Trades and observations from a British contrarian stock investor

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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Hurray, a positive day at last for the portfolio, despite FTSE falls!

Despite a nasty day for the FTSE 100 (down 73 to 5,924) and Dow Jones Industrials (currently down 100 to 12,114) it was a positive day for most of the Contrarian Investor stocks. News that The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) had moved a little closer to lifting interest rates when it met earlier this was announced today as Spencer Dale, the Bank's chief economist, joined Andrew Sentance and Martin Weale, who voted for higher rates the previous month, in calling for a rate hike. So the vote to retain U.K. base rates at 0.5% was 6-3. No doubt the MPC will be worried about the rising oil price with its impact on inflation and negative influence on economic growth.

Bowleven (BLVN) had its second day of gains, finishing up 10p at 323p with it being reiterated as a Goldman Sach's conviction buy. Goldman has said that recent share underperformance has created an attractive entry point into the stock - "We view the upcoming drilling campaign offshore Cameroon positively, with recent success at the Sapele prospect helping to de-risk the surrounding acreage,". The target price was cut to 578p from 623p, with drilling at the Cameroon Sapele-1 prematurely halted because of high pressure gas which the drilling equipment was not specified to handle. Things appear to be calming down a little in Cameroon, with President Paul Biya reportedly not running for re-election later this year after 28 years in power.

Xcite (XEL) finished up 6.5p at 344p and even Rockhopper (RKH) was in the blue, up 3p at 235p. Could this be the end of the Rockhopper slide at last? Disappointing to see Weatherly international move up only 2% after the positive comments on the interim results report.  The one glitch was the continued slide in Sirius Minerals (SXX) to 13.38p, down 5%.

I took the plunge and bought North Sea oil play, Encore Oil (EO) as it has been on my watch list for a while and around 120p it should be a strong entry point. Didn't want to buy yet another oil company but its North Sea so less risky, oil is going through the roof and frankly I've been struggling to find many decent bets outside of commodity stocks so far.
Posted by Contrarian Investor UK at 5:38 PM
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2 comments:

  1. AlexFebruary 23, 2011 at 11:05 PM

    Do you think the higher costs for a barrel of oil will have a positive impact on the Bowleven share price ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Contrarian Investor UKFebruary 24, 2011 at 6:23 AM

    There is a tipping point with consumption of any product when it comes to price (elasticity of demand). As the OPEC countries found in the 1970's after the Arab-Israelii war if the price goes up too much, demand collapses as economic activity falls. In oil stays in its current range it is probably positive for BLVN, if however if moves closer to $150 a barrel, the markets may become concerned that the developed world may collapse into recession which would hit BLVN sentiment. Complicated!

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