Good afternoon. Apologies for me running late today - I've been preoccupied with some very volatile share price movements, on newsflow from 2 of my largest positions - IQE & G4M.

Anyway, the decks are clear now, so I'll spend the rest of the afternoon & early evening writing up on newsflow from: IQE, G4M, EGS, Spectra (reader request), and anything else I have time for.


IQE (LON:IQE)

(at the time of writing, I hold a long position in this share)

This one is now well above our usual market cap limit here of c.£400m, being now valued at a whisker over £1bn, taking into account today's price rise. It's such an interesting company that I hope you will permit me the indulgence of commenting briefly.

I read today's interim results first thing, and was left feeling rather underwhelmed. Adjusted profit before tax for the 6m to 30 Jun 2017 actually fell 5% to £9.6m. That's hardly compatible with a £1bn market cap.

EDIT - here is the link to the investor presentation slides, at the meeting this morning which was confined to just "City analysts and institutions". Everyone else (including me, for the first time ever) was denied entry.

So early doors, the share price plunged from 138p to about 120p. As it's my largest, leveraged position, I was forced to sell some, as a couple of my smaller spread bet accounts had gone onto margin calls.

However, at that point I collected my thoughts, and recalled why I had bought the share in the first place. Namely for the growth potential of multiple new product lines which are coming on stream over the next 2 years. The narrative contained enough red meat on that to satisfy me that holding, and riding out any further price falls, was the right thing to do. Then I did what I often do in situations like this - went back to bed!  I'd made my decision, on a rational basis. So now the main risk would be allowing emotions to take hold, and panic selling if the price fell some more.

The good news is that when I awoke for the second time this morning, the market panic had subsided, and IQE was now up 6p on the day. What caused such huge volatility intra-day? I think it must have been…

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