BHP Billiton

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

....
But looking at it i.e. it's history, through all the outside world dramas, in my naive opinion, it looks like it must be very well managed. I'm almost tempted to forget all the uncertainties, "cycles", etc. and just take the view, "Jeez, whoever runs this thing, is much better than me at making money through thick and thin - I'll trust him with mine!!" (if you'll pardon the pun)

Matt

Very well managed? I disagree.

You're probably right 77ss. My above remark was idle speculation. I was merely thinking that they obviously operate on a rough terrain, metaphorically speaking, and to have stayed in business doing that, for that long, they must be doing something right, that's all I was trying to imply.

And no I did not buy any in the end, and don't really see that ever happening. Nice to be hear to talk to others to guide me and Mel through many of these decisions.

thanks
Matt

[simoan]

And no I did not buy any in the end, and don't really see that ever happening. Nice to be hear to talk to others to guide me and Mel through many of these decisions.

thanks
Matt

[gbjbaanb]

I hope that the abandonment of the US shale oil business (coyly described as "Onshore US exit for value") may be a shot in the arm.

Up 5% today.... so maybe it was!

[dspp]

In my opinion if you are buying on dividend only you will make mistakes.

Probably, if DY was our only criteria.

However, this is not the case: But we are trying (well from now on at least) to be reasonable fussy regards the exact firms we choose as the mature div firms, e.g. firms where the dividend is growing, where the firm has improving (or high) profitability, and where the firm has acceptable levels of debt.

Furthermore your stated aspirations (esp wrt growth companies) is at odds with buying on divi yield alone.

Surely that's irrevelant? We also have about 30% of our investments in corps bonds, 10% in NS&I bonds, 15% in a world index funds (which reinvests the divs).

re. Equity we always want a div: either a thin and maybe improving one from a growing firm, or a fat (but safe) one from a mature firm.

It is an oddity of the UK financial sector that high growth companies pay dividends. More ordinarily the management team of a high growth company should NOT pay dividends.

I see it differently, and I appreciate that I lack yours and others experience. I see it as a guy who has read plenty, and seen plenty regards market crashes and fluctuations.

I'm not prepared to spend my cash on some pieces of paper which (e.g. the ftse100 about now) which may be worth 7500 now, then 12000, and then 4000 after a crash. I want compensation that my stake in the company, seeing as they aren't paying me a wage, is being rewarded.

That UK-specific (or European-specific) oddity is cultural, and that culture is why there are very few large scale high growth companies in UK/Europe. Contrast with USA.

I think the deal with people investing in zero div, high-faluting growth firms is fine for some but for me it's abhorrent.
..
This point is interesting: but a div or coupon of some form is essential for our investment philosophy.

Matt

M&M,

Most very high growth sectors are ones where there is a benefit to very rapidly scaling, either to claim the normal economies of scale/scope/integration; or the more recent ones of network effects & platform adoption. By more recent, I mean since (say) the advent of industrial canal networks and railway networks, i.e. this is not something that is merely a phenomenon of the last few years, it has been around long enough for economists to dissect data and teach professional managers the lessons.

Typically such a sector will commence life as a myriad of relatively small companies. Then it will both grow as a sector, and the number of firms will reduce, i.e. the surviving firms will grow faster than the average for the sector. Most firms that exit the sector will simply go bust, generally few get taken over, and so investors in the failing firms get little or no return.

Therefore if you are managing a firm in such a sector the only two god strategies are either to exit early, before you waste too much of your shareholders' funds; or to grow to scale at blistering speed, faster than the competition and then harvest whatever are the subsequent good times. In modern technology games the good times are often simply the entry ticket to the next competitive cycle !

The last thing a manager should do if running such a firm is to take money out of that growth treadmill and return it to shareholders, by paying a dividend. Indeed paying a dividend is almost guaranteed to lead to failure in such markets as it is removing resources from the firm that place it at a disadvantage vs its peers. However in the UK (and in many continental European bourses) institutional shareholders will not invest in any company that does not pay a dividend. This is one important reason why UK/EU tech-sector growth & success stories are a rarity versus USA.

To get around this it is fairly common for a UK-based tech/growth company to pay a trivial dividend, e.g. ARM used to pay about 1% (see *) so as to be able to 'tick-the-box' for a dividend. Therefore if you screened on dividend and/or PER you'd always ignore ARM. If however you screened on TR and/or PEG you'd notice that ARM was a fantastic share to hold. So basically if you really want to purchase growth, but use dividend and/or P/E tools to do your analysis, you'll be disappointed.

Even when such a share becomes dominant in its market place it is still on that treadmill. So Intel for example typically pays at between 2-3% divvi. It is parsimonious in the extreme with dividend because it knows it needs to keep reinvesting in the next cycle, and growing scale etc in the tech sector. Yes it may have corporate jets and high paid execs, but that is a minor piece of the puzzle. Continual reinvestment ("only the paranoid survive") is the key to such growth. That doesn't mean that Intel is necessarily a bad investment, just that you need to evaluate it on a TR basis rather than just a DY basis. And that is exactly what the USA markets do. Go and look at the DY on the FANG companies.

Turning to the point about not wanting to hold a piece of paper that may go from say 7000 to 4000, then if that is really how you think you need to think again. Even if you pick a high divvi company (such as RDSB) then approx 95% of your value in the company is in the capital mkt value at any given moment, and only about 5% in the divvi of the year. And very quickly pretty much all companies can - and have - halved in mkt value. That is the nature of financial markets - you either buckle in for the ride, or stay out of the car. And they can take 30, 40 years to come back to where they started - just look at stock market data from the 20s/30s through to 50s/60s. Timescales like that are longer than most investors' remaining lifetimes. And you are exposed to that risk irrespective of whether you are holding individual shares or an aggregate such as a fund or a tracker.

Regards,
dspp

* https://www.fool.co.uk/investing/2016/0 ... dend-buys/

[Pastcaring]

Ah,BHP,the big Australian.The company seems to be proof of buy a company that an idiot can run,because one day an idiot will be running it

As they are large in the state I live in ( Western Australia),the noise is non stop.Western Australia will probably all be exported overseas,so many holes in the ground.Luckily it is big,around twice the size of Europe,but I could be wrong there .

I don' t own them,very capital intensive,long lead in times for projects.They can only get money basically when a boom is on ,by the time everything is built the boom is over.

The huge boom we had here when the rest of the world was dodgy ,that was a laugh.From memory right at the top of the market they launched a hostile take over bid for Rio.Around $150 Billion. The board thought they were worth that ,the board of Rio thought they were worth far more than that. I don' t think they are worth $150 billion in market cap together now.

Rio shot themselves in the foot buying Alcan I think it was as a poison pill.Forty billion $$,shortly after written off as worthless I think.

BHP luckily dodged a bullet,down to good luck rather than good management.Which board of directors was the dumbest?

However,I have looked at them a few times over the last 40 years.The thing that surprised me was how good they have been in the long term,from around 50 cents a share in 1980 to whatever they are worth now ( $33 ? ).,No good to me though,they don' t have a DRP which always stopped me buying them.

The noise when oil and copper,and iron ore rise in price is deafening here.I think they went up a good bit today,commodity prices rose last night (WA time ).

The money they bring in is unbelievable,fortunately it is more than they can squander . Buying Billiton,shale oil,potash in Canada,down here HBI plant in Port Hedland,Olympic dam north of Adelaide,it was planned to be the largest copper/gold mine in the world.The takeover of WMC,WMC and Billiton are now basically South 32.

A huge nickel mine on the south coast here,houses built for the workers, $4 or 5 billion wasted,I think they closed it around 6 months after it was open, price of nickel dropped drastically during build.

BHP is good to buy when everybody has the chicken little suit on saying the sky is falling.After the Japan bubble burst in 1990 WA was a wasteland,all miners basically went under or begged to merge with BHP.China came to the rescue.What a boom it was,there wasn't enough labour in the world to fill the jobs going begging,people queing up 100 deep to rent houses.

Around 2 or 3 years ago BHP was flatlining at around $15,that was the time to buy it,chicken little suits were everywhere.If you wait and can get it under $20 that's the time to buy.Then you might have to hold it for 5 -- 10 years,time the cycle.

The problem you will have is,have you got the balls to buy them then,they have dropped 30-- 40%.The crowd are running round saying don' t buy them,company XYZ went bust, company ABC cut their dividend,BHP will do the same .

Hold BHP for the long term and it is hard not to make money,everybody needs commodities.Don't buy them at $33 unless they are for momentum trading,even then think long and hard about it.

If you worry that you might buy something and it falls,don' t go anywhere near stock markets,you have to be prepared to lose 50% or more of your money.They will fall,but I have no idea when.Usually when everybody is saying the boom will never end,that is the time to find comfort in dividends,or get out.

[Pastcaring]

Just checked,BHP has a market cap of A$106 Billion,RIo has a market cap of A$ 33 Billion.Perhaps check the A$ 150 Billion hostile takeover,I may be confusing myself there,perhaps Rio reached $150 a share at the height of the boom here.

Year high for BHP is A$34.61, low of A$ 24.28

High and low for Rio is A$87.09 and low of A$62.11.

Where are the crystal ball gazers and tea leaf readers when you need them?

[Gengulphus]

To get around this it is fairly common for a UK-based tech/growth company to pay a trivial dividend, e.g. ARM used to pay about 1% (see *) so as to be able to 'tick-the-box' for a dividend. Therefore if you screened on dividend and/or PER you'd always ignore ARM. If however you screened on TR and/or PEG you'd notice that ARM was a fantastic share to hold. So basically if you really want to purchase growth, but use dividend and/or P/E tools to do your analysis, you'll be disappointed.

Depends on the dividend tool you use.

For example, 10 years ago in July 2008 ARM's historical dividend was 2p and its share price was a bit below 100p. Five years later, in July 2013, its historical dividend was 4.5p and its share price was a bit below 900p (all share prices eyeballed from charts, which is why they're very approximate).

So in the intervening five years, the dividend yield had dropped from about 2% to about 0.5%, but the dividend had grown over twofold - they're two "dividend tools" apparently sending you very different messages...

The key to that is that the two tools are telling you about different things. The dividend yield is telling you that ARM was a better investment in 2008 than in 2013; the dividend growth is telling you that the company had performed excellently in the period 2008-2013. Both are true: the company had indeed performed excellently in that period, but not as spectacularly as the ~9-fold increase in the share price would suggest!

And by the way, I'm reasonably sure that the dividend ARM was paying was not interfering with its ability to expand, as I believe it had net cash throughout the period it paid dividends and certainly in the later years that net cash was steadily expanding. It was investing heavily in R&D, I suspect to the point where "Mythical Man Month" effects would have limited the effectiveness of any further investment, and it was acquiring businesses that fitted into its business model, but those businesses were generally quite small - and its one big acquisition (Artisan in 2004) could hardly be described as a resounding success (it basically became the "physical IP" division of the company, so its progress can be traced in the company's results RNSes and annual reports).

Gengulphus

[77ss]

Just checked,BHP has a market cap of A$106 Billion,RIo has a market cap of A$ 33 Billion.Perhaps check the A$ 150 Billion hostile takeover,I may be confusing myself there,perhaps Rio reached $150 a share at the height of the boom here.

Year high for BHP is A$34.61, low of A$ 24.28

High and low for Rio is A$87.09 and low of A$62.11.

Where are the crystal ball gazers and tea leaf readers when you need them?

I top-sliced RIO back in 2008 at £64.88. Thanks in part to BLT's crazy takeover attempt. The bid was said to affer a 45% premium to RIO's existing share price.

I think your market cap values are out. Perhaps you are just looking at the market cap of RIO Ltd? I find these dual listed cos very confusing. I think the real market cap of RIO (plc and Ltd) is about £72bn - about A$ 127bn. Similary, you understate BLT/BHP - probaby by not acounting for BLT?

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

Most very high growth sectors are ones where there is a benefit to very rapidly scaling, either to claim the normal economies of scale/scope/integration; or the more recent ones of network effects & platform adoption. By more recent, I mean since (say) the advent of industrial canal networks and railway networks, i.e. this is not something that is merely a phenomenon of the last few years, it has been around long enough for economists to dissect data and teach professional managers the lessons.

Typically such a sector will commence life as a myriad of relatively small companies. Then it will both grow as a sector, and the number of firms will reduce, i.e. the surviving firms will grow faster than the average for the sector. Most firms that exit the sector will simply go bust, generally few get taken over, and so investors in the failing firms get little or no return.

Therefore if you are managing a firm in such a sector the only two god strategies are either to exit early, before you waste too much of your shareholders' funds; or to grow to scale at blistering speed, faster than the competition and then harvest whatever are the subsequent good times. In modern technology games the good times are often simply the entry ticket to the next competitive cycle !

The last thing a manager should do if running such a firm is to take money out of that growth treadmill and return it to shareholders, by paying a dividend. Indeed paying a dividend is almost guaranteed to lead to failure in such markets as it is removing resources from the firm that place it at a disadvantage vs its peers.

Yes, this makes perfect sense.

However in the UK (and in many continental European bourses) institutional shareholders will not invest in any company that does not pay a dividend. This is one important reason why UK/EU tech-sector growth & success stories are a rarity versus USA.

There's no real more point my disputing issues which I have no data to back up. However do you really think that paying like 1% DY is what is holding back our small growth firms? I'm sure there are many other "advantages" (deliberate quoted), to being in the States. What about taxes, and the sheer size of California (e.g. thats where A, G, F etc. are) and the US markets......for 30+ years since Reagan the country has basically printed money, and worshipped it. Plus in terms of young UK talent, they would much rather being in CA, earning more with fantastic weather, quality of life etc. etc. Several colleagues of mine have actually left England for the sunny state.

To get around this it is fairly common for a UK-based tech/growth company to pay a trivial dividend, e.g. ARM used to pay about 1% (see *) so as to be able to 'tick-the-box' for a dividend. Therefore if you screened on dividend and/or PER you'd always ignore ARM. If however you screened on TR and/or PEG you'd notice that ARM was a fantastic share to hold. So basically if you really want to purchase growth, but use dividend and/or P/E tools to do your analysis, you'll be disappointed.

Ok - but seeing as we are (are we??) possibly at the top of a bull market, I guess I'm not ready to put a great deal into "firms I believe may be hot-growth areas". That is, I don't have the necessary experience, and it arguably takes me and Mel further from original goal of "better than savings account return and greater flexibility+independence than pension fund topping up".

And that is exactly what the USA markets do. Go and look at the DY on the FANG companies.

This is why I'm not impressed by at least one of those firms

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/faceb ... 2018-07-25

and FWIW, my friend, Facebook doesn't need to reinvest much money at all in organic growth. Once you have a web server engine like there's, except for maintenance (security fixes etc.) and the odd rebrand, there's little scope for massive expenditure organically. Acquistion wise FB did try to buy Snapchat (which is far more popular with the kids) a few years back, and I think they acquired a Virtual Reality thing as well.

https://www.fool.co.uk/investing/2016/0 ... dend-buys/

Thanks for this will try to catch up with it later.

Matt

[Pastcaring]

Just checked,BHP has a market cap of A$106 Billion,RIo has a market cap of A$ 33 Billion.Perhaps check the A$ 150 Billion hostile takeover,I may be confusing myself there,perhaps Rio reached $150 a share at the height of the boom here.

Year high for BHP is A$34.61, low of A$ 24.28

High and low for Rio is A$87.09 and low of A$62.11.

Where are the crystal ball gazers and tea leaf readers when you need them?

I top-sliced RIO back in 2008 at £64.88. Thanks in part to BLT's crazy takeover attempt. The bid was said to affer a 45% premium to RIO's existing share price.

I think your market cap values are out. Perhaps you are just looking at the market cap of RIO Ltd? I find these dual listed cos very confusing. I think the real market cap of RIO (plc and Ltd) is about £72bn - about A$ 127bn. Similary, you understate BLT/BHP - probaby by not acounting for BLT?

Yes,I would think you are correct.The dual listing confuses me too The market caps were for the Australian listings only.BHP is the second largest company by market cap after Commonwealth Bank, ( CBA ), around A$135 billion for CBA. Rio is down around number 13 .

Probably around the time that BHP was $14--15 CBA would have been going up to their top of $96,lot of daylight between them then,narrowing now.BHP at $33 and CBA around $75.

For a laugh Google Poseidon bubble.The nickel boom of early seventies,I think the share went from around $1 to $ 300 in a month or so,and almost as quickly back down.Windarra nickel mine which ended up the the hands of Western mining ( WMC ) ,and ultimately BHP.

I think it is still going but not sure,if it is it will be in South 32 now.Nickel sulphide mines are costly for extraction I think,when the gold price went up it was worthwhile sorting through the tailings ,using [expletive deleted] in the process of gold extraction.I did a bit of work for WMC then building a gold processing plant for them,probably around 1989 .

Fun and games happen down here in the wild west when commodity and LPG prices take off.

[dspp]

Most very high growth sectors are ones where there is a benefit to very rapidly scaling,.....

The last thing a manager should do if running such a firm is to take money out of that growth treadmill and return it to shareholders, by paying a dividend. Indeed paying a dividend is almost guaranteed to lead to failure in such markets as it is removing resources from the firm that place it at a disadvantage vs its peers.

Yes, this makes perfect sense.

However in the UK (and in many continental European bourses) institutional shareholders will not invest in any company that does not pay a dividend. This is one important reason why UK/EU tech-sector growth & success stories are a rarity versus USA.

There's no real more point my disputing issues which I have no data to back up. However do you really think that paying like 1% DY is what is holding back our small growth firms? I'm sure there are many other "advantages" (deliberate quoted), to being in the States. What about taxes, and the sheer size of California (e.g. thats where A, G, F etc. are) and the US markets......for 30+ years since Reagan the country has basically printed money, and worshipped it. Plus in terms of young UK talent, they would much rather being in CA, earning more with fantastic weather, quality of life etc. etc. Several colleagues of mine have actually left England for the sunny state.

To get around this it is fairly common for a UK-based tech/growth company to pay a trivial dividend, e.g. ARM used to pay about 1% (see *) so as to be able to 'tick-the-box' for a dividend. Therefore if you screened on dividend and/or PER you'd always ignore ARM. If however you screened on TR and/or PEG you'd notice that ARM was a fantastic share to hold. So basically if you really want to purchase growth, but use dividend and/or P/E tools to do your analysis, you'll be disappointed.

Ok - but seeing as we are (are we??) possibly at the top of a bull market, I guess I'm not ready to put a great deal into "firms I believe may be hot-growth areas"...
Matt

M&M,
There are many factors that act as a drag on company growth in the UK vs say USA, and some of them are more relevant to the tech-sector than others. Since I have spent time in the USA and in tech and in studying this I have many thoughts on the matter. As an entrepreneur running tech companies based in the UK I have even more thoughts on the matter. So best I don't go there on this thread as my opinions are lengthy. All I was really trying to do is to make you aware that depending on the sort of companies you are seeking out (and you did indicate that growth was one of your desires), you may need to adapt your search tools and expectations appropriately. Good luck.

regards, dspp

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

All I was really trying to do is to make you aware that depending on the sort of companies you are seeking out (and you did indicate that growth was one of your desires), you may need to adapt your search tools and expectations appropriately. Good luck.

Thanks, mate. I agree with you. For me and Mel, this is very early days, so we really do appreciate your advice (and anyone else's).

I'm not trying to be controversial in my replies, I just do the typed-version of "speaking my mind".

thanks again, Matt

[Pastcaring]

You' ll all be asleep,around 4 am in the UK.I' ve just got in from my bike ride and turned on the TV for 5 mins then out again.

Full of BHP,shale oil sold for $10.8 billion,a loss of around $20 billion Sold to BP,don' t know if this was released your yesterday,and hit here on market open.I don' t follow commodities at all.

Headlines here yesterday that their $4.5 billion mine expansion in the Pilbara ( inland from Port Headland ) may be a cost blowout,shortage of labour,other projects taking off and planned.

I don' t think it is anything to worry about,they are a great cash flow machine.If they don' t take the risk they would now have a closed mine in Broken Hill ,nobody would have heard of them

TV off,me out,can' t stand that daily,weekly,monthly noise.Toss a coin to see if the bull carries on or turns into a bear.

Gut feeling for me is BHP may hit $40 on momentum,but I have no idea,never been able to predict the future.No intention of buying any

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

Gut feeling for me is BHP may hit $40 on momentum,but I have no idea,never been able to predict the future.No intention of buying any

Well like I said earlier, I changed my mind on this purchase. I guess I just don't know enough about this type of investment/firm etc. to know exactly how to treat it.

Though, as you seen already, in
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12069#p144071

we are very much newcomers, and just trying to ensure that we do a better bit than a basic flexible savers account, don't lose too much, and hopefully learn something as we go.

Chatting with you people, particularly, dspp, is starting to make me think a lot more about different types of sectors, and figuring out what's growing and what's not.

Matt

[Dod101]

Chatting with you people, particularly, dspp, is starting to make me think a lot more about different types of sectors, and figuring out what's growing and what's not.

When you've figured it out please let us know

Dod

[dspp]

Edit to add link: http://people.stern.nyu.edu/adamodar/pd ... pdate7.pdf

That slideset is very useful and leads one to question or exclude a whole swathe of probable poor returning stocks.

In slide 10 of that, note how many of those bad sectors are in cyclical industries. Then note that this was for 2016, so not exactly top of the cycle (e.g. annual avge 2016 WTI was $43/bbl. Brent was $44/bbl) and arguably bottom of that bit of the cycle*. So basically that study uses 12-mth earning data to tell you that at the bottom of the cycle, cyclical industries are poor choices for short term investments. Well duh.

If you obeyed that slideset you'd never invest in a cyclical industry at the bottom of a cycle, because you'd be worrying about destroying capital (which is precisely M&M's concern). However back in the real world investing in 2016 was a fantastic point to time ones entry into (say) BHP-BLT.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=LON:B ... upXYCw_5:0

That is why it is also worth keeping an eye on the CAPE Shiller which has the advantage of using 10-year data, as one of the aids to decision making.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclicall ... ings_ratio

But in investing of this nature, i.e. where one is trying to beat the market return, then inevitably whatever metrics worked yesterday probably won't work tomorrow.

But are M&M still trying to beat the market; or just buy the market; or indeed can they accept the risk of being in the market at all ?

regards, dspp


*https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=29412

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

Chatting with you people, particularly, dspp, is starting to make me think a lot more about different types of sectors, and figuring out what's growing and what's not.

When you've figured it out please let us know

Dod

Ha ha!

I have actually got an idea perhaps I should start a new thread.......but perhaps someone already has. In the UK, it has to be Automobile Electrification. I've been wondering about this for a while

I was listening to R4/moneybox the other day. Basically the govt. has a carbon plan to stop the sales of any new petrol/diesel cars by 2040. However, we already have umpteen different/incompatible charging connectors (hardware) and networks (billing) on offer. The batteries themselves are obv. the achilles heel and as is also the charging infrastructure. There was lady guest on the program, she has already a phone app (to display different charging points/networks) for leccy drivers to plan routes and so on.

Combine this with the fact that currently the batteries (on average) need 30 minutes for a fast charge, and ~8 hours for optimal full charge.

Obviously the queueing at m/ways for charge would be horrendous in peak times if a large volume of vehicles needed a top-up, quite apart from needing to know ahead of time local availability regards your charging network provider.

So here's the master plan:

1. persuade Tesco et al to convert car wash zones, into charging zones, fitted with adapters for various car-connectors
2. create a clearing (billing / charging) firm which somehow smoothes out charging (i.e. is a dreaded middleman) between the individual networks firm (e.g. secure plastic card handling and electronic fund transfer)
3. create some application or in-car feature where a car can gauge it's current charge, scan networks for nearest charging zone (e.g. a converted car wash place), and perhaps even book a slot for a certain interval.

Anyway above are just rough ideas, very quickly typed being on Friday lunch etc. I think the main growth area will be R&D in battery and motor technology, and of course the provision of the materials.

Matt

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

But are M&M still trying to beat the market

No. Hoping perhaps!

or just buy the market

Not got big enough wallet. Unless you mean get a tracker fund.

or indeed can they accept the risk of being in the market at all ?

Why yes. But we've all got our own risk vs return matrix haven't we?

FWIW. We have ~14k in ready cash/saving accounts, and it will stay like that. I work fulltime, and Mel works about 4-5 days a week. And woopee! no mortgage, credit cards, HP, car loans, etc etc.

But I've already iterated our goals here already. That is:

1. money in more profitable place than 1.22% saving account
2. money in more flexible place than pension topup
3. gain experience of what to do with money when we eventually do stop work

How we get here? Who knows? But we are trying to learn as we go.

Matt

[richfool]

If you are wanting exposure to BHP Billiton, but are not sure how much to take or the risks involved, you could always dilute/spread your exposure, and delegate the management/risk, by investing via a mining or commodities investment trust, such as Blackrock Commodities Income trust (BRCI) or Blackrock World Mining trust (BRWM).

Currently, they hold 8% and 10% exposure (respectively) to BHP Billiton.

http://citywire.co.uk/money/investment- ... undID=2794

http://citywire.co.uk/money/investment- ... undID=2799

[tjh290633]

Matt/Mel

viewtopic.php?p=150834#p150834 is a thread devoted to electric motoring.

You might like to have a look there.

TJH