Thursday, 24 November 2011

Canadian gold and silver miner performance

Valuation data for a representative list of Canadian gold and silver miners and explorers are maintained on the Gold Miner Pulse site (GMP). On the dedicated ‘Gold Miner Pulse’ page of this blog the performance of the HUI unhedged gold miners index is shown relative to gold bullion. It doesn't look nice: nor over the short term nor over two years, even since the aftermath of the secular financial crisis. In another graph the performance disparity is illustrated among the gold and silver miners of the GMP database. Some lucky picks have been outperforming silver or gold by an impressive margin. Few laggards have lost tremendously despite gold and silver up considerably over the year. A disappointing majority of 61 precious metal miners are in the red since Nov 19 last year. Little individual miner information can be conveyed in one such graph. Therefore, I 'm going into detail to give an idea which miners were good picks and what are the investor's nightmares.

A first analysis in this sense was made in August (See: Stock picking matters).
Over three months later, the performance disparity has only grown, especially near the bottom of the list, though there have been few shifts among miners and explorers in the bottom quintile.

Wednesday, 9 November 2011

Woluwe Shopping houdt de markt van de vastgoedcertificaten recht

De BRECS returnindex (Petercam) van de vastgoedcertificaten heeft postgevat boven 70.000 (eind 1985 = 10.000). Over de voorbije 12 maanden komt de return daarmee op 16% waarmee de BRECS met ruime marge de returnvariant van de BEL20 het nakijken geeft.

Petercam BRECS index (blauw, linkeras) en dividenrendement (rood, rechteras) - klikken om te vergroten
Dit is in zeer grote mate te danken aan de gestage klim van Woluwe Shopping  (koers +22.5% sinds eind december 2010 en +23.4% over 12 maand). Het is inzake beurskapitalisatie al sinds jaar en dag het zwaargewicht onder de vastgoedcertificaten. Het voorbeeldige beursparcours werkt dit nog verder in de hand. Woluwe Shopping staat inmiddels al in voor meer dan 29% van de beurskapitalisatie van de markt van de vastgoedcertificaten.

Wednesday, 2 November 2011

Bullish call option spreads

Time value
Speculators familiar with buying options know it too well: the option value erodes over time if the stock stays level. The option value is composed of two components:
·         Intrinsic value (for a call option above strike or a put option below strike)
·         Time value
While the intrinsic value only depends on the option strike and the share price, time value is a different animal. It is larger for a stock that is most likely to end up ‘in the money’. Hence the time premium is higher the more of the following clauses are fulfilled:
·         the stock price is pretty close to the strike (the option is ‘near the money’),
·         the option has some time left for the stock to pass the strike price,
·         the underlying exhibits a high volatility, making it more likely for the stock to bridge the gap to the strike price.

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