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Fleccy, whether you need the money or not is not the point, i don't need it either as i have own my own home and a comfortable lifestyle, but i don't think anyone here is interested, the reason for investing in the stock market is to try and get a better return than you can get in a bank or building society, if you lose more money on your capital than you get back in dividends then it's obviously not working, just about everyone who's invested here has lost money and the longer they've been invested the more they have lost, can it get better and if so by how much, we will have to wait and see, this truly has been a dog of an investment, but like other longer term holders i'm hoping i can reduce some of my losses here, hopefully we will see some improvement this year
Well Rob investors have a choice, they can either sell up and invest a different stock they think will do better, sell up and give up accepting a loss to their capital, or top up and average down. Personally I've decided to top up and average down, whether or not that's the correct decision only time will tell. I know people who've invested and panicked when the price dropped, selling out and turning a paper loss into a capital loss. The reason I choose the companies I do, is because they pay dividends that can be reinvested should the price drop, if the dividends are subsequently suspended or stopped, well I cross that bridge when it happens. There's only two events that matter when you're looking to invest, they are the price you buy at and the price you sell at, anything in between is just noise.
Fleccy, you left out the investor choice to simply HOLD and use the time in the market approach.
Robleo
Fleccy takes next to n notice of anyone except himself...he prefers to be his own company analyst and financial advisor and is quite happy to sit on paper losses for 10 years if need be .and would see any stock market crash as just "noise"
He believes that no matter what goes on in the big wide world that the likes of BT or VOD may operate in
...everything will work out well in the end
It is one way to look at it all and perfectly fine to do so , if anyone wishes
I can't fault anything you've just posted Poker, you're pretty much spot on.
Pokerchips. A very good post from you about fleccy, & exactly how I feel, but based on fleccy's response, you clearly have a far better way of putting it than I do, so thanks for that.
There are a couple of reasons I have faith in BT and Vodafone; One is that the Telecom sector has been trashed for years and is overdue a different narrative, the other reason is the persistent trashing of UK stocks over the same period, also overdue a change of narrative. From recent articles I believe the Government are starting to view UK stock valuations as a serious issue and will start looking at ways to turn this around. I suspect there'll be some sort of carrot and stick approach, probably centered around tax benefits and allowances. If I was in Government I'd immediately end the right to hold foreign stocks in ISA's and make them available for UK listed stocks only. There are also changes they could make to encourage UK based investment and pension funds to invest in FTSE stocks. I don't see why any UK based investor should receive tax benefits for investing in Foreign markets.
As far as my opinion's concerned, I just tell it the way I see it and present arguments reflecting my opinion, and if I get something wrong I'll admit it and make corrections as necessary.
I even received criticism after I've gone to the effort of producing charts detailing Vodafone's debt maturity, and reduction in Bond debt over time if debt repaid without refinancing; You just can't please some people.
Fleccy
"many" people here just watch the share price squiggle on the page ..they don't get very involved in accounts, charts, debt repayments etc ... ...they just buy and follow whether the price goes up or down ..and call the CEO useless if they lose money !!
Interest rates at the moment make it less risk to invest in other asset classes than shares ..or even bonds ... and all the market is ..is relating risk to reward ... not valuing assets etc ... UK is more risk adverse I think than the US ...the US tends to realise more time is needed to grow a business
plus..there isn't the leverage right now to pump more borrowed money into the markets ....
I do get the impression that the Swiss, French, German Investment banks have been particularly negative towards UK shares with their CFD shorts and sells
London though has become a trading centre - especially during harder times ..... shorter term price cycles
Interesting what the taxes the Govt receive from the City currently are.... that tends to bring change if they lose tax revenue !!
the US has a lot of money of course .... the Golden 7 in the SP500 seem merely as car parks to park cash whilst wondering what else to do with it ...but take those 7 out and the SP500 performance hasn't been so great either ...
Another day with huge amounts of trades going through something must be cooking...atb
The imminent approval of a US spot ETF is currently sucking all the air out of the room, CNBC seem to be talking about it every time I've looked in today. I've taken a long hard look at Bitcoin and I just don't understand why any sensible person would invest in it. Poker the reason I'm mentioning this is because I'd be interested in your view of Bitcoin and Crypto/DeFi in general.
How does Bitcoin Mining work:
Bitcoin is mined by processing Blocks using ASICS to compete in a race, to find to a Hash lower than or equal to the Target Hash. The large Miners build huge ASIC farms to increase the probability of finding a winning Hash, or smaller Miners join Pools, where all the ASICS in the Pool work together to increase their chance of finding a winning Hash. The Network runs a difficulty algorithm that looks at the number of Blocks processed, and either increases or decreases the difficulty every 2016 Blocks, dependent on the average time taken to reach the 2016 Block difficulty change point; The idea of the difficulty algorithm is to limit the overall speed Blocks are processed, to an average of one Block every 10 minutes; The more Network Hash/processing power used to find a winning Hash, the faster the Network will process the 2016 Blocks causing the difficulty algorithm to lower the Target Hash, making a winning Hash harder to find. Because of the race to find the winning Hash the Proof of Work method requires massive amounts of energy, to power the huge number of ASICS required for the miners compete and win the Bitcoin reward. The transaction space available in one BTC Block is around 1mb, so the Bitcoin network can only process 1mb of transactions every 10 minutes, which is pitifully slow. Each halving comes around approximately every 4 years, and reduces the Bitcoin reward by half for the miners who find the winning Hash, the next halving is due around this April and will reduce the Bitcoin reward to 3.125 Bitcoin per processed Block. The Miners rely on the Bitcoin price to increase with each halving, otherwise the on-grid miners wont be able to cover their operating costs and make a profit. As the BTC reward falls, in the absence of the Bitcoin price increasing, the miners will have to rely on transaction charges to fill any gaps in income.
My view is that Bitcoin is the most hyped, artificial, useless investment the planet has ever seen, so the fact that people plough their hard earned cash into something comparable to the Emperors New Clothes is astounding in my opinion. The vested interest commentators have telegraphed various use cases and narratives to pump the token, with the only remaining one describing it as Digital Gold, more like Digital Fool's Gold if you ask me.
Is it any wonder companies that actually do useful things are down in the dumps in this topsy turvy investment world?
I'm still awaiting a convincing argument supporting any value in Bitcoin, maybe someone on here can set me straight?
Dan, how are them night classes going mate? It would be a strange and boring world if we were all the same and all had the same opinions, i don't mind Fleccy or pokerchips posting charts as long as they don't force me to read them
one thing we all have in common is we want this dam share price to rise, but personally i don't want to wait 10 or 20 years for it to happen, let's hope this year will be a bit kinder to all of us Voders
sack the CEO i say and give their bonuses to me lol
$hitcoin is the biggest scam ever transferring wealth from the haves to not haves.
Dr Varoufakis nailed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JGYpDZixlY
Hi rob. The night classes are going fine, I have progressed from 4 pints of cider in one night to 5. As for this forum? Well what can I say. But as you correctly say, everybody is entitled to there opinion & I have never said, or suggested otherwise. I just don't like graphs, sorry, just my opinion.
Hi Dan, i like the sound of those night classes, think i might join you, one year ago i don't think anyone could have predicted the share price would be where it is today no matter what research or charts they use, and don't think anyone can predict where it will be a year from now either, but each to his own, there are are more question than answers with this one, maybe this will happen or maybe that will happen, sell this merge with that etc,but some people like that sort of thing, so best of luck to anyone if they think they can work it all out
Rob, forget the past, you cant change it. Just look at the future, that is all that matters. Who knows? If you can't be possitive though, just give up & go away, why be negative?? Why?
Dan, saying that's it's disappointing to see this drop so low is not being negative,it's just the reality of how bad it has got, this share does appear to have reached it's bottom and of course i'm thinking and hoping it can improve from here, let's see what this year can bring for Vodafone
Fleccy
Bitcoin is just a gambling speculative asset as far as I can see ....at any moment the whales can sell big amounts and it can drop ..it has a lot of blog,social media rampers merely trying to suck in buyers
I think if you want to get into crypto then you have to fully understand it before doing so, i.e spend a whole week and bookmark blogs and such like to keep up...
For me.. I know insufficient about it and dont feel I want to get involved .... once you buy then you suddenly get sucked into following it
I guess I would only have it as part of a managed fund with a small % of the fund ..managed by others ..I dont want to invest time on it myself
I do think the technology behind it can be useful and I think Ethereum is probably the one I would buy,rather than Bitcoin
I would challenge the view that you forget the past. A companies track record is vital to consider and understand, to be able to take a view on their future.
VOD’s is not great. Have they changed enough to make the future different to the past?
Poker I agree with everything you've said, I believe the US Spot ETF's are going to be used as a vehicle to pump the Bitcoin price in order to bail out over invested Whales. At the moment if the large Whales start selling there isn't enough liquidity to hold up the price, so the solution is probably to pull in new money from pension and investment funds. I just view ETF's as a way of pulling in cash, via the backdoor, from people who'd never knowingly invest in Bitcoin or Crypto themselves.
Ethereum is Proof of Stake so more geared toward centralised finance and control, but I wouldn't buy the Token itself since anyone can create their own Blockchain along similar lines. I can see a uses Proof of Stake Tokens in the DeFi sector, for things like tokenised ticket sales and other similar uses, but I'm not not sure how that translates into monetising Ethereum when alternative Blockchains can be used.
Fleccy
I would think Ethereum is more likely to be here to stay, and receive more development support, whilst some of the alternative blockchains may not
But as I say, I really dont know enough about it all
I'm no expert on Crypto myself; I've just looked at Bitcoin in order to understand the basics and that was enough for me to realise it's all hype. I have no idea how Proof of Stake tokens work, but Blockchains are basically databases with each entry tied to the previous entry, ensuring you can't change existing entries without breaking the entire Blockchain. In the case of Ethereum I believe they use validators who stake their Tokens to allow the creation of new Blocks.
The problem I have with any of these is that anyone can create their own Blockchain, to suit their need and there are alternatives to Ethereum, like Solana. Because Ethereum was designed to apparently run applications from the Blockchain, it's more versatile than Bitcoin. Some of the apps and developments around Crypto are probably really useful, but I don't see value in something that's easily replicated in a different form. Central Banks could create their own Blockchains for CBDC's, or the market makers could create Blockchains for trading commodities, why would they need to use DeFi Tokens when they can just create their own Blockchains and their own Tokens? One more thing, anything DeFi involves having the entire Blockchain on the internet and even though the Chains are currently secure, as Quantum Computers emerge things like store now and decrypt later might become relevant.
BTC is a very handy value store. Easy to hold, easy to transport and a good hedge against the long term fall of the pound. The halving in March should see the start of the next run up over the next few years. ETF is a sideshow, especially for UK residents.
All other crypto, you do have to do alot of thinking and following regarding their eventual use case, and then you still need the use case to work. If you don't want the chase, stay away.