Small Cap Value Report (Thur 19 Mar 2020) - KETL, DTG, ADBP, MARS, ESC, RTN

Whether the needs of 99% of the population should be sacrificed against the loss of 1% of the population is a very difficult question.

That is a very misleading way of posing the question. True, most young people will not die as a result of Covid-19. But they, and the economy will be affected. 

- Many of them will need hospital care. Letting the infection "let rip" will lead to many younger people not getting the care they will need, for Covid, or other issues.

- There are economic costs to that, staff off sick, health service costs .... Even with no restrictions many younger people will choose to stay off work, or avoid packed pubs rather than risk getting it, even if their chances of death are low.

- Most young people have familes, including older generations, or those with health issues who will be at risk. Losing them, or the risk of it, will not be appreciated by many of those young people.

Pretending this is not a very serious threat to both population and economy is not an option. The actions that have been taken, for example by China, and are beginning to be taken in most parts of Europe, are pretty much unavoidable. But what a good govt can do is the utmost to protect not only businesses and the economy, to allow as rapid a recovery as possible, but the welfare and livelihoods of the all workforce, including the self employed and those on zero hours contracts.

Thanks Michael, I'll pass that along.

And thank you for being so open with your thoughts over the past couple of weeks. I'm sure it has helped a lot of people to know others are out there feeling the same way.

Stepping away for a bit is understandable - there is a life outside of the stock market and away from the computer screen.  So much has happened so quickly, we all have plenty to reflect on right now. 

I Look forward to when you're back!

Cheers,

Jack

davidj99

The bulk (70%+) of a company's intrinsic value lies in the cash-flows it will generate beyond the forecasting period i.e. from three years out to infinity. So to an extent, being unsure about 2020 or 2021's profitability is not a major concern right now.

In the currrent global crisis, what is crucial is short term liquidity. Any companies that are  capable of riding out the current storm will enjoy a huge upside post COVID-19, as the current de-ratings gets reversed.

The Stockopedia database can help here - you can calculate Fixed costs with the available data. These in the first instance can be compared with the available Balance Sheet cash to give an idea of how many months/years a company in question can survive if it's Sales plunge.

Beyond that, you'll need to study the accounts to identify further sources of liquidity (credit lines, scope for sale&leaseback of freeholds, capex deferrals etc)

Hope this helps.

The equivalent saying used to be

Nobody needs a broker in a bull market and no-one wants them in a bear market

This is a great product under normal circumstances....

It can be lonely at the best of times being an investor. At the moment I feel this board alone is worth the subscription…..

Good in theory but we can't built hospitals rapidly like China did, but where are you going to get all trained staff from, I suppose we could import them from Asia? Who knows when this will end, probably before they have built the first new hospital. If everyone is infected how many people will die, 670,000? What if its 1,500,000 is that ok and its not just old people who die, the highest infected people are the ones who are treating patients. These numbers are ok if you are not one of them, I have heard this from young fit people, I'm already Jack, it won't happen to me. Of course if 15% of the over 80s did die then it will reduce welfare and pension costs.
What about all the other critically ill people who may die also because of lack of intensive care availability or will they just not treat Coronavirus patients, is that the plan? I think younger people would soon be squealing if it was affecting their age group.

Your base premise is incorrect.
It isn't tens of thousands, it would be hundreds of thousands. And many in younger cohorts under 70. You can't build the capacity needed in the time scales available. Hugely increased contingency capacity  is a consideration for the reviews into this when the dust is settling.

Low mortality rates around c1% require all those requiring medical treatment to receive it.
Look at Italy - they are experiencing mortality rates approaching 10% in the worst hit regions.
Their health service is overrun (and it has twice the ICU beds as the UK) which means those that would normally recover with intervention are dying. Hence the Chinese experience of very low single digit mortality has risen rapidly.

It is surely a moral question for society but would it not be a better strategy for the long term health of the economy and our social fabric, and the livelihoods of millions of people, to allow the infection to spread to the whole population?

Problem is, what you're advocating is a very dangerous strategy. COVID now looks as though it won't be as dangerous as our worst-case estimates. It looks like things are settling down now.

My thinking is guided by Nassim Taleb, although he'd undoubtedly think I am a cretin.

The problem with extreme improbable events is that you don't know the probability, and you don't know how extreme it will be. "We got away with it this time" is the wrong way of thinking.

The mortality rate for the pneumonic plague was 90-95%, for septicemic plague it was near 100%. (source).

What's the acceptable mortality rate before shutting down the ecoonomy is a good idea, and how do you guarantee that any future even will be within that rate?

It's not an easy question to answer.

Why are the government inflicting this pain on the economic and social fabric of our country when the incremental death rate over and above that from seasonal flu and other health conditions is relatively low (I don't want to get into mortality rates but if we are being told the truth (?) the vast majority of healthy people who get Covid-19 recover without any long term ill effects). 

Voting propensity?

BTW Here is mortality broken out by age (subject to change) cf flu. Death rate is incremental I agree - just it is a large incremental.

What do Stockopedia subscribers who will be losing a large chunk of their investment portfolio and may find retirement a very different proposition than they originally anticipated think about this alternative strategy?

Not lost a large chunk: Mostly stopped out. Dabbled since, with a "value head" on, losing trivial amounts. I think I've learnt not to do this again. Everything changes in time. Part of being a speculator is adapting. It sucks that I'll probably have to work for longer. If I remain with a job. Thats life.

However, once society starts writing off people who are an inconvenience to the majority it starts on a very slippery path. Personally I think other lessons could be learnt from this.

As you say it largely a moral question.

It is an interesting idea, but as has been said above there is no way we could build hospitals as quickly as the Chinese did, and even if we could where are the staff going to come from.

Too many people are confusing the infection rates with the mortality. Yes everyone has a great risk of catching it but as the graph put up by Humourme shows the young do not have much risk of mortality. If it is true that in much London people are ignoring the warnings and carrying on as normal, I wonder in part at least it is because much of it has a young population, who have worked out they aren't at great risk of anything serious so are choosing to carry on as normal. It is said that some people barely know they have it.

I think politics is playing a large part in the response, media exaggerate to make a good sensational story, and keep talking about 'lockdowns' in other countries and people start expecting the same here. Government looks as if it isn't taking it seriously enough unless they do the same, regardless what the science says.

It's very tricky. I'm still uncertain as to how you decide someone died from covid19 and not a combination of factors and how this is reported.

How many deaths or how much risk should we accept?

how will we pay for the current and future protective, fiscal and monetary response?

In 10 or 20 years will the actions seem appropriate and proportional in hindsight?

I know my responses to those questions will be biased towards my circumstances so I'm happy to leave them to more intelligent and informed people. I hope that is what is happening.

Very interesting point. I think there are some big societal questions here not the least of how healthy our approach to death is, as a society? I would like to see people embrace it instead of trying to stay young forever. I believe this mentality would improve peoples' joy of life. But equally to throw in a left fielder, I do believe that the chaos being created will provide our youth with renewed opportunities and equally the decline of flights and pointless travel will give the environment a breather. The question is do we still have the entrepreneurialism of the past? So I see it as an opportunity but just as 2008 rebalanced the picture of power in the world coronovirus will add momentum.

"It will take the economy a generation to recover if it ever does"

I disagree. When recovery comes it will be rapid. There is no economic rationale for your claim, provided that the govt doesn't totally mess up. No doubt they will make some policy mistakes (who wouldn't?) but so far they are showing the ability to learn on the job and change their mind when the evidence is staring them in the face.

Let's be clear. No government is going to let this virus burn through the population once they have understood what that means. It's not going to happen. Whether it's an authoritarian govt or a democracy, they will all make the same choice when confronted with the evidence. Only 3rd world countries where there is no effective government might be different.

The way to tackle the virus is with technology. Technology for testing, contact tracing, drug treatment and ultimately vaccine. So far, believe it or not, the signs from around the world are that we can have a positive impact if we do the right things. But we need a bit of time to make the learnings and roll out the technology. It would be utterly reckless to destroy our chances of doing that.

I am 57 and the biggest impact on me personally is likely to be significant losses on investments I can't sell. Despite that, it's clear to me that the government is now taking appropriate action, and indeed the only course of action that it realistically can do. I believe the people of Wuhan and Lombardy would agree. Certainly my friends in Milan do.

Why are the government inflicting this pain on the economic and social fabric of our country when the incremental death rate over and above that from seasonal flu and other health conditions is relatively low.

Well, the Imperial College estimate of deaths in an unmitigated scenario is over half a million. There is no plausible scenario in which NHS capacity can be scaled up to handle the level of admissions that would imply - the NHS currently has around 6,000 ventilators. There wouldn't be a family in Britain that wouldn't be affected.

So I doubt the government could survive if it allowed that to happen and in any case isn't it a hallmark of a civilised society that we protect the weak and the poor?

Although the fall in many stocks' share prices have been unpredictably precipitous investors need to look at themselves as much as at external factors. Of course, some losses are inevitable in these situations but were people taking on too much risk prior to the crash in the happy delusion that markets can go only one way?

20%, 30% or even 40% falls in markets are not uncommon and usually happen once a decade on average. Should we really be encouraging the government to let thousands of people die in order to save the economy and protect us from our own poor risk management?

The economy always waxes and wanes and the markets were, in patches, significantly overvalued before the crisis hit. Valuing an airline - even one as good as Dart (LON:DTG) - at over 20 times earnings is not sensible - the industry is subject to all sorts of exogenous factors and anyone with a grasp of market history knows that such companies never make good long term investments.

And yes, lots of very good companies have seen precipitous share price falls - but in many cases they are still trading way above 2008 levels and on earnings yields that are - to be polite - optimistic given the current outlook. Where not directly impacted by the pandemic many investors are holding on in the hope they will recover. And they may, if the crisis passes in 3 months, humans are nothing if not myopic. But they may not.

However, we need to look forward, not back. Regret is pointless and as the late but very great Phil Fisher said:

“With the possible exception of the 1960’s there has not been a single decade in which there was not some period of time when the prevailing view was that external influences were so great and so much beyond the control of individual corporate managements that even the wisest common stock investments were foolhardy … Yet every one of these periods created investment opportunities that seemed almost incredible with all the advantages of hindsight”

Stay safe everyone.

timarr

can anyone explain why this is not a bargain at the moment

.........because it has broken 'Support'.

from a Technical Analysis perspective in early and late 2014 it touched 'Resistance' around 299p. Support has become Resistance. Now it is 278 and there is no visible support until 177 which was the Lo of that year.

Volume was relatively high then, 2,5 to 4 million, and it had been relatively low as the price climbed vertically. Now it is back over 2 million as Institutions unload.

Actually now I look closer with a view to buying the low of the day validates this analysis, it dropped between 180 and 190 some hours ago.

A few reasons..

Once coronovirus is resolved, it could be unlikely that the travel industry will be the same as before. Health certification might be required and almost certaiinly travel insurance will be a a lot more expensive.

Also, it's not clear if the average Joe (if they can still aford it) will want to travel if they fear getting ill in a foreign land.

If the coronovirus gives us a melt down then governrments could requistion key transport assets or they might be nationalised. I think that this unlikley - but the market may be pricing these dangers.

From memory - please check my figures... DTG has c.£900m of customer deposits which is included in their 'cash on hand'.  Assume they have to hand this back to customers because summer is cancelled and they are sitting on a lot of debt. TCG technically only had £40m of debt just before it went bust, but over £1bn of net deposits minus payables to hotels. As soon as credit card companies smell blood they withhold payment until the flight/holiday happens (recall FLYB) because other wise they are on the hook. Hence why travel companies unravel so quickly - their are always living off cash deposits from the next season and a hint of trouble means the payments processors starve them of the cash float which is essential to their business model.

Lots of investor expertise being shared here (and everywhere in fact) at the moment, but IMOH the current state of the markets is such that more than ever, one person's bargain is another's bargepole and vice-versa.

The cold, hard truth is none of us know or can predict future outcomes at any time, and given there is no historical precedent for a time of global government interventions of this nature (we are not "at war", nor is this a burst bubble, nor a banking failure) personally I don't see the point in trying to call a top / bottom or otherwise.

What is most important (at least on an investing basis) is understanding one's own risk appetite, wealth position, dependency on market to support livelihood and so on, and use that to determine actions, not collective reasoning.

FWIW my own view on Dart (LON:DTG) is that it is a bargain, and I trebled my position size this morning in the dip which brings my average down to £4.50. My theory is pretty simple on this - this action cost me 0.5% of my (massively depleted) portfolio and it is a gamble that within the next 24months I will see a better return than holding cash in a Marcus 1.35% account. If it does, happy days. If it doesn't, then it will irritate but not cripple me.

Whether that makes it a bargain for the next person is a whole different matter, and I offer no view on that. No trying to boost my ego through posting, just offering an honest view about individual appetite to risk and absorbing losses in wild markets - something it is all too easy to forget in the avalanche of commentary and newsfeed available.

It seems to me that measures like a business rate holiday are designed so as not to remove the jeopardy. When the holiday is over companies still have to good enough to survive long term. In the long term this is a better policy that unlimited support, propping up failing businesses that were already only surviving due to very low interest rates.

Some of the recent comments like 'doing whatever it takes' (which is the right message today) are going to come back to bite them! Every business, sector and special interest group will say they need more help than they get, and any business that fails will be siezed on by the media as showing that the government hasn't helped enough.

I just need to know whether companies will survive or die. If the government is going to provide unlimited support does that remove the jeopardy?

From what perspective - shareholders current ownership of that business? or that buisness in general ? they are two completely different things - and i would say its only the latter that will have any help whatsoever. 

I think the recent extreme share price reactions tell you everything you need to know - take Marstons Marston's (LON:MARS) as an example. Judging by shareprice decline - it's over a 50% expectation that shareholders will be diluted to close to oblivion. It's nil solice from a shareholders point of view if Martsons is still going in 12 months time with private equity or replacement equity taking all or 90% of the future upside. This is where strong balance sheets come in- 90% decline in shareprice then 10 for 1 rights issue then buisness back to where it was will destroy your initial investment almost to the same extent that would have happened had the company gone to the wall. I guess all Boris and most people care about is that Marstons are still in existence in 12 months time employing people - share owners knew the risk they were taking when they bought the shares. I hold shares in Marston's (LON:MARS) - doh. Like any recession the weakest will vanish completely.

Does a sale of the business become more likely?

I would say the forced passing of ownership from current owners to someone else with some deeper pockets or ability to strike a quick deal is highly likely to be commonplace.

It's all guesswork though as to where any of this will end up

My worry with Wey Education (LON:WEY) is that some schools are now teaching online as a 'needs must' and seem to have done so quite easily. This devalues the IP of WEY.

Most of the teachers I know have been configuring Google Class Room for the last few weeks, and assessing the kids who might need help with access. 

Basically most have a budget to buy a few google chrome books (£200 each) which work of the bat with it for the kids who need help.

Off the top of my head without a huge amount thought yet, I would say:

Air travel will recover fairly quickly but perhaps not to the same level, business first and then holiday travel. I think home working will continue at a higher level than pre virus, more video conferencing?. More companies will think about the risk of having the majority of their manufacturing in China (this isn't the first virus that has started out there). I agree on infrastructure projects, if governments have the money to do them, some might be delayed.

Need to give this a lot more thought

How will this affect the business landscape? It's too early to tell in much detail because a huge amount depends on choices taken by the govt. For example, what will they do with airlines such as International Consolidated Airlines SA (LON:IAG) and Easyjet (LON:EZJ) ? They could let them go, on the basis they're not a current priority, or they could make loans, they could inject capital similar to key banks in 2008, or they could let them fall over and then nationalise them, wiping out the shareholders. Who knows?

Personally, I think the following things are a bit clearer:

- many businesses will collapse, particularly smaller ones, but
- the govt will not let the banking system collapse, we wont have a banking crisis in that sense
- we will recover at some stage, with timing dependent on technology to tackle the virus
- when that happens it will be a massive surge with explosive economic growth
- the "undergrowth" will have been cleared, leaving masses of opportunity for new businesses and new investment
- the cyclical businesses with strong balance sheets that have managed to survive will be the major beneficiaries
- this is an ideal business scenario for the likes of Volvere (LON:VLE)
- the surviving banks will return to previous eras of profitability due to higher growth, interest rates and inflation, and a steeper yield curve.

One common operational theme across industries will be that companies will look to diversify their supply chains and workforces. It's not the end of globalisation, in fact I think globalisation will increase to a degree as companies look to give themselves more flexibility. But being robust will be of more importance than before and achieving the lowest unit cost via consolidation will be of less importance than before.

Other than that, I do expect some radical changes, but it's too early to tell which way they'll go.

I wrote a post to try and stop me from doing things in this environment. Not followed my plan fully, but certainly better at it than I was! Apologies for the plug.

https://www.stockopedia.com/content/make-the-s-p-great-again-575213?order=createdAt&sort=desc&mode=unthreaded

On the bright side, at least you sold everything in Feb - better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all (so they say!)

Personally, I have stopped checking my account (am tempted to today, but think that will just be tempting fate!!)

Re books on behavioural investing: James Moniter, Howard Marx, Thinking Fast & Slow and Predictably irrational are good (the latter two are not about markets per se, so nice if you want a break).

I have a couple of books with the hope of gaining some perspective:

Essays of Warren Buffett (nice reading from an eternal optimist and long term investor) and The Rise of Carry (not finished yet, but pretty sure it is going to profess the end of the current financial system at some stage). This creates balance and also has the added benefit, that if it is the end of the financial system as we know it, my losses probably don't matter all that much.

Of course Buffett has seen everything except the Great Depression! No evidence, but I expect defense companies did OK during that time! SUK2 I am sure would have done OK too if it was around.

All the best everyone

Have a look at books about cognitive behaviour therapy. No book will change your behaviour though as only you can do that if you apply the techniques you learn from the book.

If you want to *really* understand why we repeatedly make dumb decisions and forge foolish forecasts you won't do better than to go to the horse's mouth: Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
As a taster, have a look at the presentation I gave at Mello London. https://drive.google.com/file/d/12vPfLQwxjmDNkDgVIlXlTp98peEBQubx/view

The last page has resources including Charlie Munger's masterful and witty talk, The Psychology of Human Misjudgment
https://soundcloud.com/buffettmungerwisdom/charlie-munger-the-psychology
Gotta mention expert Tim Richards AKA timarr or @psyfitec - The Big List of Behavioural Biases -
http://www.psyfitec.com/p/the-big-list-of-behavioral-biases.html

Keep the cash and go gardening for the rest of the year. 

You’re not the only one, I top sliced and too have gone back in too early, and I too should know better that it is better to trade with extreme patience, less is more. Quality trade at the right time, not quantity. I think we can all see now clearer this isn’t a quick bounce to a mid point situation.  I’ve struggled with applying my charting discipline from my days intraday trading futures (so long ago now), and have adapted badly to long term holdings in companies, picked because of all the noise around them and not purely on their charts.   This bear has been in the charts for sometime and the bears in the market mocked too many times to be heard. 

No rush everyone, take some space from all the noise, we’re incapable of making good trading decisions at the moment and most importantly keep everyone as well and healthy as you can to allow the hospitals to function as best they can.  

It would be interesting to hear from any chartists out there, How much further this correction has to go?

Lastly and currently most importantly, If you can afford it support others currently trying to make ends meet, and small businesses, share the love ❤️

I am a long term follower of Mark Minervini and once again he has saved me from my own folly.  I read and follow his tweets at least two or three times a day and ignore all other noise in twitterland.

 - He posted on 27/2 that he had gone 100% cash on 24/2. I followed on the same date.

- he has consistently warned since then against bottom fishing  (I ignored this a couple of times and got punished)

- As of today, he still believes there is more pain to come

- He never calls the bottom. His method is to wait for stocks to set up first and then start selectively buying

This may not be to everyone's taste or style. But it worked and works for me. I am "only"  7%  down since the start of the year and I put it down entirely to listening to MM.

For now, I am sitting on my hands and waiting for him to signal the time to selectively buy.

I concur thinking fast and slow is the best book I have read on behavioural psychology. To that I would add Mistakes were made but not by me. Although the title sounds a bit lightweight it's at a similar level of academic rigour as thinking fast/slow

Yes, bryans1311, I know this well. I did much worse in 2008. Tim Richards website and the Kahnemann book (both cited by Mr Contrarian in this thread) are excellent. The Little Book of Behavioural Investing by James Montier (how not to be your own worst enemy) is also good. 

In a nutshell the key is to make decisions when you are not in a panic and only when you are not in a panic. The key to making that possible is to make a plan (when not in a panic) and then action it when needed. This avoids the risk having to make decisions while in panic mode. 

We are hard wired by evolution to take extreme actions (fight / flight / freeze) when in danger. This works well when a tiger is on the prowl and all we need to do is run. It doesn't work as well when facing a screen with a sea of red. This psychological model is called the Window of Tolerance model. Decent write ups of the Window of Tolerance model should be easy to find online

And, the best way to learn is to make a complete b***s up of it once. This is how we really learn. From experience. 

And, down 17% is really not so bad, much better than any of the UK indices and much better than my calamitous 2008 (down 47%)

For me, I am down 13%, largely out of the market with a some money in index short ETFs which (so far) are doing very well. My initial attempts to hedge using a gold ETF did not work at all so I got into the index shorts a bit late. Overall though I am happy with where I am now

My only concern is whether there is a risk that the index short ETFs stop doing what it says on the tin / stop tracking the index (in reverse) or even blow up. I would welcome thoughts from anyone with knowledge on how confident we can be that index short ETFs will do what they say they will do

That's a great post Bryan. I've definitely done that sort of to and fro. Not so much the time, but definitely previously and I bet we all do. 

Well done for selling when you did! I personally ignored the technicals and moved onto the 'hold forever camp' as a slight change to my trading style. Boy did that backfire! I used to be a forex trader and looking back at charts, the stop areas were obvious for most of holdings. But I evolved into value investing, so will update in a few years if it works out!

Agree on Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow...

in terms of trading/investing specific

Mark Douglas wrote two books before his untimely death, they are my go-to re reads on psychology "The Disciplined Trader" and "Trading In the Zone" .. I believe the posthumous publications in his name are not the same quality (according to reviews)

Brett Stennberger's has also written a good few, I found the Psychology of Trading very useful

I'd also include The Art of Execution by Lee Freeman-Shor - he does a great job of profiling by behavioural types .. current markets have probably resulted in a lot of Rabbits in terms of capital  impairment/preservation

Thanks for posting - as you say, it is good to show what a turbulent market does to otherwise half decent investors.

I was not really involved in the turmoil of 2008 but have built a diversified portfolio that I was fairly confident could weather a storm. This is what I had planned to do when the numbers on all started turning red. I was busy at work, trying to not get too worked up and telling myself not to look at the numbers too much. Last weekend, with some time off I did a bit more reading and started to get more worried about the situation. The severity of the shock and both supply and demand sides and the battering the economy going to take in the UK, US, everywhere! Was also seeing borders closing in Europe and started to think about where the money was going to come from to plug all these holes. I think the potential for a health crisis to become a financial crisis are quite high which would in turn become a political/social crisis in a worse case scenario. There is a huge amount of uncertainty out there and the news stream is going to get worse before it gets better.

In any case, with all these thoughts swirling in my head I decided I had to write some things down and quantify my position in terms of probability and risk. In the end, I concluded that 25-30% I was already down could likely become 40-50% and was very unlikely to be the bottom. Additionally, on the other side when news started to turn positive I want to have flexibility to shape a portfolio for the new economy to be able to make up for the losses in a shorter timeframe. Trading costs when your stocks are tanking 10% daily are also negligible. So I sold out of 70% of my portfolio - keeping some bombed out stocks that had reduced to nothing worth selling, RDSA which is now a bargain on 12% divi and a large portion of a Gold ETF (a lonely bit of green left). 

You could say that I've crystalised losses but I see it has stopping the rot that looks set to continue, preserving my total assets and making myself flexible to take advantage of the great opportunities ahead (...oh, I feel much less anxious too!)

Bryans1311 _ I have one thing to say to you, well maybe more than one 

TRADE WITH THE TREND You know it's your friend

TRADE WITH STOP LOSS only move then up on long trades and down on Shorts

I had over 80 open positions before the 25th of Feb. I sold the bottom 10 losses and sold the top 10 winners, the rest were stoped out, except for 5 short positions. I have only traded short since then. I will only short until the market turns up again. Go with the Trend, my friend,

Good luck in the further

I suggest reading William O Neills "How to make money in stocks". His argument is that there are specific technical factors which point to when the market bottom has been reached and is unlikely to drop lower. The main thing to look for is a move of at least 2% on higher volume in one of the major indices 4--7 days from the most recent low. The point s not to go in at the absolute bottom, but to go in once a trend has started. Upward volume is critical because this indicates the start of institutional buying, which will tend support stock prices. The FTSE hit a new low today - it is possible that this is is bottom but O'Neill would reset the clock and wait for thar rule to come into effect.

Like most people I am finding this market very difficult. However, being aware of these rules is really helpful isettling my nerves.

Yes  a brilliant piece of analysis all investors can benefit from reading  not just for the their substantial coverage of the current Covid-19 situation but for the commentary on the long terms prospects of the retail sector. 

Indeed. Looking through some of the announcements today, I think we are finding out some of the classier and well managed companies around in the UK.

Kudos to Quartix Holdings (LON:QTX), Auto Trader (LON:AUTO) (hold), Next (LON:NXT), Up Global Sourcing Holdings (LON:UPGS) and £BBRY (hold) (of the ones I have read) for responsible capitalism and responsible reporting. 

Indeed, while the losses are not pleasant, I think the response from business has been admirable. While I am sure the government is doing its best, I wonder if the country would be in better shape if the Board of Next (LON:NXT) was making these decisions. 

Makes a far cry from the likes of Delta (who spent 96% of Free cash flow on dividends and buybacks) now going to the government and asking for finance as opposed to asking their shareholders for the cash.

That's a hearty effort Mr C, many thanks as ever!

Yes, thank you.

For me, the impressive data point in today's IG Group (LON:IGG) numbers was the Q4 revenue, which has a run-rate 115% higher than Q4 last year.

The leveraged brokers ( IG Group (LON:IGG) , CMC Markets (LON:CMCX) , Plus500 (LON:PLUS) ) are currently rare benefactors of today's global economic crisis.