Small Cap Value Report (Mon 16 Nov 2020) - Paul's Recent Buys, NCYT

15th Nov '20 by Paul Scott

133 comments 16861 reads

This part written by Paul

Good evening (I'm writing this first section on Sunday evening). I promised to follow Jack's comments last week, on what he's actually been buying recently, so somewhat belatedly (with my apologies), here it is.

EDIT: I've put this up on Sunday early evening (in between binge-watching The Crown) to give subscribers some time to digest things at leisure, rather than trying to combine it with the usual 7am deluge of RNSs on Monday morning.

Also, I have to take one of my dogs to a cancer specialist tomorrow, to see if we can save him, so won't have that much time for writing. Also whether we can justify spending money on an elderly dog, or if it would be better spent on saving the lives of pensioners in Zimbabwe via my favourite charity, ZANE. Lots to think about. It should be a simple, logical choice, but it's not when emotions are involved.

We caused chaos in the De Beauvoir Arms N1 just before lockdown 2, when my dog Paddy kept vigorously trying to climb onto the table. I kept shouting at him to get down and this poor human on the nearby table kept jumping out of his skin! Turns out he was called Paddy too, so we had a good laugh and I bought him a drink by way of an apology for fraying his nerves. He thought it was hilarious in the end, so no harm done. Here's my Paddy

This section written by Paul

I promised last week to update you on my recent “buying frenzy”, so here goes, and sorry for the delay. In recent months I’ve been building up positions in a number of shares that looked too depressed, and should benefit from a likely gradual recovery from covid in 2021 (better treatments, testing, and vaccines). However, I suffered heavy losses on these shares (the worst being Revolution Bars (LON:RBG) ) as they fell, and fell, and fell. So my portfolio, which had been looking quite healthy earlier this year, was starting to look sickly again recently.

Pleasingly, I’ve recouped all of my losses from Sept & Oct, in one week, last week, and am now back to a more comfortable level that I was at in August, in terms of portfolio performance..

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timarr

16th Nov '20

correlation between initial viral load & severity of symptoms

Hi Gromley

I believe - but am happy to be corrected - that the evidence for this correlation is uncertain.

A lot of the received truths around the virus seem to be either mediated by "commonsense" - i.e. obviously a higher viral load means you're likely to get a nasty dose - or by wishful thinking- i.e. T-cell immunity means if you've had the disease then you're safe. Broadly, if you look you can find the evidence for whatever you want to prove, and there'll be some scientist concurring with it. Scientists are human too, and prone to all the normal biases - that's why we have peer review.

All I've really learned by doing lots of reading around the topic is that the immune system is really, really complicated and the only way of figuring out how it'll behave under any given condition is to do the research. And, sadly, the research takes far longer than most people have patience.

Lion Tamer

Thanks Timarr and Gromley, very good news (potentially)

sharw

I have never even heard of these before but took up the challenge and found the answer blindingly simple : Golden Prospect Precious Metals Limited has two classes of shares - ordinary shares and subscription shares. This is far too complex for Stocko - it is the same company so must share the same figures. Open these two in adjacent tabs and flick between them - you will see most of the figures are identical:

https://www.stockopedia.com/share-prices/golden-prospect-precious-metals-LON:GPM/

https://www.stockopedia.com/share-prices/golden-prospect-precious-metals-LON:GPSS/

Gromley

I won't be correcting you on that Timarr as far as I can see there has been (inexplicably in my view) very little proper research into the subject - the "challenge group" refer to some (essentially suggestive) evidence on the point but do point out that this would have to be finessed in order to structure challenger trials correctly. This is probably redundant now as imv challenger trials have been pretty much squeezed out of the landscape (at least for now) by the last two weeks announcements,

Probably entirely scurrilous of me to consider, but I cannot help at least speculating as to whether fields of research were somewhat filter on the basis of which may have been easier to monetise.

Hi Timarr & Gromley

I thought I'd seen something somewhere, and finally found it:

"There will also be some people - such as those with a weak immune system - who will not be able to have the vaccine. "

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/exp...

Strangely it is under the heading "Will it offer lasting protection?" However this is the only place I've found it so far, so hopefully it's not true, or at least not as simple as it seems.

Phuntt

There are three key factors that are going to hold back reducing restrictions in the next 6 months:

1) logistics in validating, producing and administrating vaccines (totally understandable)

2) continued risk of overwhelming the NHS (fine but much better dealt with a regionalized response)

3) government inability to admit they may have been wrong/ overreacted or to change course based on new information (totally unacceptable).

The reality is though that our job as investors is to accept the reality of the world the way it is rather than how we would like it to be. Government is simply not set up to deal with a crisis like CV19 (as I think has been amply proven).
While walking the dog this morning I listened to ‘State of the Markets’ a podcast I had almost unsubscribed to as they have interviewed more and more extreme nut jobs over the past few months. However I have to recommend their interview with George Cooper published yesterday - a great interview with a clear thinker detailing the very human issues we are going to have changing course now.

The ship of state turns exceedingly slowly...

Aha - two classes of shares Golden Prospect Precious Metals (LON:GPM) and Golden Prospect Precious Metals (LON:GPSS) - there was a similar issue raised a couple of months ago about another "stock", but I cannot now recall the details.

From the LSE :

GPM is "ORD SHS 0.1P" - essentially shares in the company.

GPSS is "SUB SHS NPV" - I don't profess to know what that means,

When it comes to what LSE market these trade on, the description is "ADMISSION TO TRADING ONLY" - I can't remember the precise distinction now, but I seem to think it means they are tradeable on the LSE, but not formally listed there, When I looked before, I concluded that it was something I did not need to understand!

john2

That's about it - the mRNA vaccines enable the production of a protein which mimics the coronavirus spike, thus encouraging the production of natural antibodies which will attack it.

Tim Harford's programme today contained a lot of thought-provoking information about the new vaccines and the practicalities of administering them.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/p...

Nick Ray

Very much off-topic but I did have a discussion related to the challenger trials (which AFAIK are not going to happen anywhere) observing the apparent correlation between initial viral load & severity of symptoms - did make me wonder if the answer to herd immunity was to expose the least vulnerable to a low load of the actual virus, AFAIK no-one is acting on my genius insight!

Not so very different from the route by which vaccination originally came about.

People used to "innoculate" children with smallpox scabs (variolation) to allow them to get a mild form of smallpox while still very young and able to fight it off more easily. Later on, Jenner noticed that cowpox protected you against smallpox and invented vaccination - which is basically innoculation with cowpox to avoid catching smallpox.

I have wondered myself whether certain groups could be innoculated with a low dose of COVID. Rather famously, Jenner decided to do a "challenger" trial with a young boy and didn't need to get any permissions from any overseeing health bodies! It was a lot easier to do this sort of what-if experiment back in those days!

ken mitchell

Gromley.

GPSS is a Subscription share. In other words it is a warrant. But call them warrants and they are not allowed in ISAs but call them Subscription Shares and they are! There used to be a lot of Subscription Shares and warrants on the UK market, but now there are very few left.

Stockopedia are now aware that the GPSS figures are farcical and I’m hoping they will do the obvious thing and simply remove them all, as errors like this don’t inspire confidence in their figures generally.

Thanks Ken,

Hopefully Stocko will fix this now. I cannot however help thinking that LSE could do SO much more to clarify what "instruments" they are listing - of course if they did this there might be a more level playing field and that is not so good for those living at the top of the hill.

Robert W

Many thanks

dodge1664

17th Nov '20

I reported both of your abusive, unpleasant posts. The only idiotic posts I've seen on this board have come from a toxic minority of Paul Scott fans.

Gromley

Oliver from Stockopedia helpdesk has now looked further in to this. It seems the figures for GPSS are for the share, and the reason the figures for GPSS are different is because of the different share prices for GPM and GPSS. He is finding out how to deal with it. The obvious and quick way would be to remove the GPSS figures pronto. It’s caused me to ponder the reliability of their figures in general. e.g their 2 lists of highest dividend paying shares are also hopelessly wrong.

mojomogoz

This is rather idiotic and provocative post that refers back to a provocative early post. The indignant post (how dare some report me!) then goes on to call other users cowards. I have openly disagreed with Francis here and used similar language to him in the process....I wonder if I get both reported and deleted for daring to do so....I mean he did call people out as coward for not openly disagreeing with his comments so I have been non cowardly...but then a lot of people do like to vote me down and even flag me for not being agreeable enough.

Does Stockopedia wish to empower sanctimonious holier than thou posters to virtual bully people?

If the first rule of fight club is that there are no rules...then we don't need a referee.

But if there is a referee that keeps the rules and so the peace...then the referee must not be biased.

Bravo dodge1664....clearly you are not a coward

yes ken, that chimes with the earlier example I recall seeing.

The issue comes down I believe to the fact that the fundamentals related to the company or "issuer" in LSE parlance, whereas the ticker/epic/stock code is the "instrument" (or instruments) issued by the issuer.

It should all work fine for 'ordinary' shares, but when you've got other odd instruments that may have different rights to company assets, dividends etc it all gets a bit messy.

The solution I think is (1) differentiate between the ordinary shares and other instruments and then (2) for the other instruments either (a) display no fundamentals or (b) go through an unpicking calculation to understand what the specifics are.

Personally I would go for option (a) both because it is simpler and it reduces the potential for misunderstanding - it is probably misleading to include a warrant or 'B Share' in a screener as (for one thing) the downside protection is probably not the same as for the actual equity.

I'll link Oliver into my reply here.

GrahamF

Seems likely that there will always be outliers. Both sycophants and haters. As for the referee, an unenviable task.

At times I find the sycophants very irritating - holier than thou, self-appointed thought police. At times I find the deliberately disingenuous, haters equally frustrating (No reference to any specific person implied or intended!). But then I try to remember that I probably annoy the hell out of other people too, and so try to lighten up a bit.

Old saying, that I recall being repeated to me as a child, which later turned up as a pop song (for those of us slightly longer in the tooth).......It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it....that’s what gets results!

For those not averse to remembering that they’re getting on a bit, a trip down memory lane

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Tain%27t_What_You_Do_(It%27s_the_Way_That_You_Do_It)

And just in case anyone is wondering, it’s the 1982 version that I can recall, not the first recording of 1939!

There really should be an additional Stockopedia medal - for posts managing to reference Bananarama on an investment forum. (I have probably grossly offended all of Fun Boy Three fans out there now . I hope they'll both accept my humble apologies.)

Paul Scott

24th Nov '20

Hi Fishcake,

It's fine, I'm happy to share my positions with people. It's just that generally I hold the same things for a long time, several years typically. So portfolio updates from me would generally just be repetition.

The main reason I did an update here, was that I've found some (I think!) cracking new stocks lately, and thought it would be fun to share them.

I should add that my big positions are long term holds, and for the avoidance of doubt, I NEVER sell into short term price fluctuations which may or may not have been assisted by positive comments from me. To my mind, that is crossing a line, and it's not something I ever do. I'll leave the short term trading to others.

The only exception to that, is if I'm forced out of something because of a margin call, which does happen with depressing regularity, due to my lack of discipline.

Regards, Paul.

Small Cap Value Report (Mon 16 Nov 2020) - Paul's recent buys, NCYT

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