4th February 2000
This is quite a long article and details the notes/actions from our meeting last weekend, what's happened this week and a few other things.... Unfortunately I have left the minutes of the meeting at home but wanted to get this out to you all today, so the minutes are from memory.
Minutes
We each discussed various shares we felt would be good buying and the
strategy we should adopt. We voted to buy £400 of Digital Animation Group
and possibly £400 of Oxygen shares when they opened on Friday, IF the
conditions looked good for them and they didn't open too highly.
We also agreed to monitor some shares - Telewest, Vodafone, BT, and Centrica Action on me: I agreed to look into registering us for new issue information. Resolution: This can be achieved by going to www.issuesdirect.com and registering your email address. They will then email you with any new issues and invite you to look online at the prospectus and download an application form. They have a lot of Internet companies in the pipeline... However you can't usually buy shares for clubs, but it may be of interest to us individually.
Action on me: update the website with our new shares and the ones we are monitoring Resolution: I have emailed Yahoo! about the bug in their software that doesn't allow us to view our portfolio correctly (see noted further below)
Action on Alistair: looking at buying foreign shares/unit trusts The next meeting was agreed for 15th April at my house (I will send map/details in due course).
Happenings
The markets were in volatile mood this week. On Wednesday BT crashed
20% so we took it as an opportunity to by. As I write, these have risen
by 43p/4.4% which is nice. We also bought in some Digital Animation Group
as agreed which have risen by 108p/41% in the last 2 days(!), which is
also nice.
Looks like we're beginning to make some good decisions! Vodafone has dipped back, wiping off yesterday's gains and Telewest is up and down more times than a whore's knickers (sorry, slipping into Jim mode there). We took advantage of Vodafone's weakened position by voting and agreeing to buy them - 110 shares @ 346.5p
Other Points
Boots. Yep, a horrible share to buy. However, despite their massive losses,
I calculate that EACH PERSON has only lost about £20 of their money in
the Boots fiasco. I know it's bad to sell at a loss, but if we can use
the money for a hot tip and MORE THAN MAKE UP THE LOSS, then it may be
worth it.
I recommend we wait till they go up a bit (600p? we'd only make a tenner loss each then) and then stabilise again, and then sell them. What do you all think? Let's have a vote - go to the Yahoo! Club - http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/bradfordgraduates - and vote on the message board there - just reply to my message with your vote. Personally I'm happy to go with the majority, whichever way you all think...
Talking of the Yahoo! club, I've emailed them to have a look into the bug there that stops our portfolio being displayed - will update our shares as soon as they fix it. I think we'll use this as our main portfolio page instead as it shows so much information/news etc, etc and is all real-time...
Club a dministration
I was talking to a friend of mine who is also in a share club and he was
telling me some of the things they do there... They use a spreadsheet
program (the one advertised in Shares for £35) that converts all the club's
assets into units. Members then own a certain number of units, so when
they want to withdraw/input some money, they can do with ease of calculation
and without the necessity of selling everyone's shares (most unit trusts
work this way too).
I have recently setup a DLJ Direct online account, which Big Jim also uses and they are pretty good, including the promotion of the first month's trading for free. Additionally, they offer accounts for share clubs and also allow to deal in US shares for a reasonable price, similar to their UK prices; 1%/£15. I'm sure we all appreciate Jaymz's hard work in setting the club up, and up to now we haven't had the need for either of these changes. However, maybe these are things to think of for the future?
Share tip
My recommendation/watched stock at the mo is MultiMedia Corporation, who
in turn own a percentage of BATM Advanced Communications, and it is BATM
we are really interested in (but using MTD's part ownership as a cheap
entry point). BATM make some of the parts for routers (I'm sure Big Jim
can come up with some more info here?) that Cisco make. Cisco has valued
BATM at £100 per share (currently around £48). While BATM are pretty pricey
to buy, we could get in there by buying some MTD shares.... Let me know
what you think/do your own research/see what Big Jim, knows about them.....
'tis all for now, Brad.
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