gamesinvestor
28 Jun 2017
CFO offloading Not sure if this is significant, but here goes :-20-Feb-17 Sell Christopher Lynch 3,617.88p 6,739 £243,808.9231-May-17 Sell Christopher Lynch 3,108.01p 7,582 £235,649.31His shareholding is deemed to be :-Christopher Lynch 27,412 £863,340.96unless something is wrong here, his sales are a chunky % of his remaining holding.Games
gamesinvestor
25 Jun 2017
Coal biz bidding [link] cash for the RIO coffersGames
JohnGeoff
20 Jun 2017
Re: Resignation of non-executive director - ... I can respond to my own posting - he is one of the four Barclays directors who were today charged with serious fraud by the SPO for offences relating back to 2008. Maybe a good thing he has resigned from RIO
gamesinvestor
20 Jun 2017
Rio spurns GLEN coal offer [link] villify old Trumpy for trying to protect his coal industry - and everyone in America is up in arms, yet the Chinese are in bidding wars for the stuff.Too many perhaps take Trump for a fool because he doesn't want to play the global games run by countries that sign deals and often flout them after the event.Games
JohnGeoff
20 Jun 2017
Resignation of non-executive director - with immediate effect Does anyone know any more about today's news feed that John Varley has resigned? He was the Chairman of the Remuneration Committee and has resigned with immediate effect. The website has already deleted him from their list of directors - maybe today's near 3% fall is related?
gamesinvestor
19 Jun 2017
iron ore forecast [link] at Citi lowered their forecasts for the price of iron ore over the next twelve months, telling clients that lower prices were needed in order for the market to re-balance and in anticipation of waning Chinese growth.Their new forecasts called for an average price of $61 per tonne in 2017 and $50 per tonne between 2018 and 2020.A near-term trough in prices - with spot prices dropping to the low $40s - was possible over the next six to eight months, they said.""Games
Eadwig
15 Jun 2017
Re: Is there any point? Figures out of China today show that borrowing is getting away again, so don't be surprised if there is more tightening there announced soon. You just know that will hit the sector.Don't know much about BLT. Every time I ever started looking into them I came across things I didn't like and stopped bothering.As I've said for a long time, I don't believe oil is coming back anytime soon without some huge global crisis somewhere (middle east). that I mean not going above $60, and always felt it would more naturally be around $45 without OPEC fiddling.GLEN has some exposure but its laughably small, really. They do trade a lot of oil, and its true to say their trading does better when prices are rising (they say). However, they still make money in a falling market too, which is the backup they always have in a depressed commodity market.My reason for sticking with them, as I'm sure you remember. I've been trying to sell tranches of them @299p to trade around a position, but every time they get close, like yesterday, they fall right back again to around my buy price, approx @280p.A bit frustrating, but what can you do?
gamesinvestor
14 Jun 2017
Re: Is there any point? EW -- I unloaded BLT today leaving RIO and GLEN -- both have a big uplift broker target, BLT does not. I offloaded half of GLEN a while back at a price above today's.I wanted to rid BLT first as it seems to lurch from one crisis to the next, has highish debt and has a poor history of management stupidly buying shares back at above intrinsic value.Activisit investor Elliot, is making lots of noise about management and board level reshuffles and I'm not sure if they feel they have a plan to turn around BLT or they are just desperately trying to change something, or anything. Also BLT has exposure to oil and I believe, at least according to reports, that this aspect of BLT's business is poor and not cash generative. Looking at the price of oil today and over the last weeks I think I made a reasonable decision.I think the recent recovery is enough for me as I was well under water and got out at more than a 10% gain over two years - so not a disaster.I'm left with a 1.32% of my wad in RIO-GLEN.Games -- time will tell I guess !!
Eadwig
14 Jun 2017
Re: Is there any point? Games,I've come to the same conclusion. Small cap miners, different matter, risky but potential high returns. The majors, all you're really getting is a bit of diversification in your portfolio, and if you're lucky, a low single figure percent return p.a. over the long term.I'm sticking with a long term position in GLEN (although why they want to buy RIO's coal assets when they were trying to sell their own just a few weeks ago, I do not know, presumably they have a plan). Otherwise, large diversified miners, I just don't see any easy way to make money in them. Or more to the point, there are many more easy ways to make money.Remember too, they're all carrying a premium in their price on the LSE at the moment due to USD earnings. So, unloading while in profit might not be the worst idea in the world.
LK Hyman
14 Jun 2017
Re: Is there any point? Games,"Mining companies spend so much on capex over time that they inherently offer poor returns on investment"I don't think that that's necessarily a reason to avoid miners in general. So long as the world wants to consume minerals there will be money to be made. However the sector will inevitably be volatile, because some mup pet miners will spend the capital but not then generate the returns. That makes it all the more important to do one's research and only invest in high quality miners, of which Rio is one in my opinion.Other sectors, with capex-lite characteristics, will tend to attract competitors more readily than a capex-heavy biznay, which is another reason to allocate a modest bit of one's wad to mining.It's good to see Glencore wanting to buy RIO's Oz coal.LKH on the flybridge miners 5% of wad holding RIO, BLT, ANTO and S35 (the latter reluctantly)
gamesinvestor
14 Jun 2017
Is there any point? Investing in mining companies when you loo at this analysis which highlights the disparity between the effects of different business's Operating Cashflow / Capex.[link] companies spend so much on capex over time that they inherently offer poor returns on investment compared to other capital light businesses.I guess this is why you don't see any mining companies in portfolios held by the likes of Terry Smith, Nick Train etc.Games -- all comments and ideas welcome in response.I have just over 2% of my wad spread across RIO-BLT-GLEN and am wondering if I should dump the lot while they are all in profit and move on?
Eadwig
24 May 2017
Re: India Direct Correction Previous post: "Major miners, at best, your own experiences aside, seem to be single digit return vehicles over the longer term."Should have read:"Major miners, at best, your own experiences aside, seem to be LOW single digit return vehicles over the longer term."
gamesinvestor
24 May 2017
Re: Raising the funny money! "They will have had to pay coupons on bonds which they will no longer have to do when they buy them back."R - Apology, I misread it somewhat -- it's a straight debt reduction as you rightly point out.Games - must have been suffering from brain ache that day
Eadwig
23 May 2017
Re: India Direct Rhigos,Indeed, you've mentioned these figures before. I first bought RIO maybe 10 years ago at around £45.00 or some such, I did make one or two trades around then that made a small amount of profit (I'm talking 5% here and there on a tranche), then it was mostly down hill for years along with the end of the super-cycle.In fact I made the point on this board several years ago now that for years the Chinese Premier(s) had been telling us all that they were aiming to transform their economy from an emerging economy with infrastructure building building on a large scale into a more mature, western style consumer led economy, yet many of us kept averaging down in mining stocks in the belief that somehow demand would continue and prices remain high anyway.The stupidity on my part was fantastic. The Chinese leaders were telling us year after year what they intended to do. The same guys who had turned on the super-cycle were warning they were going to turn it off.I was watching the merger and acquisition activity as people supposedly much better in the know than I were obviously paying no attention either. I had made a ton of money on Joy Global and to a lesser extent on Caterpillar, yet I was fully aware that their sales were dropping and disappointing quarter after quarter and had already pulled out of those bellwethers of the global mining industry.Meanwhile previously uneconomic reserves were being brought on line by the majors, including RIO, as usual about 5-10 years behind the demand cycle, and all were 'buying growth' by taking over other miners. I would guess more than 50% of all that extra production ended up being written off.RIO did a rights issue which I took part in and managed to make quite a nice bit of cash on, but the overall trend was ever downwards from about 2010. I would offer the excuse that I think the picture was slightly confused by the financial crisis, where a big drop off in demand was seen, but recovered quite sharply, but from the peak of that recovery the trend downwards started and is really still only just off the bottom it finally reached. A very steep drop due to the extraordinarily steep upward curve of 'the super-cycle-, which, of course, you caught from 1997, but which I only ever got the tail end of.Confusing the picture further was I was making money hand over fist on gold, and, not entirely deaf to the words of the Chinese, I had invested in FCSS, an investment trust fund focussed on the emerging middle classes in China, but which failed to make money year after year.That was partly due to Adam Bolton, the fund manager with a great track record in the UK behind him, being taken in by accounting practices in Hong Kong that would be considered fraudulent in the UK. He also purposely avoided infrastructure plays, and he included housing in that, which was where most Chinese consumers spent their first wave of wealth.That fund is now doing ok, and retail sales in China continue to put in double-digit growth figures month after month, whereas the fall in infrastructure spend has the general GDP figures down at 6.9% (I think was the latest) which is a bit higher than where the Chinese leadership said they intended to take it while the mining companies were still trying to grab more reserves for ever greater supplies.I've been repeatedly warned about India (and having spent time there, I'm quite prepared to take on board just about anything people say about the economy). However, as the fund figures show, despite hurdles being thrown up constantly against inward investment, the recent debacle (yet internally applauded) of withdrawing certain cash notes from circulation at short notice to catch out many non-tax payers who make up probably the greater part of the economy, and unbelievably stupid *internal* trade barriers, business continues to thrive in many areas, in a chaotic, Indian kind of a way.It wont ever be another China, it is far too chaoti
Rhigos
23 May 2017
Re: India Direct Eadwig, You do not seem to have had much luck trading RIO. I have been invested in RIO since 1997 it was by far my largest share holding for a long time. In Feb 2006 it was 14.5% by value of my total share holding. I have traded RIO 34 times over the years. Cheapest I bought at was 738.5 in 97 and the most I've sold at was 6250 on 16 Apr 2008. I have never sold RIO at a loss. When they were in trouble in Dec 2008 I bought a significant amount of shares at 1075 and a couple of months later sold most of them at nearly double that price. Have made more money out of RIO than any other share I have bought. Wish I could do this well more often.My exposure to India is via VED. At the moment showing a 57% loss on average purchase price. Could be worse, at one time over 70%. Still a significant paper loss of 1.66% of portfolio value. India has regularly failed to perform as well as anticipated. From what I hear though things should improve in a year or so.
