Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Time to buy into Northern Rock?

Two hedge funds have punted heavily on the British lender that the government has supported with £55 billion.

The share price has slumped from over £12 last February to 69 pence, assisted by the gleefully gloomy 20/20 hindsight of the news media. We had voxpops today from small "windfall share" demutualisation shareholders ruefully reckoning their notional losses and admitting they can't find the (now-near worthless - ha!) certificates.

One of Sir John Templeton's maxims is "The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell."

Let me offer two of mine: "Never buy what the fund managers try to sell you at financial adviser seminars", and "Remember the journalists who had their pensions in Equitable Life with-profits, because EL didn't (ugh!) pay commissions".

If I had the spare, I might speculate on NR. Hedge funds may be able to afford losing money, but they certainly don't go out of their way to do it. I wonder what will happen?

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