Barclays is a major global financial services provider engaged in retail and commercial banking, credit cards, investment banking, wealth management and investment management services. Company operates in over 60 countries and employs over 78,000 people.

            Red = 25 day moving average.           Green = 200 day moving average.

so what do the papers know??

at the w/e, there was comment that most short positions had now been closed and that BARC would come in with better results than feared and no rights issue to be announced when they give a trading update on 15th.

excellent (for me!) move south, so whereas i was almost scared out of my short, i am now well in the money, though shall now watch with a view to banking that profit

FTSE starting to recover a bit as is BARC so banked my profit

I think the banks will drop further...the credit crunch is still not over yet. It is just the end of the beginning. Housing market still shows no sign of recovery, inflation going upward, oil price rocketing and people are losing their jobs in the City.

SELL the banks.

the market looks about 6 months forward, so going short at this juncture is quite a brave call ...... also, crude is due for a sharp correction

Inclined to agree Cynic, but as a holder of BARC awaiting news on Thursday with some unease. Hope they bite the bullet and personally I would welcome scaling down of Barclays Capital activities, for therein imo lies the source of most of their problems. Basic banking on personal/corporate front still a first class cash cow, even if market mature in UK at least.

somewhat at a tangent, i reckon Deutsche Bank has some pretty severe problems as i keep coming across reports of it selling swathes of shares in various companies

LONDON, May 15 (Reuters) - British bank Barclays said profits fell in the first quarter after it took a 1 billion pound ($1.95 billion) writedown on assets tarnished by the credit crunch.
Britain's third-biggest bank said on Thursday the writedown for Barclays Capital was net of a 700 million pound gain on the fair valuation of debt it carries on its own books. The writedown was less than the hit taken by many other banks.
The bank did not disclose the extent of its profit fall. It expects its core tier 1 capital ratio to be slightly lower at the end of June than the 5.1 percent it reported at the end of 2007, but intends to lift it to its 5.25 percent target "in time".



suspect the market will take that with relative equanimity, especially as no rights issue announced

No news hopefully good news, but size of some of their assets relative to the bank's capital base still leaves me a bit nervous. At least they are making efforts to manage some of it down.

Barclays Bank has not reveal the extent of its profit fall. Sounds very suspicious to me and also give scrip dividend. This are useless.

I expect BARC to fall below 390p.

Wrong Barclays has stated it will pay a cash dividend as it considers scip dividends as not real dividends. One in the eye for RBS perhaps!

Suspect there is quite a lot going on behind the scenes re capital adequacy position and it is looking like something other than retained profits will be needed. Underlying trading of core banking business still looks strong, but an element of the falling knife about present share price situation. As a longer term investor (and have held various amounts of BARC for 40 years) I am happy to sit tight for the time being.

Seems like a nice little rise today and looking at the chart MACD seems to closing and RSI is oversold

partridge - Quite agree with your remarks. I have been trading and investing in BARC since 1961 and have a large holding. Have seen share price well down in the early 1970's, 1987, 1998 etc. and just continued to hold and they have subsequently recovered to a higher level. In hindsight I wish I had sold the lot at 794!! but being a bit greedy was looking for further rises and, at that time, people were talking about 1000+. Should have sold some over the last 12 months as the price fell but did not want to reduce my holding just to see the drop reversed and the price fly up. Anyway I feel that there is light at the end of the tunnel now and hope that things will look a lot better in a few months' time. Good luck to all BARC investors & traders.

at 375 or a bit lower, BARC are prob a reasonable/good buy, even though the markets remain pretty soggy overall

Buy low, sell lower... I mean higher

i just bought lower at 357 and fully expect to be able to sell higher!

I also bought some stock today. I think the success of the RBS issue with speculation of stake build up will rub of on Barc to a degree and a higher price will then help the latter with its possible fund raising.

Possible bloodbath on Monday but will that be the bottom?

Oil price likely to fall next week following general condemnation of politically motivated sabre rattling by an Israeli minister see todays RNS.

Dvu