Back To (Bond) School
There are some things you can (normally) be sure will not happen. For instance, a hurricane in October 1987, rising bond yields leading to a stock market crash, or a Reform government. You could also have been sure that the Labour government would never allow fresh North Sea oil and gas exploration / production. But according to the Financial Times this weekend, the latter is going to happen. On the face of it this is good news. However, gas revenue and energy security is more important than Net Zero, things must be bad. Just as well as Argentina seems primed to take the massive reserves around the Falklands.
Indeed, we have also been warned by the Chancellor John Healey that he is going to serve up a tough Budget. Presumably, this will add to the £66bn in extra taxes delivered since Labour came to power. That said, taxing your way to prosperity may be a thing, depending on whose statistics you believe. The shocker remains that we were paying out £330bn in taxes to pay for £330bn to the welfare state, as well as those less fortunate than ourselves. The problem is that in this day and age the more you complain about an issue, the more those in charge of it double down on it. Perhaps if we all said everything was fine and dandy and we wanted more tax, regulation and migration, it might stop. Just an idea.
Investors On Social Media
There is little doubt than in the 25 years or so that I have been writing about the stock market and trying to highlight the next ten bagger, the lay of the land has changed markedly. The area used to be dominated by financial journalists from the mainstream media. Then it went onto the bloggers, who were essentially doing the same as our friends in Shares Magazine and the Investors Chronicle. However, in the tougher world and markets of the 2020s, it would appear that we have cut out the middle men, and want to source our ideas from those who are actually trading / investing, and have a track record of success. I could name names, but I think this is a good development, especially given the way that say the top five on X that I follow really know their onions. I know some of them personally, and the rest I can tell from the way they write / tweet that they are the real deal. Indeed, it is tempting just to copy trade them.
That said, I have seen in the many of the big winners of the year to date, such as GCM Resources (GCM), and Kendrick (KEN) that just with charting techniques they have been spotted early, sometimes earlier than the social media influencers who work largely on a fundamental basis. For instance, Tungsten West (TUN) and Strategic Minerals (SML) emerged from bear to bull last autumn, with the classic consolidation above rising 50 day moving averages. The turnaround in East Star (EST) happened in November with a similar set up. Thruvison (THRU) broke its main resistance at 1p last month and never looked back or gave a reason to be bearish. Kistos (KIST) gapped up through a rising 200 day moving average in December near 180p and now at 300p has stayed above its 200 day line at 247p currently ever since.
What is interesting is that despite all this decent coverage, no one has ever said “Zak, you are a charting genius.” There are at least a couple of reasons for this. The first is that these days do not say things like that, let alone to me. The second is that calls are all well and good, but people want to see money made out of them, preferably by them!
Another aspect with charting is that there are simply too many stocks covered, and people will naturally only remember the bad calls, not the good ones. This is even if stop loss levels are shouted from the rooftops. To this end after a quarter of a century I am going to focus on narrowing the coverage universe and only looking for the best of the best. Let’s see how it goes.
Milestone Birthday
There seem to be a lot of 60th anniversaries this year. For instance, since England won the World Cup, The Beatles album, Revolver, and even Star Trek. For me though, these all pale into insignificance as compared to my own 60th on Monday 7th September. This time last year I was looking forward to it. However, apart from the miseries of boarding school, I can say that this has been one of the most difficult years of the 60. One can only hope that the stone has finally hit the bottom of the well. At least the financial markets keep on going as a never ending distraction.
