Buy troubled Bank of America, the share price goes up 25%, how can Buffett ever lose?

How can you lose as an investor if just the fact that you buy a share makes the market also buy it and sends the price up by 25%.

Such is the case with Warren Buffett and his $5 billion dollar purchase of shares in the struggling Bank of America.

It does send a tremendous message of confidence out to the World that the Worlds greatest analyst is buying big into Banks.

He was buying further into Wells Fargo Bank last week and is said to own 9.5 million shares in them.

Which makes us here at Dunover.com feel a whole lot better because thats exactly where we are. 

Heavily invested in Lloyds and also in RBS and convinced the Banks will recover from these rock bottom prices in the next year or two.

The only doubt in my mind being that Warren Buffet at 80 years old may have just lost his marbles ....

Warren Buffetts Eureka moment in the bath tub:

http://www.dunover.com/investments/index.php?topic=1278.0  

Steve Jobs, Sir Terry Leahy, Alan Parker are gone, where are the stars of the future

If you ever believed 3 individuals were their company than look no further than those above.

Steve Jobs resigns on health grounds and suddenly the supremacy of apple becomes a major doubt.

Sir Terry Leahy leaving Tesco sparks an exodus from his disappointed board members who were aspiring to the job.

Alan Parker turned around Whitbread with a simple but effective strategy built around Costa Coffee and Premier Inns. What hope for them now in the declining leaisure industry.

From an investing point of view I would have considered all 3 of those companies as great investments.

I love my apple Iphone, love shopping at Tesco's and love a trip to Costa Coffee.

However despite all that you feel you are looking for the next Steve Jobs, Terry Leahy and Alan Parker to invest in, not backing those companies that they have now left.

Warren Buffett may be heavily invested in Tesco's but I'm backing away from all 3 geat companies.

Better to spend time searching for the next generation of great businessmen building the great companies of tomorrow.

Any ideas then let me know, the Dunover.com investment fund is waiting for opportunities to invest ............

Dunover.com fund at risk as Lloyds Bank now more donkey than stallion

It’s a big call for Dunover.com investment portfolio as we are invested heavily into a Lloyds Banking Group recovery. More heavily than I would ideally like.

But with the shares falling to 28p we are a victim of circumstances and it will take some balls to get out of this tricky investment situation.

What should we do at Dunover.com then ??

Panic and sell the lot at a big loss.

Sell half and cut our losses and maybe buy back in at a lower price later.

No, none of the above.

We have just bought more at 28p today with what remaining spare cash we currently have.

It’s a conviction purchase.

Whilst the Stock Markets might be shorting Lloyds heavily and forcing the share price down, we still believe Lloyds are in a good solid recovery position.

So we are buying more at bargain prices.

Not a place I would choose to be having a large amount of our portfolio at risk but then I did not choose the share price to go down to 28p either.

So you have to do something at 28p.

If we’ve called it wrong, then we’ll all be in the soup kitchens ………….

20th Aug - DIY Investors giving up ?

Reports that investments in Fund of Funds have reached record levels is a great disappointment. 

Fund of Funds are a classic modern day Financial Services product. You basically pay a fund manager to invest your money for you in another Fund Manager who invests your money for you. So fees can be taken off you twice.

Lined up to sell this concept is the reward of bumper commission to Financial Advisors to push these products to private investors.

Meanwhile performance tracking indicates that in many cases these fund of funds are very poorly performing.

The disappointment is that your average man in the street would still rather go to a Financial Advisor and blindly follow what he says without any research to challenge the advice given.

In fact I'm feeling people generally put more research into buying a TV than they would into investing their pension funds. Yet the cost to them could be significant over a very long period.

A simple tracker fund would be 10 times cheaper than a fund of funds and there is no evidence to suggest that the returns would be any worse.

Cheaper still, buy a few shares yourself across the Footsie 100, then you have a reasonable risk free spread.

At the very least, check out the advice you get from your Financial Advisor before sinking your cash into a black hole.  

Arrogant traders are getting it so wrong here, Buy, Buy Buy Lloyds Bank

This fat bloke whose opinion I have no regard for, came onto BBC news last night declaring to the nation that "the markets" were just not satisfied that politicians were doing enough to stablise the Financial Markets across Europe and America. Hence they would keep selling until they were satisifed.

We really have lost the plot here have we not. Here is me thinking the people running our pension and investment funds would be looking for long term growth opportunities.

That seemed to be the last thing on the mind of this fat, greedy individual as he announced to the nation he was still selling.

Anyway time for us helpless private investors to take advantage here.

If our fat greedy market traders have decided that they want to use their clients money to engage in a willy waving war with Goverments and drive the price of Lloyds Banking Group down to 28p then I can only say thanks very much for that.

I'm currently raising every penny I can to buy Lloyds Banking Group shares at that ridiculously low bargain price.  

Our investment strategy at Dunover.com is laid out here:
http://www.dunover.com/investments/index.php?topic=1234.0

The Women of Whaddon show how to make money whilst being at home

Absolutely brilliant are these ladies from Whaddon, Bucks above.

The women above for various reasons have to be at home and in some cases have had redundancy packages to help set themselves up.

They use the power of the internet to help run their business. The theme being English traditions and passions:
home made fruit cakes
hiring out vintage crockery
retro ice cream van
restoring antique furniture
designing couture wedding dresses
hairdressing/beauty salons

It's a theme all in the UK today nearing retirement or even younger have to face. We can't afford to retire hence we need to be entrepreneurial and take a flexible view towards earning for the future. 

http://www.dunover.com/investments/index.php?topic=1261.0

God luck to them all !!

and you can contact them all as below:

Hayley Southwood vintagescoops.co.uk
Johanna Hehir johanna-hehir.com
Jo Mortimer-Bush myvintageday.co.uk
Samantha Wickham thefabulousfruitcakecompany.co.uk
Sue Dewar couchi-couchichairs.co.uk
Suzy Christie lifestylesalons.com

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-2024177/How-women-village-turning-WI-style-skills-money-making-enterprises.html#ixzz1V0OZZFjL

Bank of Dave and Channel 4 take on Project Merlin and the High Street Giants

Enjoyed listening to a representative of small businesses yesterday as he lampooned the High Street Banks and the Government for starving small businesses of cash.

He stated that Project Merlin to agree loan quota’s was merely an agreement between politicians and the Banks to try and show that everything was fine in the lending sector. It had nothing to do with helping businesses.

30% of small businesses reported that they had applications for loans to grow their business turned down.

A higher percentage which I can’t remember clearly stated that their business growth plans were shelved because they could not get funding.

Somewhat astonishing when you consider we are desperate to climb out of recession right now.

So not only did the greed of the Banking community bring the British economy to it’s knees it is also now strangling the recovery by their desperate desire to maintain their own profits and bonuses at the exclusion of everyone else.

But along then comes Bank of Dave …

Channel 4 have commissioned a tv series to be filmed spring 2012 to follow millionaire entrepreneur and avid Burnley fan David Fishwick trying to take on the Banking giants head on by setting up his own bank to lend to local Lancashire businesses.

Good to know that the British entrepreneurial spirit is not dead and there are still people around who want to do something for others and not just line their own pockets.

Looking forward to watching how he gets on putting Burnley on the map:

http://www.dunover.com/investments/index.php?topic=1258.0        

 

Charles Dickens wake up, there's much to write about in 2011

Good news for executve pensions this week, they are up to an average of £175k per annum. 

Leaders in the Exective Pension club continue to be the stars pictured above, Eric Daniels from Lloyds on £210,000 a year for life. Fred Goodwin from RBS gets £342k a year for life and he's only 53 years old. 

All this while their companies under their stewardship brought the country to it's knees and destroyed their shareholder value. 

Oh and the value of the pension funds they ran too. 

Meanwhile down with the workers. 

Campaigns are ran to reduce public sector pensions down to the poverty levels of private sector workers because it's cheaper that way. 

Annuity rates are slashed meaning workers get even less for their pension pot when they do retire. 

Pension funds, many larger than country economies save all the rewards for themselves and give pathetic returns to pensions investors. 

Then along comes NEST to compulsory enrol workers into these pathetic products. Workers are then encouraged to pay even more of their money into the pathetic pension industry for even longer periods of time. 

The reality of this is that no one can afford to retire anymore. We are all heading for a flexible kind of reirement where we work till we drop and then get our houses taken off us to pay for our retirement homes. 

Enter Charles Dickens, poverty is no longer in the workhouses with the young. 

We needs some stories on the old, the workhouse residents of the future. 

Executive pension scandal:

http://www.dunover.com/investments/index.php?topic=1252.0        

FTSE drops 10% in a week, we are doing some re-alignment at Dunover.com

Call me King Canute if you like but .........

To put this in context. At the bottomof the stock market crash the FTSE dropped to 3,800.

Subsequently it climbed back to 6,000 but this week it has dropped back to now be 5,246.

You have to make a call now as to where the markets go from here.

Given the massive debt issues do you think we are heading back to 3,800.
If yes, then you should be selling out completely and buying back in at the bottom.

What are we doing at Dunover.com

Our large long term recovery holdings in RBS and Lloyds have taken a hammering and currently sit at 28p and 32p respectively. To be worthwhile selling and re-buying you would need them to drop at least a further 10%. Do we think they will go down to 25p and 29p.

Our call is not to panic. We are holding Lloyds and RBS.

The Western World are definately broken but we have changed our investment strategy to invest in Asia driven companies anyway.

So we have sold out of our European driven recovery plays Dixons, French Connection and Premier Foods anyway and sitting on the cash.

Our revised 5 companies to buy into Mulberry, Burberry, ARM, Autonomy, GlaxoSmithKline are all dropping with the stock market at present.

So we are holding onto our sale proceeds for now and wait for the market to steady a bit before buying into our super 5 companies. 

The market ecovery has basically been set back a year this week.

That in my opinion is fair given the debt issues of USA and Europe.

Do I think we are going back to a FTSE of 3800 ??

Answer is no. My view is the markets will be a bit rocky during thin trading in the holiday season and will steady in September when everyone comes back to cheap share prices and hopefully some political solutions to the economic problems.

So we are holding and keeping our nerve but using the opportunity to re-align to our new more heavily Asia based investment strategy.     

Retail Research on the Luxury big sellers at Bicester Village

Well I went to do some research on the Dunover revised investment strategy of investing more fully in Chinese, Indian and Arab spending power.

Meanwhile writing off the heavily in debt American and European economies.

So off we trotted to the luxury goods paradise of Bicester Village.

Sadly I succumbed in the process to buying myself a new leather wallet at Samsonite, such is the power of the spending frenzy that goes on at Bicester Village.

Meanwhile, the research showed a very clear picture of what is hot and what is not in the luxury shopping world..

Unfortuneately though, only a limited number of these companies are available for us to invest in.

We were looking for shops attracting the people who have the big money to spend i.e. Chinese, Arabs, Indians.

Research being done based on the people at the tills of our local Retail outlet, Bicester Village. That being the highest Retail spend per square foot in the world, so a good place to judge. 

Listed in order of volume of customers

Burberry - well established as a Chinese favourite

Prada - iconic Italian brand, established attraction to all

Samsonite - Chinese and everyone else going crazy for their leather suitecases and travel bags

Mulberry - emerging Chinese popularity

Jimmy Choo - all round popularity

Hugo Boss - popular amongst the Chinese

Juicy Couture - as worn by Colleen Rooney, very popular amongst Chinese and emerging Arab taste

Reiss - as worn by Duchess of Cambridge, popular amongst all

Ted Baker - British shoppers only, no Chinese in the store

Superdry - see Ted Baker

The rest, 100/1 outsiders for customer popularity I'm afraid