SN, that is a tall order. However, after a little bit of due diligence, I found this broker:

Look for the entrance just past the oranges on the right...

and ask for Georgio.

He'll see you right! :D

Litotes

B*lls, it worked in Preview but doesn't work here: try this: www.panoramio.com/photos/original/2322261.jpg.

That doesn't work either: Try Google Images and Nicosia Market!

I am an IT biff!

I was thinking about the whole distinction between speculation and investment. The theory is that unless you bring something really special to the table then you should not be rewarded. Someone who can really understand a set of accounts, and who takes the time to read them, should expect to be able to make a bit of money from that. But just taking a punt shouldn't result in any money - play roulette and in the long run you always lose. Similarly, betting that the stockmarket, or any share, will go up or down might mean that you have phenomenal insight, the product of thousands of hours or work and unusual abilities - but if that is true, and given the power of compound growth, you should be rich by the end of the year. The fact is that the companies can probably make the best bet for everything - IG index know better than anyone else where the FTSE is likely to be in June. Some punters think it will be higher, and some lower. If all the punters bet, bet again, bet again..............ten times through, and you start with 10,000 punters, some will become very rich just through chance, and they can then go on to run courses on how spread betting made them rich. I think the financial markets are probably the last place in the world to try and gain more information than the rest of the world and make money out of it. The bookmakers, and the other punters, are much easier to exploit. Bookies used to never "take a position", they would only "make a book". In other words, if you were smarter than the other punters you could really make money. These days the bookies, on the big events, try to work out what they think the real odds are, and that sets the limit on the odds they are prepared to quote. It can be harder to make money - moron punters move the prices less than they used to. But still the bookies make mistakes. The lost millions a few years ago by quoting two scam artist ex-bookies odds on anyone scoring a hole in one in a major championship. Bookies quoted 100/1, sometimes 1000/1. Real odds 8/1. Bookies get rogered.

So if I was trying to make dough out of speculation I'd become an absolute expert on something the bookies quote on, but isn't such a big area that they have massive teams researching it - undercard boxing, maybe.

[Mind you, the last two years maybe indicates that sometimes at least there are mugs in the financial markets ready to be taken :D ].

you are absolutely correct,

if you completely exposed yourself in the certainty of success you would be extremely rich. there is a limit to how rich you can become in any financial year due to market cap.

There is also a hefty penalty for insider trading hence why "it doesn’t happen" or at least as much as it could.

the financial markets are ideal as there is roughly 2 trillion floating about perpetually therefore the market cap is bigger. Therefore small consistent trades based on sound mechanics rather than prospecting are attainable.

All graph depictions of price movement have a mechanical process based on global speculation. Effectively the market takes 5 steps forward and three back before returning forward (based on the consensus of fair buy/sell value). so in the short term an exploitable pattern occurs.

where the pattern breaks down is when static assets become the basis of an economy (i.e. property) because their 5 steps forward occur over ten years, so the three steps backwards will come in one substantial hit.

if you are really interested, research Elliot Waves (5 steps forward three back), Ballan wrote a good clear book on the subject.

This is also the reason why I stated earlier, that the longer you take a trade position the larger the holding you require.

I use the Elliot wave principle every day. With discipline it is very accurate.

I wouldn't be able to accurately read a set of accounts if I tried. Mathematics and arithmetic have never been a strong point of mine.

That said, my own portfolio is currently up 25%, six months ago it was 48% down. By averaging down and taking some big risks I've been able to play the market quite well.

I've recently(end of March) set up an account for a colleague who wanted to invest 4k. I offered some advice on stock I've been following for a number of years. Call it luck if you want but, the 4 stocks chosen have performed quite well:

Barclays +84%
Partygaming 4.2%
Sainsbury 5%
Vodafone 7.4%

Overall profit (paper profit until cashed in) 1013 quid or 23.35%

Keep an eye out for Partygaming in the next three weeks. Harrah's casino group may make a bid for Partygaming in order to get them back into US online gambling.

Small cap shares which I have an eye on are Ultima Networks and Mercury Recycling, both expected to post a good set of results this month.

please do your own research also, and only invest what you can afford to lose.

Ultima Networks.

http://quote.barchart.com/texpert.as...N.LS&code=BEQM

Composite Indicator on 1st May 2009
Trend Spotter TM Buy

Short Term Indicators
7 Day Average Directional Indicator............... Buy
10 - 8 Day Moving Average Hilo Channel .........Buy
20 Day Moving Average vs Price.....................Buy
20 - 50 Day MACD Oscillator Buy
20 Day Bollinger Bands Buy

********Short Term Indicators Average: 100% - Buy
20-Day Average Volume - 129004

Medium Term Indicators
40 Day Commodity Channel Index............. Buy
50 Day Moving Average vs Price............... Buy
20 - 100 Day MACD Oscillator.................. Buy
50 Day Parabolic Time/Price Buy

*********Medium Term Indicators Average: 100% - Buy
50-Day Average Volume - 101729

Long Term Indicators
60 Day Commodity Channel Index.............. Buy
100 Day Moving Average vs Price ..............Buy
50 - 100 Day MACD Oscillator................... Buy

**********Long Term Indicators Average: 100% - Buy
100-Day Average Volume - 85702

Overall Average: 100% - Buy

Price ........... Support ........ Pivot Point .......... Resistance

2.4000.......... 1.8667 .......... 2.3167 ..............2.7667

My uncle buys AIM shares and I tried to explain to him the importance of bargain size and the spread. He cut me dead, big booming voice - "I'll tell you what I know about shares, son. I buy them and when the price goes up I sell them. Just bought a new Merc".

He's been a lot quieter recently

Originally Posted by fishfingers

I wouldn't be able to accurately read a set of accounts if I tried. Mathematics and arithmetic have never been a strong point of mine.

That said, my own portfolio is currently up 25%, six months ago it was 48% down. By averaging down and taking some big risks I've been able to play the market quite well.

I've recently(end of March) set up an account for a colleague who wanted to invest 4k. I offered some advice on stock I've been following for a number of years. Call it luck if you want but, the 4 stocks chosen have performed quite well:

Barclays +84%
Partygaming 4.2%
Sainsbury 5%
Vodafone 7.4%

Overall profit (paper profit until cashed in) 1013 quid or 23.35%

Keep an eye out for Partygaming in the next three weeks. Harrah's casino group may make a bid for Partygaming in order to get them back into US online gambling.

Small cap shares which I have an eye on are Ultima Networks and Mercury Recycling, both expected to post a good set of results this month.

please do your own research also, and only invest what you can afford to lose.

Ultima Networks.

http://quote.barchart.com/texpert.as...N.LS&code=BEQM

Composite Indicator on 1st May 2009
Trend Spotter TM Buy

Short Term Indicators
7 Day Average Directional Indicator............... Buy
10 - 8 Day Moving Average Hilo Channel .........Buy
20 Day Moving Average vs Price.....................Buy
20 - 50 Day MACD Oscillator Buy
20 Day Bollinger Bands Buy

********Short Term Indicators Average: 100% - Buy
20-Day Average Volume - 129004

Medium Term Indicators
40 Day Commodity Channel Index............. Buy
50 Day Moving Average vs Price............... Buy
20 - 100 Day MACD Oscillator.................. Buy
50 Day Parabolic Time/Price Buy

*********Medium Term Indicators Average: 100% - Buy
50-Day Average Volume - 101729

Long Term Indicators
60 Day Commodity Channel Index.............. Buy
100 Day Moving Average vs Price ..............Buy
50 - 100 Day MACD Oscillator................... Buy

**********Long Term Indicators Average: 100% - Buy
100-Day Average Volume - 85702

Overall Average: 100% - Buy

Price ........... Support ........ Pivot Point .......... Resistance

2.4000.......... 1.8667 .......... 2.3167 ..............2.7667

good bit of info there, though i don’t trust Bollinger’s etc unless you have a lot of room for manoeuvre, as the are historical (though weighted depending on what is going into the market at any given time) and can and do turn against you regularly.

For some reason Fibonacci is an extremely good indicator of retraction, using it with Elliot wave can give you good results.

TFR, thanks for the heads up on the Elliot Wave and Fibonnaci. I've been looking at some examples on Youtube and plan to compare some of my holding over the weekend.

I stumbled on the following a while back, it may be useful to those thinking about investing in shares.

http://www.incademy.com/pages/home.htm?ginPtrCode=10002

On the subject of bank shares - the thing that would worry me is that the world is full of extremely rich and clever people who wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. There's an argument that most banks are completely worthless. RBS is supposedly worth £25bn, but even if you believe that they have £1,000bn in outstanding loans. Imagine you knew a drug dealer who was owed £1,000 from a bunch of junkies, he owed a £1,000 to the gangsters who supplied him with the drugs and he had £25 of his own money to add to the pot and save his legs if the junkies only handed back £975. Junkies hand back less and the dealer is screwed. How safe would you say his legs are?

One way to think about the trade in bank shares is lots of people without too much dough sitting in their houses watching a chart tick up and down, trying to decide in which direction the next move will be, every trade costs a lot and whoever is holding the bomb when the music stops loses the lot. There's a lot of research that men in particular are hard-wired towards "attribution bias" - in other words, they do a lot of work and research, have a system, trade, win, and attribute the success to the work. Get it right three or four times in a row and the temptation to think that the victories are because of the work is nearly irresistible. The problem is especially severe when the risk of something going wrong is low, but the consequences are horrendous. Humans just aren't good at that kind of risk. Everybody knew that Independent Insurance were making money by ignoring long shot risks and therefore underpricing policies, and it worked like magic for years before it all blew up.

Nice story in the FT about the rally in bank shares, and why you should probably sit it out.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9d08661c-4...44feabdc0.html

The FT Personal Finance section on a Saturday and the Investor's Chronicle are full of adverts for fancy trading platforms for those who aren't discouraged. Providing this service seems to be a pretty competitive business. One of the companies seemed to be offering trading the FTSE100 on a 1 point spread.

Originally Posted by gobbyidiot

Nice story in the FT about the rally in bank shares, and why you should probably sit it out.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9d08661c-4...44feabdc0.html

The FT Personal Finance section on a Saturday and the Investor's Chronicle are full of adverts for fancy trading platforms for those who aren't discouraged. Providing this service seems to be a pretty competitive business. One of the companies seemed to be offering trading the FTSE100 on a 1 point spread.

I suspect that those offers are to draw in the punters (aka gamblers) in the hope that they will lose plenty of money in these markets.

Litotes