ASOS have dropped quite significantly in the past week for no particular reason and I view this as the perfect opportunity to invest as I can see them bouncing right back up to the 5.50p mark in the next 2-3 weeks. STRONG BUY!!

sandra

DFD looks interesting but not sure that now is the best time to get in. In a few weeks, I believe the lock in period following float is due to expire which could mean some sellers.

Erring on caution it may be better to leave for a month before buying, assuming a PET holder could ever be cautious.

capa

sandra

have held DFD for quite some time. Currently over 70% paper profit. Less than 80% held outside founders/family. Have heard institutional interest awaiting sales after lock out period expires in December. Am unsure if this will affect the SP downwards or upwards. Anyones opinion welcome. ...Also hold ASOS and PET and am regular reader but not contributor to BB's.

If institutions are being lined up then I would suggest this may mean a temporary dip in price, but overall an increase in liquidity will be a good thing.

capa

Thanks everybody for your comments and opinions.Hilluk please join us on the DFD thread.There are so few contributors over there and we could really use more input.
Eric ...It's really helpful to have your opinion. I tend to rely rather heavily on my gut instincts...nice to have some technical analysis to back it up.
Glad to see ASC sp rebounding. What brought on the rash of sellers today!

sandra

Well, I do try to do the logical analysis bit but looking back on the buys they tend to be an irrational mix of intuitive mind, emotional heart and instinctive gut!

Re ASC sellers: mea culpa! It wos I wot did it with the CFD yesterday at too high a price - wailing and gnashing of teeth! Probably mainly positions being closed for the weekend. I suspect some late so-called sells could have been buys delayed for an hour - not sure whether 25,000 would fall into that category. Going by the sell price matching the buy of an hour earlier.

Oh! must do the figures! See you later!

Eric

ASOS CHALLENGE PORTFOLIO

Still a wait and see week with the portfolio. But we are coming up to some significant movements - hopefully upwards.

company________ EPIC price,p shares shares price_ value_ cap.(m) gain/_ gain on
____________________ buy____ in iss bt.___ 19-Nov 19-Nov________ loss % week %

ASOS____________ ASC 56_____ 67.97__ 8900_ 85.50_ 7609.5 58.11__ 52.68_ 6.21
Broker Network H BNH 77.5___ 15.065_ 6450_ 101.50 6546.8 15.29__ 30.97_ 8.56
Stanelco________ SEO 4.5____ 78.225_ 111000 5.62_ 6238.2 4.40___ 24.89_ 40.50
Civilian Content CCN 16.25__ 41.883_ 30700_ 17.50 5372.5 7.33___ 7.69__ -7.89
Petroceltic Int. PCI 15_____ 484.975 33300_ 16.00 5328.0 77.60__ 6.67__ -1.54
Yoomedia________ YOO 22_____ 125.538 22700_ 23.00 5221.0 28.87__ 4.55__ 0.00
Sterling Energy_ SEY 17.25__ 822.712 29000_ 18.00 5220.0 148.09_ 4.35__ 2.86
Marchpole Hold._ MPH 33.75__ 120.455 14800_ 32.75 4847.0 39.45__ -2.96_ -2.24
cybit holdings__ CYH 1.82___ 988.952 275000 1.70_ 4675.0 16.81__ -6.59_ 0.00
Petrel Resources PET 124.5__ 58.625 4000___ 105.00 4200.0 61.56_ -15.66 -6.67
CFA Capital Gp__ CFP 0.7____ 619___ 714000_ 0.50_ 3570.0 3.10___ -28.57 0.00

total__________________________________________________ 58828.0__ 6.96_ 3.43
Smallcap index__________________________________2691.10 57003.9__ 3.64_ 0.47

ASOS continues to lead the way with good progress again. In fact, 90p has been broken only for the stock to fall back through profit-taking. There has been some dialogue on this column as to how far the share can go. There seems to some agreement between the fundamentals and chartist approaches that the share can reach 140p-150p in first few months of next year. One chartist view puts this as the first of three waves of progress taking the share to 5. A Shares Mg. recommendation in the contect of inflation-proofing with ASC as a desirable Retail share would seem to be taking a similar view.

The mover of the week has been Stanelco. The gloom with the court case has been thrown off with the announcement of a deal with Asda. Given the Walmart relationship that would certainly seem to open up the horizons.

ASC has interims coming up on 29th November: an upgrading from their house brokers from Buy to Overweight is encouraging that a bullish forecast will be forthcoming. BNH report the following day and the price has been moving ahead in anticipation.

Also by the end of November, there is real hope that a major PET win in Iraq will be announced by the Iraqi Oil Ministry, possibly during the procurement Conference early next week: the price could rocket. YOO is still suspended whilst finance is negotiated for a major gaming acquisition with the target much larger than YOO itself; disucssion on the bb expects a price rise to between 30p and 35p and possibly much higher - the reutrn from suspension should also be by the end of November.

Civilian Content, Marchpole and cybit have all failed to carry through good news. Another CYH deal, this time with Sainsbury, has had relatively little reflection in the SP. Shares comments for MPH that "although the group has some strong niche brands the rating is about right". With a prospective PE of 9, try telling that to the bb adherents. CFP continues to languish through the lack of news, despite signs of good trading.

PCI gets a good write-up in Shares. SEY is also included in their Oil and Gas portfolio. Without exception, the shares in the portfolio look good holdings - we are back to the key issue of timing. There is no share in the portfolio that you would not expect to rise, in most cases, significantly over the next year.

Eric

Good work eric. Hope you bought some Toa at 8.5p too pal.. now 10 on the bid.

Don't settle for less than 1.50 on BNH sir ;-)

Asc performing very well over the past month or so. MPH not doing as well as we thought... although time will tell. I bought at 34.5 and sold at 35.5 before I had to settle out of the position... so i pretty much broke even.

Thanks again for the weekly wrap-up. Are your nerves as shot as mine awaiting the PET decision....I expect so as your topping up has kept pace with mine.

legend: Not in BNH but its not because its not a good share but I'm one of those who focus their funds in 4 or 5 shares. Possible I could have a wee flutter over the results: they do seem to move a lot on small demand so if the results are better than expected they could certainly get to 150p.

sandra: Nerves not really frayed at all but I am still really relatively light (about 17% of portfolio). Its like waiting for a sale to come through. You tend to write in the success and its an anti-climax when the sale is confirmed. Obviously, things can fall through at the last minute but you just need to get on with things. Even a PET loss could well be cancelled out with a Pet gain. YOO should be back on-stream this week with a significant rise in sp. You just play your hand and switch if you lose a trick. The other thing is to be ready to react when (not if!) the good news comes - now that really is fun: deciding how much to sell and at what price and where to put the funds.
Better than household budgets - oh, damn: got to complete the business income tax before we go on hols mid December. Now, that is work!

John: bad timing of the CFD buys on Thursday means I am a bit near the limit and I need to be ready to top up the funds; I've learnt that lesson already. But I realise it works both ways. If you have a surplus on current contracts you can invest that as well and really build up the gearing. Do you tend to come in and out of your positions in line with your projections of teh chart movements?

Eric

Eric: Thanks as always for your weekly summary. Very useful and informative.
Like you I may follow a number of companies but limit my stakes to no more than 4. Try unwinding a lot of positions at once if something big breaks!!

As for CFD's, I do exactly what you say and use the charts to come in and out of positions on balance it works well. As we know SP's do not go up in a straight line, so you just have to be patient some times...but it pays in the long run. If a SP gets away from you must follow your own trading rules and tough it out. Essentially you need two brains, one for trading and one for investing! Difficult soemtimes but can be useful as long as you always remember which brain you are using!

Sandra: Re your Debt company, there was a penetrating analysis on WatsHot.com this week (it is not an expensive subscription)...I urge you to read it if you have not already done so. I will check out the chart later and get back to you.

ASOS: Should be a very interesting week as we run up to the announcement. It has recently had a good run...sometimes you see a SP rise on the expectation and fall on the actuals. Exciting.


John

Should indeed be an interesting two weeks from the perpective of share movement.

In my opinion though, the results will tell us very little that we do not know.

I think we can presume that they will come up with a figure of about 80% higher turnover in comparison to last year and a statement that current sales are strong (without many figures for current trading, as they will announce these in January in the Christmas trading update). I'm sure they will mention that the product line expansion has increased rapidly as expected, that registered user numbers are still rising, that the miss sixty products will come on-line soon as will the amazon store-front and that the cash generation is still strong. Other than that I am expecting very little real 'news'.

At best, it would be nice to hear that the soft launch in the US is doing OK, but I don't think there are many sites in the US selling ASOS clothes yet and only expect the launch to really begin once they have the new warehouse facility around summer 2005 and with a real push into the US in time for next Christmas 2005.

I do think the Sales update in January will be very interesting though.

Does anyone know if Girls Aloud still put flyers advertising ASOS in their CD covers? If so, the following article put out by Reuters today could be useful.

LONDON (Reuters) - Pop group Girls Aloud have blown Irish rockers U2 from the top of the singles charts with their cover of The Pretenders ballad "I'll Stand By You", the Official UK Charts Company says.

The girl band got their second official number one with a single for the BBC's annual fundraising drive Children in Need.

wjordan

That was a good analysis of expectations for next week. I would hope, and reasonably expect, there to be a trading statement covering start of Xmas season, i.e. October. The new buyers should be starting to have some effect. Seymour Pearce, house brokers, have raised advice from BUY to OUTPERFORM. I agree that the 80% is built into price although a key figure will be level of overheads and thus gross margin. So we need something more for the price to move ahead and my money (literally with the CFDs) is on a bullish trading statement. If its not there, then the price could come back giving a buying opportunity.

John

How do you read the charts?

Eric

Looks like ASOS has got a bumper christmas on the way... Taken from the personal finance section of money am.

Online Christmas shopping spree
MoneyAM
An estimated 10.1 million UK shoppers are forecast to buy Christmas presents online this year, according to market researchers, Continental Research.

If true, it will be a new record.

The projection is significantly up from the 7.3 million adults who bought gifts online last year. And is in stark contrast to just 5 years ago when only 1.5 million people took the online plunge.

The 10.1 million shoppers are predicted to spend 178 each, thereby generating 1.8 billion of sales in the process - 500 million more than last year - and twelve times the 150 million spent in 1999.

Much of the impetus, according to Colin Shaddick of Continental Research, is coming from the growth in broadband take-up; coupled with improvements made to the overall online shopping experience.

However, the exponential growth in online shopping hasn't come at the expense of shopping on the High Street where there has been little sign of customers giving up their traditional habits.

Eric: Just a quick update on the Charts, RSI (always an early indicator of change) turned down slightly towards the end of last week, followed by the MACD. So I see the MACD as supportive of a slight pullback at this moment. Now the support line (at least mine) runs through 70p, with resistance at 110p. So we could just be marking time at present, I myself would like to see the SP pull back a little more towards the support line, and the RSI reverse before I would increase my stake (it would then be a good risk/reward trade again). John

Today's Times

INTERNET shopping still accounts for a tiny proportion of total retail sales, but it is growing fast. Extrapolate the trend shown in yesterdays Office for National Statistics data, and there is good reason for retail landlords to be feeling uncomfortable. Boo.com, an early attempt to sell clothing online, drowned in its own publicity, but customers are warming to the modern home shopping. Asos, which kits out would-be Kylies, has seen its share price rocket from 4p to 93 p in a year. Its ambitions are high and its property needs minimal.

What I like about these various quotes that are cropping up, such as that in today's Times, is that ASOS always seems to be the positive example. Price starting to move ahead again after a correction. John: I take your point about the Resistance level but the Monday results are key. If there is a positive trading report re the start of the Xmas season and the effect of the new Buyers, then the price has to move ahead again. I think you do have to weigh the Seymour Pearce OUTPERFORM as they will know a lot that we don't. I would also expect there to be more buying ahead of the interims rather than profit taking. Now, if they were coy about the futures, but I don't think they go in for 'coyness', then there could be a bout of profit-taking and your resistance level could be tested. Mind, its a windy world out there with these CFDs; lovely to have multipliers when the share goes up but not so much when it is going down! Taking about winds, I have a vision of capa's waves of sp rises; isn't asos on the way to becoming a household name and therefore have broader application thna currently realised? And what about that lovely US market with all the lovelies wanting to look like their favourite lovely? Lovely!!

Eric

Great mention in the Times, backs up what we already know, thanks marketmaker

Got to sit on my hands at the moment, nearly bought some more this morning and would now prefer to wait until next week to see how interims are received. My experience of late is that good results usually result in a good buying opportunity as traders take their profits, plus ACE report on Thursday and I may need money for them.

capa

It is noticeable that whenever there is press coverage of ASOS, invariably good, the SP moves ahead. I think it is more than wanting to catch the trend, more like shortage of stock! I agree with CAPA on the importance of next's weeks statement, but even if it does not provide too much detail it is bound to mention current trading and outlook. That may be enough to push it up and away. All I tried to point out in my chart analysis, is that I would not buy at this level...but then again I already hold a big chunk of stock and it to make me buy more I would like to see the SP pull back from current levels. I hope to get that opportunity before Xmas!

Re media coverage, internet buying was discussed recently on a late night 5Live broadcast, and guess what ASOS products were held up as a perfect example of what young ladies want to buy, and the conclusion was never mind the High Street just log-on! The site was praised as being easy to use, and people actually called in agreeing!! What next I wonder.


John

John

John
John
Is obviously the done thing, like buying dresses at ASOS, to sign your name twice! Is this to celebrate the forthcoming doubling of the ASOS price? Sorry, John John, no better buying opportunity than now as the price will be up, up and away by Christmas. Just look at the buying trades going through and hardly a speck of red to be seen. Now, what would be better than buying an ASOS dress for Christmas, yes, yes, your right, ASOS shares! Have recently transferred 1000 to each of four children in ASOS shares at 68p; they are hugely impressed with their growth - and Dad's skill!
Eric
Eric