Ashtead (AHT) - The recovery continues

Guess you are all nursing your hangovers, rather than the unwell women in your life, still means I don't have a hangover.

Just read through a round up of the tips and thoughts for 2005/6 above.

My take on it is that IF you pick the right stock then it does not matter what size of company it is.

Highest growth rate in any world market this year? Turkey 59% how many in Turkey would make it to the FTSE250? After that you got S Korea and Pakistan even after the earthquake at 54%.

Even H saying that he would in hindsight not have picked some of the smaller stocks is only related to the date at which he makes the statement after all if he chose an earlier date to bail on them there were strong gains made already.

Having said that I do agree about hte risk of small stocks. I also believe that you are more likely to come across a "Langbar" in the small companies arena, that's why the rewards can be higher but you have to accept the risks are far greater.

When I first started looking at shares as a 16year old my idea was that if you picked a large company that was down on its luck share price wise and bought, invariably something would happen to put it right, either change in management a buy out or just a change in broker sentiment ( which I really believe is often just about creating volume of share transactions, i.e. xx is looking cheap relative to the market so buy, followed by we have reiterated our forecasts but now looking fuly valued so sell.)

After many years I'm coming back to the same theory, however now it should involve Rescuer style research rather than just looking at the chart.
Take M&S now back up to a 7 year high against the odds. Though if the number of unsold suits in their sale was anything to go by their buyer has made some mistakes this winter.

So to summarise, you are all right, some of the time, the hard part is knowing when it is and selling at the top, or realising when you are wrong.

Tip for 2006, same as last year really, Lloyds TSB still yielding around 7% divi, not likely to go bust, less likely to reduce the divi and still likely to have a US bank come over the hill with a pile of money to buy.
A US chief exec who hires senior respected staff from other US banks, who wants to concentrate on the UK core business and not aquire others is in my mind just trying to bring Lloyds to the attention of his US competitors, sooner or later with the $ strengthening they will have the firepower to come bidding.