The Student Loan Ranger

Just a little bit of interesting stuff from this morning. RBS is down again as predicted due to the US recession gossip and their markets slipping up on Friday. The range is low so we’ll see what happens up to the ex-div date on Wednesday. I’m expecting it to go down to around 355p before adjusting back to it’s real value.

Anyway, as for the media, well well well I say. HSBC was the last bank to report today.

• Operating income up 25% to US$97.6bn

• Annual profits to US£24.2bn

• EPS up 17.9%

Really not bad at all fundamentally is it? Not if you’re the press. BBC headline “HSBC in $17bn credit crisis loss”. The small print read “But its annual profits still rose 10%”. Now this is why there is so much doom and gloom going around at the moment. It’s total garbage. Average Joe knows nothing about finance and reads this and thinks.. oh no, debt everywhere.. i’m going to lose my house.. stocks are for people with lots of money.. blah blah. What strikes me is that the headline should have read “HSBC profits up to 10% despite credit crunch losses”. That’s a much more optimistic headline that would encourage more confidence in the market. But the market movers will have it another way.

RBS is subject to more of the bad press. Citigroup, a rival, is always making the prices – why? They’re total balls compared to RBS. RBS went down in price on a good day for the market despite record profits. HSBC has gone up on a bad day because of less impressive news. I might be a slight bitter because my holding is down £30 lol, but there are people sitting somewhere just having a laugh. I really like that aspect but why should the UK sector be so pessimistic because American banks gave money to people under the poverty line?

SFR slumped a bit this morning but recovered and is finding its feet again. It’s amazing how tempted I am to sell to buy some other stocks but there’s no point really. I’d make the same gains from them that I would with SFR anyway. Desire Petroleum, despite the huge rise still looks a good prospect. I have also added KLR, ROC and IPR to my watch list. ROK is up 4.1% this afternoon and most of my watch list still looks quite good (speculators aside that is).

While guiding a Boa-Morte inspired Portugal to World Cup glory on Pro Ev last night I conjured up my re-investment plan for my money. Which is still a work in progress there go subject to change. It’s just for the anticipated profits of my £900+ equities holding. For the profits back, I will re-invest 60%, put 20% into an ING savings account, and keep 20% for miscellaneous misdemeanours. It seems good enough; I’m not really expecting any real gains in each trade. I’m aiming realistically for the portfolio to be worth in excess of £5500 by June. £500 isn’t much yet is double what I would expect to get through leaving it in a bank. This is all subject to change of course, dependant the medias point of view.