I know I blogged about it recently but one of my mates had some success with Binary Options yesterday so I thought I'd add his feedback here so that you can make your own decisions.
He basically elected to use the Justrade.com platform and he committed 300 bucks. In two hours of trading he managed to turn it into R670 so he's pretty pleased with it. In terms of the stocks he traded he had REM, FSR and ASA
Apparently he got very lucky in the auction though with a lot of the profits coming from FSR in a last minute trade which made his main profits.
His main concern though was there were insufficient market participants and basically he scalped the market maker at the end. Hopefully this will change as the offering goes along...
... heck maybe I'll even sign up for them one of these days.
He did grumble that the contracts were dated a little too far in advance for such an illiquid market - i.e. the strikes were too far out to generate trade in them - think he said they were priced a week in advance - but a nice profit meant he wasn't moaning too much... plus I think he said the trades were something ridiculous like R1.50 a match which seems really cheap - but if it floats your boat then I guess you can take it...
Anyway that's my public service announcement for the day....
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
SW
It's Friday and I thought I would stir the pot a pit... On one of the trading boards one of the posters posted a graph of the Smith & Wesson share price since November 2008...
The share has moved from US$1.50 to US$3.66 (yesterday).
Is this a hint that people are stocking up on guns since the financial crisis started to bite?
The share has moved from US$1.50 to US$3.66 (yesterday).
Is this a hint that people are stocking up on guns since the financial crisis started to bite?
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Shopping list
A bit of income is coming into my account again at the end of this month and I'm going to be using some of that cash to add some more shares to my portfolio.
As things stand at the moment, I'll be adding the following shares
PSG: Jannie Mouton continues to buy up these shares left, right and centre. I've previously blogged on why I think PSG remains a good buy and Mouton has been good at returning value to shareholders so I'm going to rely on his judgement here.
Capitec: As far as banking offerings going, Capitec remains one of the most exciting in the sector from a growth perspective. At a time when consumers are looking for the most cost-effective offerings around, Capitec would fit the bill and I wouldn't be surprised if they pick up customers in these tough times.
Altron Preference shares: I indicated in previous posts that I think preference shares are going to be a handy asset class in the coming months and combined with the demand for power related projects, I think it makes sense to add some of the Altron Prefs to the ordinary underlying shares in the portfolio as well.
Growthpoint: Income remains key to growing my portfolio and an investment in a blue chip property offering like Growthpoint will hopefully boost this aspect of my portfolio.
Milkworx: My cheap and nasty turnaround punt. I promised myself I would add a few more of these at 3c so I would be able to participate further in the rights issue.
Beige: Again I've blogged on this company before but my argument was that it trades at a nice discount to NAV and keep tucking a few of them away....
As things stand at the moment, I'll be adding the following shares
PSG: Jannie Mouton continues to buy up these shares left, right and centre. I've previously blogged on why I think PSG remains a good buy and Mouton has been good at returning value to shareholders so I'm going to rely on his judgement here.
Capitec: As far as banking offerings going, Capitec remains one of the most exciting in the sector from a growth perspective. At a time when consumers are looking for the most cost-effective offerings around, Capitec would fit the bill and I wouldn't be surprised if they pick up customers in these tough times.
Altron Preference shares: I indicated in previous posts that I think preference shares are going to be a handy asset class in the coming months and combined with the demand for power related projects, I think it makes sense to add some of the Altron Prefs to the ordinary underlying shares in the portfolio as well.
Growthpoint: Income remains key to growing my portfolio and an investment in a blue chip property offering like Growthpoint will hopefully boost this aspect of my portfolio.
Milkworx: My cheap and nasty turnaround punt. I promised myself I would add a few more of these at 3c so I would be able to participate further in the rights issue.
Beige: Again I've blogged on this company before but my argument was that it trades at a nice discount to NAV and keep tucking a few of them away....
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Asian Currencies
A while back we blogged on the subject of the dollar and whether Asian currencies such as the Singapore dollar were in line to become increasingly important in the global economic picture.
I picked up this story off Bloomberg:
Asia Agrees on Expanded $120 Billion Currency Pool
Japan, China, South Korea and 10 Southeast Asian nations agreed to form a $120 billion pool of foreign-exchange reserves that can be used by countries to defend their currencies amid the deepening global recession.
Read the complete article here...
The US has been so busy trying to stimulate its own local economy that it hasn't been able to defend its dollar and I'm wondering if this isn't a hint that w're one step closer to seeing the dollar replace.
I picked up this story off Bloomberg:
Asia Agrees on Expanded $120 Billion Currency Pool
Japan, China, South Korea and 10 Southeast Asian nations agreed to form a $120 billion pool of foreign-exchange reserves that can be used by countries to defend their currencies amid the deepening global recession.
Read the complete article here...
The US has been so busy trying to stimulate its own local economy that it hasn't been able to defend its dollar and I'm wondering if this isn't a hint that w're one step closer to seeing the dollar replace.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
US$1000 gold
US$1000 gold - fanbloodytastic!
Well sort of.... South Africans have always had an affinity with gold and when it starts hitting records, the gold bugs start jabbering.
Considering that the mining industry in general is down in the doldrums, a surging gold price may help to stave off some of the unemployment we could be facing in the next few months
Yesterday gold hit US$1007 an ounce before retreating to US$993 in US trade... There has also been a bit of a decoupling with the rand weakening while the gold price is going up which is contrary to recent history where the rand has strengthened when gold has gone up.
While it is great for the gold miners - As we've warned before on this blog - when gold spikes it has tended to pre-empt further equity market sell-offs... gonna be interesting to see what happens here and how the gold shares end up reacting.
Well sort of.... South Africans have always had an affinity with gold and when it starts hitting records, the gold bugs start jabbering.
Considering that the mining industry in general is down in the doldrums, a surging gold price may help to stave off some of the unemployment we could be facing in the next few months
Yesterday gold hit US$1007 an ounce before retreating to US$993 in US trade... There has also been a bit of a decoupling with the rand weakening while the gold price is going up which is contrary to recent history where the rand has strengthened when gold has gone up.
While it is great for the gold miners - As we've warned before on this blog - when gold spikes it has tended to pre-empt further equity market sell-offs... gonna be interesting to see what happens here and how the gold shares end up reacting.
Friday, February 20, 2009
It's a slaughterhouse...
Thursday and Friday were just a sea of red on the JSE... Before I get into the reasons and try and pick my way through the carnage, I thought I should post the following picture to try and put some sense of humour into the story:
I think that's the closest I could come to Mr Market giving you the middle finger if you were tempted to go long.
Friday saw our markets rocked by some shocking news from Anglo American as they announced another 9000 job cuts and declined to pay a dividend. Ferronews.com has more info. The miner was down over 15% and some serious questions are going to be asked about the amount of debt the company is carrying... Don't be surprised if this isn't the last bad news to come into the market from this company.
On the financials side, Old Mutual got caned again and between Thursday and Friday they came down over 16%. The company managed to recover a couple of percent late in the day but it was really one way traffic. I remember calling Old Mutual as a R5 company and sure enough we got down to the R5.60 level so I think I'll take that one....
Basically this is how the indexes played out on Friday:
ALL SHARE 19403 -3.28 %
TOP 40 17464 -3.41 %
INDUSTRIAL 14800 -3.31 %
FINANCIAL 4826 -5.15 %
GOLD 2906 1.59 %
The US didn't get any better and gold spent a lot of US time above the $1000 an ounce levels. Remember I'm looking at levels of around 6500 - 6800 on the Dow in the next few months before I expect selling pressure to abate.
The Dow closed 100 points down at 7365 but had been down around the 7230 level...
Warning
Rumour mongering isn't really my thing but I think that there are some investors out there who will try and take some high risk positions simply because "Things can't go any lower..."
We are in a really bad economic situation at the moment - don't take unnecessary high risk positions that you don't need to take.
Two companies in particular I'd warn to steer clear of.
IFCA - I noticed the company traded down from 10c to 1c before somebody came into the market and bought 100 shares at 1c to boost it back to a 10c share.... steer clear
Super Group - I've been hearing some very bad things about this business beyond what is in the press and I believe an asset sale is on the cards. Basically their financial wellbeing sits with a banker deciding whether or not to process a high risk loan and we know what the lending environment is like at the moment.
I think that's the closest I could come to Mr Market giving you the middle finger if you were tempted to go long.Friday saw our markets rocked by some shocking news from Anglo American as they announced another 9000 job cuts and declined to pay a dividend. Ferronews.com has more info. The miner was down over 15% and some serious questions are going to be asked about the amount of debt the company is carrying... Don't be surprised if this isn't the last bad news to come into the market from this company.
On the financials side, Old Mutual got caned again and between Thursday and Friday they came down over 16%. The company managed to recover a couple of percent late in the day but it was really one way traffic. I remember calling Old Mutual as a R5 company and sure enough we got down to the R5.60 level so I think I'll take that one....
Basically this is how the indexes played out on Friday:
ALL SHARE 19403 -3.28 %
TOP 40 17464 -3.41 %
INDUSTRIAL 14800 -3.31 %
FINANCIAL 4826 -5.15 %
GOLD 2906 1.59 %
The US didn't get any better and gold spent a lot of US time above the $1000 an ounce levels. Remember I'm looking at levels of around 6500 - 6800 on the Dow in the next few months before I expect selling pressure to abate.
The Dow closed 100 points down at 7365 but had been down around the 7230 level...
Warning
Rumour mongering isn't really my thing but I think that there are some investors out there who will try and take some high risk positions simply because "Things can't go any lower..."
We are in a really bad economic situation at the moment - don't take unnecessary high risk positions that you don't need to take.
Two companies in particular I'd warn to steer clear of.
IFCA - I noticed the company traded down from 10c to 1c before somebody came into the market and bought 100 shares at 1c to boost it back to a 10c share.... steer clear
Super Group - I've been hearing some very bad things about this business beyond what is in the press and I believe an asset sale is on the cards. Basically their financial wellbeing sits with a banker deciding whether or not to process a high risk loan and we know what the lending environment is like at the moment.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Business Connexion - Value play
It is not a share that appears on my shopping list but I was scanning through a couple of analyst reports recently and I've seen its name mentioned a couple of times - Business Connexion (BCX).
BCX is basically an IT services firm that is involved in systems integration. From what I can work out they do things like SAP installations, outsourcing of IT functions etc etc. They've got a number of blue chip clients like the mines, Sasol and some nice government contracts as well.
The reason that they have stood out for analysts as a potential value play is their attractiveness as an acquisition target. They are one of the few SA listed tech companies that provide a strong dividend yield and they are operating on an undemanding PE ratio of less than 10 times historical earnings.
On top of this the share is trading at a deep discount to its Net Asset Value (NAV). Currently the share is trading around R3.60... NAV when the company recently reported was around R5.20... Definately meaningful.
Obviously NAV can be something of a moving target and the assets are only worth what somebody is prepared to pay for them, but I think this bears looking at closer...
BCX is basically an IT services firm that is involved in systems integration. From what I can work out they do things like SAP installations, outsourcing of IT functions etc etc. They've got a number of blue chip clients like the mines, Sasol and some nice government contracts as well.The reason that they have stood out for analysts as a potential value play is their attractiveness as an acquisition target. They are one of the few SA listed tech companies that provide a strong dividend yield and they are operating on an undemanding PE ratio of less than 10 times historical earnings.
On top of this the share is trading at a deep discount to its Net Asset Value (NAV). Currently the share is trading around R3.60... NAV when the company recently reported was around R5.20... Definately meaningful.
Obviously NAV can be something of a moving target and the assets are only worth what somebody is prepared to pay for them, but I think this bears looking at closer...
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