While there is disagreement among the investment experts about whether inflation, stagflation or outright recessionary deflation is on the horizon, there seems to be a consensus that times are going to be tough for a the rest of this year and 2023.
Two weeks ago today at Sharestock, I spoke about Victoria Carpets Plc (VCP) and outlined the reasons why I thought it still had the makings of a good short, despite its fall from £12 in January when I last wrote on it. Although the stock closed yesterday at just 427p, the share price gyrations of the past fortnight underline why I stated that right now might not be a great time to open the short. The shares raced ahead post Sharestock but are now 53p below the share price then.
By my rough calculations the second of Versarien’s (VRS) disastrously expensive death spirals struck with Landstead has come to an end. The good news is that this prevents roughly 25,000 shares being dumped in the market every day. The bad news is that Versarien no longer receives around £100,000 a month from Lanstead. It’s also bad news for the unnamed “agent” who has been trousering a 2.5% cut of the money!
I wrote recently about Fevertree (FEVR) whose shares are now heavily down. I have closed and will not gloat because I was kind of right for the wrong reasons.
Until late 2019 shorting shares in Fevertree (FEVR) was an extremely unsuccessful strategy. Its has been a great British success story: a powerful global brand that in twenty years has conquered all before it with superb marketing of a great product.
In response to some dynamite exposes on Shareprophets about Canadian Overseas Petroleum Limited (COPL), the company released a bizarre RNS in which the sole executive, Arthur Millholland, dismissed his critics, mainly Tom Winnifrith, as snake oil salesmen and expressed “renewed confidence” about the future. Pots and kettles spring to mind here when Millholland’s track record is taken into consideration.
As Q1 limps to a close, it is difficult to see clearly through the fog of war. Mindful, doubtless, of the Covid aftermath - which bottomed almost exactly two years ago and led to a spectacular rally in stocks - investors have returned, and the sell-off seems to have petered out.
Given the hysteria surrounding the situation in Ukraine over the weekend, the falls in Western-listed Russian names were relatively muted with most being down low single digit percentages on Monday. The exception to this appeared to be FTSE 100 constituent Evraz plc (EVR), the steel producer and coal miner with major operations in Russia and Ukraine. The stock which had closed on Friday at 444p opened at 285p, showing a decline of 159p or 35%. The press was quick to latch on to this “carnage”:
These shares are already lower since this article first appeared on the N50 website just yesterday but they look to have much further to fall as, at last, it seems that we might have reached a point where equity fund managers, suddenly fearful rather than greedy, are taking a look at their portfolios to have a closer look at exactly what they hold.
Between Boxing Day and January 3 all of our writers will be serving up their share tips of the year for 2022 - and now a new occassional contributor has stepped up to the plate so that will be 24 tips. Twenty second in our series is a SELL from Lucian Miers. Over to the Bard of the Boleyn...
