The FTSE-100 is up 2.5% today at the time of writing, and my portfolio is up 5.5%. There are several stocks in there that are up more than 20% but the bad news keeps coming so this seems to be more a case of folks picking up stocks that have fallen to very low levels and moving into defensive ones than on any really good news. The impact of the virus in the UK is still growing and business is grinding to a halt.
The bad news today was 1) From Rightmove (RMV) who said “Notably the number of property transactions failing to complete in recent days and likely changes in tenant behaviour following the announcement of the renters’ protections by the government may put further pressure on estate and lettings agents”. They are knocking 75% off their customer invoices for the next few months which will mean a hit of up to £75 million to revenue! Better to have some revenue than have agents cancel seems to be the logic. The share price is down 4%. 2) From Tracsis (TRCS) a provider of services to the rail industry who say: “Given that the situation is changing rapidly, at this point in time it is not possible to accurately quantify the impact on H2 trading and therefore full year expectation”. A lot of their revenue is recurring in nature but they will be impacted by the cancellation of events. The share price is up over 2%, presumably on some relief that it is not as bad a prognostication as many companies are issuing.
I do hold those stocks but one I do not is Next (NXT) the retailer. They have received compliments in the national media about their recent announcement which gave some very detailed forecasts of how they would cope “in extremis”. I still doubt this is a sector to get back into because wages in many sectors of the economy will be depressed which will surely hit retail sales even if they are able to venture back into the shops or shop on-line. When the economic outlook is uncertain, people stop spending money also.
For Sirius Minerals (SRX) shareholders, ShareSoc has issued a very well judged blog post on possible legal claims – see https://www.sharesoc.org/sharesoc-news/sirius-update-9-14-march-2020/ . Regrettably there have been some hotheads who wanted more action and sooner, which was not practical, and some who think ShareSoc is raising false hopes. Neither is the case. As someone who has in the past run shareholder action groups, I have learned that quick actions are neither sensible nor practical. But legal cases for redress are sometimes possible – for example in the case of the Royal Bank of Scotland rights issue in 2008 and the false prospectus. But it can take years to raise funding and reach a conclusion. Persistence is everything in such circumstances. But rushing into legal action, however willing lawyers are to run up fees on a case, is not sensible.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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