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Posted

We saw the USD gold price get smoked over the last while. Theres no such thing as a safe haven when selling is this panicked. Selling becomes across all sectors and into cash regardless. I think a lot of the decline was this.

 

The ZAR gold price has obviously held up better, it did though still take a small knock, but I think a lot more of our mines are reporting in USD so this doens't help as much anymore.

 

I think it also comes down to production. Mines cannot continue to operate as usual with the human movement restrictions coming in.

 

I'm largely invested in gold now and have also been scratching my head. Theres a baby bounce this morning which helps the nerves a little...

 

edit: i don't have gearing or in-depth info anymore so you may well be right.

 

Harmony definitely don't report in Dollar anymore, and AGA only report at group level in Dollar, local company level is Rand

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Posted

RR, are you a trader? Joe average can't short can he?

Yes you can but I would go on a course first, this is as good as any www.traderscorner.co.za. Beware this is highly technical and very risky. I stopped day trading very quickly because it requires continuous monitoring so I now simply use it to arbitrage my long term investments in times of volatility.

Posted

At the start of the year I had some free cash (Euros) that I needed to invest into the market. My foreign investment strategy is relatively simple I look for ETFs that give me a dividend yield of 3% and above. Why ETFs as opposed to ordinary shares? I find that my news feed on companies in the US, Far East and Europe to be either delayed or sometimes very patchy, so it is difficult to monitor these and an ETF gives me an inherent spread in terms of risk. I have been sitting on the cash for somettime now earning no interest but I was waiting for a dip to previous support levels because the market was too rich for my blood and not meeting my hurdle rate of return.

 

So 2 weeks ago I put orders in on three different ETFs at levels that would give me the minimum dividend yield. By Monday last week I was fully invested as the first crash hit us, by Wednesday I was in the money as the market went up again but the volatility was massive so I shorted my shares. I couldn't find a direct short for the specific ETFs so I took shorts on the DOW, the DAX and Shanghai as proxies for my investment spread. As things stand I have an unrealized profit on the shorts but an unrealized loss on my ETFs, on aggregate I am in the black. This shows that the Beta of my ETFs are lower than the markets I have invested in which is another plus.

 

This strategy has worked in this instance and my only decision to make is when to take profit on my short trades. However, my local share portfolio has been reduced to mostly cash as my 10% stop losses kicked in so there's a question about when to reenter the market. Unfortunately my RAs are down roughly 20%. I have been trading on the stock market for over 20 years with well honed strategies that work for me but I am not so sure they're applicable in this market so for what it's worth I would be very cautious about doing anything rash right now. I am sitting on my hands.

Which ETF's were you in - i am looking to put money in to a similar sort of fund.

Posted

Don't worry, I'm not thinking of it. I picked Rhodes foods as a stockpick because they have just signed a deal to supply Walmart.... Down 10% last 7 days.

 

It was just a query about shorting.

 

As an aside, I worked in London City (Middle office, not trading) for some years. Most exciting time was the Money Market desk with flat-out trade going. 1 acre of traders on one floor with, as you can imagine, a host of screens and speakers on permanent open lines round the world.  

Posted

Also been watching the Sasol share price. Lowest I have seen it is at R24 some change.

 

I am a massive noob with share trading, but wondering what will happen with the Sasol share price. Can a massive company like it really fail, what are the chances the share price goes up to reasonable levels again?

 

With markets declining world wide at the moment with this virus, there will be a time where investing in shares will be very favourable, but when? So many investors selling off shares as there is too much uncertainty and prices plummeting daily.

Posted

Also been watching the Sasol share price. Lowest I have seen it is at R24 some change.

 

I am a massive noob with share trading, but wondering what will happen with the Sasol share price. Can a massive company like it really fail, what are the chances the share price goes up to reasonable levels again?

 

With markets declining world wide at the moment with this virus, there will be a time where investing in shares will be very favourable, but when? So many investors selling off shares as there is too much uncertainty and prices plummeting daily.

Rather ironically, it's that trading that self-perpetuates the decline in price.

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

My personal investments (all with Allan Gray through various funds) are down about 7.5% since the beginning of the month, which doesn't seem too bad, but it's a lot of actual value gone almost overnight.

 

My pension and preservation funds at Discovery however are down about 20% on the contributed amounts. Which is scary.

 

As a follow-up to this, my primary funds with Allan Gray have pretty much recovered and are even showing a positive 1-Year return at this stage:

 

eCJG7pX.png

 

My Tax Free investments are not quite there yet, but they are super conservative funds:

 

fAEUon7.png

 

My pension and preservation funds at Discovery are still down 6% on the contributed amounts, so they still have some ways to go.

Posted

(ignore the child-like simplicity of this pic pls...) I've been absolutely stunned by the severity of the daily moves in our market, and this really does apply to most stocks on the board. This is just one I decided to have a look at, Sibanye, over about 1 month. Net gain pretty close to +100%, but the in-between smaller % moves are just staggering.

post-90313-0-91918600-1587644430_thumb.png

Posted

(ignore the child-like simplicity of this pic pls...) I've been absolutely stunned by the severity of the daily moves in our market, and this really does apply to most stocks on the board. This is just one I decided to have a look at, Sibanye, over about 1 month. Net gain pretty close to +100%, but the in-between smaller % moves are just staggering.

That's volatility for ya!

Posted (edited)

The local and international markets are almost impossible to fathom right now. I'm sitting on the sidelines with only some shorts on some international markets to trade with and I'm watching the first quarter earnings data with great interest.

 

On one of my portfolios I'm taking the opportunity to re-balance it and lock in some capital gains losses at the same time. Sell low and buy low was not a concept I have thought much about?

Edited by River Rat
Posted

(ignore the child-like simplicity of this pic pls...) I've been absolutely stunned by the severity of the daily moves in our market, and this really does apply to most stocks on the board. This is just one I decided to have a look at, Sibanye, over about 1 month. Net gain pretty close to +100%, but the in-between smaller % moves are just staggering.

Where can one see these graphs

Or let me rather ask, how do I get into this. I have a small amount that i want to play with.

Posted

Where can one see these graphs

Or let me rather ask, how do I get into this. I have a small amount that i want to play with.

 

I'm signed up with Standard Bank online trading. They recently rolled out in partnership with Iress a really handy dashboard kind of thing, shows me heatmaps, any kind of watchlist, graphs, sens, nothing technical charting wise but nice to have.

 

I  suspect though most online platforms will have a graph system going on, and probably for cheaper than SBK

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