[Closed] shares . . . . would you?

Classic loss aversion tactic, sell them and buy something else to spread your risk.

Our shares have taken a similar path, lots of people I know have lost a lot of money they thought they had. The key to these schemes is generally to sell your initial investment at the earliest opportunity.

I'd be reluctant to own more shares than I had to in a company I also worked for.. eggs in one basket springs to mind.

Depends on the sector, how peers are performing and market conditions etc. Would these notional shares be in addition to the option? Does the company pay dividends? In a similar place myself.....

I worked in a Bank before "the crash". Shares were falling and the management were constantly talking up the share price just before they offered further share options and the subsequent almost total fall.

Had some options in the company, figured it cant do much worse than it is.

Week after signing up they dropped by 60%!

Canceled that one as even with the discounted rate and 3 years for them to pick up again I cant see them going up that quickly that i couldnt jump in if i wanted to.

They do pay dividends.

A report will be published soon which may affect the prices.

I'm in an odd position as I'd been offered a new role at the end of last year. A more junior member of staff has just found out she won't be getting a role she was promised. I half expected to hear they were retracting the offer to me to given the role and the area that it was in - but I had confirmation from above today that my role is still safe . . . Makes me feel quite positive

Opps

A report will be published soon which may affect the prices.

I wouldn't buy shares in any company who's judgement was so flawed that they counted me as one of their employees

I am not privy to the contents of the report . . . . And if I was and was considering buying shares I don't think I'd mention it on here 🙂

scotroutes - Member

I worked in a Bank before "the crash". Shares were falling and the management were constantly talking up the share price just before they offered further share options and the subsequent almost total fall.

People should have bloody hung for that tbh, I had colleagues pouring bonuses into company shares because they kept getting told how good a deal it was. Folk who knew *-all about shares and investing but believed what their employers said. Getting made redundant and having your savings suddenly become worth a fraction what they were is a lovely combo. Absolutely disgusting tbh, amazing the place hasn't mysteriously burned down.

I don't even know what the drop ended up... I sold most of mine close to the high water mark but the face value is about 1/20th without taking into account the share issues (or "thefts" as they're more correctly known)

Basically- if you don't have a pretty good idea what the answer is already, don't * with shares. Especially don't tie your income to your savings unless you're very confident in the company.

Your companies shares could go down in a general market washout(like now).You should never buy shares after a big fall or rise.Catching a falling knife etc.

AW - sounds very familiar this company.

AW - sounds very familiar this company.

+1

Pretty sure I work for the same company as Pook.

I was sitting on massive 'paper' gains not so long ago, all from share saves, bonus options etc.
Now.....not so much.

As others have said, be careful with tying your income, savings and presumably pension into one company.
I sold roughly half my shares last year, well below the peak, but just felt far to exposed with so much tied into one company. That now looks like a mistake. I should have sold them all 🙄

If you think the company is pretty sound, well run and is likely to prosper in the future (or benefit from some external forces) then it could be a good shout.

If the company is down because it's badly run, in a declining industry with lots of competition then maybe not!

depends if you know enough about the company ....

Everyone here was bigging up buying shares in my employer when they dropped below 10 dollars from a 24 dollar high/18 dollar norm over 5 years....

cant get much lower they said , pile your money in they said.... (and did)

a week later they dropped to 4 dollars 80.

Short of neon lights , a read of the Released financial reports and recent PR's pretty much said this loud and clear.

I put the money i had aside for that day into shell and BP just before xmas - at least they are both up and down stream and had some reasons other than loss making for a low share price Both have gone up by a fair margin - shell saw a near 10% increase as soon as the BG merger was voted through. - and im looking to hold onto them for some time - maybe they will get back to 2/3rd of their peak value - mean while they have confirmed they are still going to pay their dividends of 1.80 dollar/share this year.

Where are you kingisdead?

It depends on the timeframe, how often you buy shares, your attitude to risk, do they usually pay a dividend or are you after growth for a return.

I wouldn't shares on the basis of someone saying they can't go any lower, or on gossip that there would be an announcement.
If you work for the company and know there will be an announcement that will increase the share price you may be investigated for insider trading (I think) Companies that are traded on the stock exchange usually ask/instruct employees not to buy in the run up to announcements.

You should do the basic research as if you didn't work there - what price would they have to be to make sense to buy.
Given you work there you can gain a sense of whether you think it's well run, management attitude, the quality of what you produce/offer.

...and there will always be stories of shares going even lower once you buy but that doesn't mean it always happens.

Understand the fundamentals and accept you may get it wrong.

It's a potential opportunity for sure - buy low, sell high, that's the idea. Companies don't go bust because of their share price, or even because of low profits, they tend to go bust when they run out of cash. So it depends on the reason for the drop in share price. If you work for the company then you should have a good feel for how healthy the business is - what the cash flow is like, orderbook/long term prospects, the environment of the market they operate in etc. Profits are the product of a sum, share price the product of speculation, cash is king. The share price for the company I work for is taking a hammering at the moment but it is fundamentally a very sound company with a solid future, cash rich and a healthy orderbook - i'm throwing what little spare cash I have at buying 'cheap' shares via a monthly share purchase plan, but am under no illusion that it is anything but a long term investment, but I think relatively risk free.

Scotroutes - you are Fred the Shred in disguise and I claim my £5 😉

Good advice w'scott

Remember OP - financial markets are currently distorted by [s]stealing[/s] extraordinary monetary policy, which is designed to mis-price safe assets. Its not working too well at the moment but don't forget that markets are rigged.

So what? ST movements are v difficult to predict especially given the low volumes. As yesterday showed, companies with seemingly low valuations can still fall 6-10% in a day (ie banks trading at v large discounts to their BV).

So make an independent decision - you say the company pays divis - how good is the cover and what is the yield today?

Years ago I worked for a smallish IT consultancy, Fulcrum Solutions, that was bought by a bigger one that had been doing very well - Whittman Hart. The share price jumped up quite a bit to $52 but then they bought USWeb which was considered a v bad move and the price fell by 60% pretty quickly. The management kept telling us how all was fine and it seemed they just wanted us to stay in the share option purchase scheme. Just after we were committed some more bad news came out and the price fell to 10% of the peak. I had decided to go contracting and thought I'd buy some shares as a sort of hedge - I'd earn more as a contractor but would be losing some share options I had.

The company then went bust a few months later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MarchFirst

Buying shares in your own company is maximising risk as you could lose your job and your investment if it all goes tits up.

I think buying shares in your competitor is a better strategy for spreading risk...

[quote=Northwind ]

scotroutes - Member
I worked in a Bank before "the crash". Shares were falling and the management were constantly talking up the share price just before they offered further share options and the subsequent almost total fall.

I am guessing one of two Scotsroutes - if the former, could be back to £2 soon. A punt at that level!?! I think NW was the other one (if memory serves me correctly), now swallowed up thanks to Gordi

Something very odd is going on inside Deutsche Bk by the looks of things!!

Aye, I was Bank of Incompetence, from before they got invaded by the haliban who then suicide bombed Lloyds. I can't remember if Scotroutes was too or if he was Bank of Evil.

On the plus side, it's definitely easier to spend a scottish bank tenner in England now, people have heard of them 😆

Have bought shares on the two company schemes. One is buy one get one free and the other is a purchase scheme against a specified option price. Personally as these are before tax and in the field i am in the shares have got to fall a long long way for me to lose out.
If it happens then it happens I'm not relying on the money to come

😀

Well you have to laugh - I lived through the Rouge* Trader I the 90s!! (* we used to pronounce it as in the make up, not to naughty boy 😉 )

getting tempted to buy some cheap banks soon though...a few more hairy days then average in on bad days

I don't like owning shares in my employer for the reasons already stated, and on the odd occasion that I come into any I sell them pretty swiftly regardless of the perceived "opportunity".

Also I know from experience that share price movements are unpredictable, often irrational, and are probably also manipulated (hard to prove, but to me the circumstantial evidence appears overwhelming, both at individual and market levels). Basically if you're on the inside you'll already know you are, and will know what to do - otherwise, like the rest of us, you're just gambling. And that's a mug's game.

The only sensible way for most folk to invest in shares is via a fund manager, who's job it is to know what you don't. And only a few of them are any good!

Fund managers are experts in managing risk, not necessarily cherry picking individual shares. They work across share portfolio's knowing full well that some will work out, some probably wont balancing risky high yeilding shares against safer less risky but lower yeilding shares, but on balance across the entire portfolio you make a gain. Given the performance of most of the fund managers not many do a particularly good job - or certaily not much better than you can get with a high street ISA or other off the shelf investment scheme, so picking a fund manager can be as risky as picking shares.

I don't see what's wrong with investing in the company you work for. It's generally though of as a good thing and a posibive for the actual company - as long as you feel the company is in a good place. I'm quite risk averse so wouldn't consider investing in discreet shares other than the company I work for. I just wish I had the courage of my convictions ten years ago when they slumped to almost nothing. If I'd have borrowed £30k back then and invested and sold at their high a few years ago, I'd now be writing this note on the deck of a nice yacht anchored off an idyllic meditterranian coast line. I knew at the time I should do that - there was no way the company was going under, but I just didn't have the courage to take the plunge. Hindsights a wonderful thing!

Then again think of Enron, all their Pension funds and savings invested in Enron shares, so when it collapsed they lost pretty much everything!

I've always sold company shares that I've been given/earned as soon as they've matured.

Main reason is risk reduction, I already work for them and if they go t*ts-up then I don't want to lose everything.

Certainly wouldn't be buying any, unless I got a 'deal' - 2 for 1 etc. And then I'd still be selling them as soon as I could.

>investing in the company you work for... generally though of as a good thing and a posibive for the actual company

Tru dat, but most employers pay lip service to this and it's rarely encouraged in any meaningful way. More pertinently, aside from the initial discounts and 2-for-ones that some share schemes provide, there is in fact little incentive for the employee to hold the shares long term, unless by their own actions they can in some way positively and materially influence the company's results, and therefore the share price. I doubt this applies to most.

Was always a push to get more personal shareholders, and apush to get them owning shares in their employer, as if it were some magic incentive.

edit: and related to that, I've always wondered what sort of percentage of the UK permanent workforce actually works for a LSE traded company? Shame everyone who works in the public sector can't alos have a share in their school, police force, local council,...

Every share I've owned by my employer has either been cashed in asap making use of the free trading offer, or has been bought out at a price where you have no control, or has reduced to basically worthless.

Share holding individual stocks is only worth it for speculating, or possibly in the case of utilities holding on to longer term for what are typically more reliable dividends.

So yes, if you want to speculate, then buy. Else flog the lot and speculate on something else, or stick it in another traded device that is spread across more of the market (tracker fund, etc.)

Was always a push to get more personal shareholders, and apush to get them owning shares in their employer, as if it were some magic incentive.

Well they've failed as it's been falling year on year for some time...

UK individuals owned 11.5 per cent of the value of the UK stock market at the end of 2010, down from 16.7 per cent in 1998.

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pnfc1/share-ownership---share-register-survey-report/2010/stb-share-ownership-2010.html

UK ownership of UK quoted stocks
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Foreign ownership of UK quoted stocks
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