Good morning! Markets in the US and Asia have been fairly well behaved overnight, so we're looking at an open here about level, with the FTSE around 6,551.
On Weds (10 Jul) I mentioned that Mission Marketing (LON:TMMG) looked potentially interesting. It dipped 12% on that day to 23p per share after a mild profits warning, although I still quite liked the look of it on valuation grounds. The price bounced back yesterday to just over 24p, and it is announced this morning that their Executive Chairman has bought 120,000 shares at 24p each, so that's a outlay of £28,800, which is enough to be meaningful in my view.
Generally speaking, any Director purchases under £10k, especially orchestrated ones where several Directors buy at the same time, are counter-productive, since it just looks like they want to push the share price up, but are not prepared to back it with any meaningful amount of money. But £29k is a decent enough slug of dosh to lay out in a small cap, so this one gets a thumbs up from me.
Quintain Estates And Development (LON:QED) announce that their JV to redevelop Greenwich peninsula in London, has secured three positive planning decisions. I gave up on Quintain shares a while back, as it became clear that their projects were so long term (20 years in the case of Greenwich), that it was difficult to see how shareholders would benefit.
Furthermore, I am more convinced than ever that UK house prices are a huge bubble that will inevitably burst when interest rates rise. If you look at mortgage payments relative to incomes, they are currently affordable. However, if you recalculate mortgage repayments at a more normal interest rate, then they become completely unaffordable.
This will inevitably lead to a deluge of sellers, especially "accidental" landlords who thought they were onto a good thing by letting out their old house rather than selling it, and making a big profit on the rent, and assuming that prices would keep going up forever. When interest rates go up, they will begin to feel real pain for the first time, and after a time lag, many of those properties will come on the market. As supply builds, and sellers become more desperate, prices will have…
