Northern Foods - a Tasty Choice!

Morning all. Hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas. Early morning trades have so far been kind to me, which makes up for some disappointing mark down for me in late trading last Friday. On such small volumes I am expecting the prices to settle downwards when trading picks up (just re-checked and this has indeed happened).

Thanks for the quote from 'The Sage' Gateside. I hate to say it, but on the face of it my trading philosophy is the reverse of this. I try to find boring companies, that have current market sentiment against them. All I am interested in is the numbers and negative hype is manna from heaven for me on a stock that I am tracking.

I've just put in an electonic order for HMV at a limit of 140p. To add to my previous comments on HMV, I am also accounting for the fact that approx a year ago an offer of 210p per share was made for the company, which would have been based on more in depth research than I can possibly have carried out. I cannot believe that this company's worth can have declined so far in the last 12 months. If I can pick up at 140p, I would be hopeful of a recovery to 165p in the next 9 months with a 5% + divi along the way, to give a 20% + return.

Anyway, I hope many of us are preparing for our final reports at the end of the week. I should finish in the range 20-25%, which would have been unimaginable 6 weeks ago.

Best of fortune til the end of the week.

As an aside, having been laid up with a cold for a week, I've been indulging in a little (too much) daytime TV and found myself watching Deal or No Deal. Now, I would simply continue to the end of the game as the banker's offer will only ever be 40-70% of the sum of the monies left divided by the number of boxes, much as I would always gamble on a 50/50 on 'Millionaire'. So my view would basically be that I have picked a box that could have any of the 20 or so figures in it and that will be what I will win, with what happens in between an irrelevance. However, all peoples circumstances are different and I appreciate that £10,000 in the hand can be lifechanging for some. I do get the impression though that for the majority on the show the simple sum of monies divided by boxes figure does not occur to them as the average figure that they could win. Any thoughts.