Mr Obama has a bad case of the Chamberlains

Imagine if you will Barack Obama as a small child in the schoolyard, a bully crowding in on him ready for a biff.

He gets hit, says hes a "bad boy", turns the other cheek and continues getting hit over the term of his school days.

Imagine again if you will a young good looking Barack Obama in his mid 20s walking down the road with his best friend, when a big fellow with malicious intent lays into Barack's buddy.

Barack utters "bad man", does nothing to defend his mate and he ends up paralysed after the attack.

Fast forward to today, Barack is President and is confronted with North Korea blasting a ballistic missile over Japan, destination unknown, Barack and the UN say "bad country" do nothing and we are all left wondering what next.

These things confronted one Neville Chamberlain in the 1930s.

Appeasement towards your bullies/enemies simply doesn't work, they will still be your enemies if you do nothing but then they will know they can continue to escalate the bullying without appropriate consequence.

Eventually when you turn that much cheek you can run the risk of getting taken from behind.

Related Amazon Reading

Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War (New Frontiers in History) by Frank McDonough

c Political Animal 2009

Sweetheart deal for Fletcher Building's friends makes small investors sick

Bruce Sheppard had a go at it yesterday and now it is my turn to have a go at Fletcher Building [FBU.NZ] management for the cavalier attitude they have for small Fletcher investors.

At the heart of that attitude is the recent capital restructuring to raise funds to retire debt and reinforce cashflow.

Institutional investors basically got a sweetheart deal from Fletcher management when they got cut price shares at NZ$5.35 per share on a pro-rata basis. That is, in proportion to the shares they already hold. A deal apparently will be offered to smaller shareholders, but capped at NZ$100 million and not pro-rata, so we got the arse end of the donkey here.

Compounding this favouritism, apparently non-institutional "large investors" (whatever that means) have also got some cream on top of the sweetheart deal for institutions that makes it so sweet smaller investors are bound to chuck up after reading it. This particular deal will give special rights to those large non-institutional investors to ratchet up their holdings to reduce the diluting effects of the placement to institutions.

Now I don't know about you but if you are a small Fletcher shareholder (I am, I have 1000) you might be suffering a diabetic reaction to all this sweet favouritism to the big boys by now and wonder out loud to yourself again why the NZX might be an unfavourable place for New Zealanders to invest considering they are not on a level footing with the big boys that Mark Weldon's NZX has granted a wavier to to snap up more of Fletchers.

According to the NZX website the folk who may have participated in the $405 million placement of shares concluded last week are connected to Fletchers by virtue of the fact that some are "Associated Persons of FBU Directors by virtue of having a common Directorship with FBU and several placees participating in the Placement".

Those people are:

(a) ANZ National Bank Limited, by virtue of Sir Dryden Spring’s and Mr John Judge’s common Directorship;
(b) Westpac New Zealand Limited, by virtue of Mr Ralph Waters’ common Directorship; and
(c) the Accident Compensation Corporation, by virtue of Mr John Judge’s common Directorship.

So it gets even worse when you dig down into the detail. Its like a bloody incestuous Utah Mormon clan!

I haven't got the time to read through the pages of verbose detail but I guess some will be revealed at a latter stage. Most will be lost on the average small mom and dad Fletcher share holder because media are too lazy to do the research - all except Bruce Sheppard, I am sure we will be hearing from him again on this matter.




There is however a solution to this.

Strong demand from those mentioned above for shares in the capital raising aside, Fletcher Building still operates in an environment of weak business prospects and an uncertain future as far as sales go.

Global stockmarkets have raced ahead over the last month or so and there is downside to come.

Shares in the company have ranged from $5.11- $6.50 over the last six months (see chart above) and it is not unlikely scenario that smaller shareholders like me could pick up extra shares cheaper than the proposed $5.35 to stop dilution of their holdings by buying them on the open market. You don't have to participate in this madness and still stay undiluted!

That is just what I am propose to do .

Bugger them.


Fletcher Building @ Share Investor

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c Share Investor 2009

Latest Colmar Brunton Poll reveals Phil Goff is history

In a week that revealed Helen Clark felt rejected by New Zealand when she lost in a landslide election to National last November comes more bad news for Labour.

New Zealand is in love with John Key and the National Party.

They have done well so far despite for delving into "big gay outs" and cycleways just to win popularity but John Key continues to urinate into Phil Goff's pocket.

ONE News Latest ONE News Colmar Brunton poll results as of 05/04/09

• WATCH the video (4:47)

It might be wrestling with the biggest economic down-turn in 70 years, but the National-led government is riding a massive wave of popularity according to the latest ONE News Colmar Brunton Poll.

Despite some of National ministers needing to be reined in like Richard Worth's, whose private business trip to India had the opposition accusing him of both a cock-up and a conspiracy, it hasn't affected National's or PM John Key's popularity with the masses.

It is still sky high in the polls with 57%. Labour is well back on 31%, the Greens are on seven percent and the Maori Party and ACT both hovering around two percent.

Translating that to seats in Parliament, it gives National 70, Labour 37 and the Greens eight.

Assuming electorate seats are held the Maori Party has five seats, ACT two and United Future and the Progressives one seat each. TVNV.co.nz

What is clear is that Kiwis wont even consider Labour as long as Phil Goff is spluttering his way through his opposition position.

c Political Animal 2009

What 11 years of Stockmarket investing has taught me

This might be depressing or revealing or both but hang on dear readers you just might learn from my experience.

Discuss this subject @ Shareinvestor.net.nz

If I knew what I know now before I started investing in the stockmarket 11 years ago would I still invest today?

I think that is a really good question.

Again it is a question of long VS short term investing.

The first stockmarket investment I made was quite large at the time. It was around 90% of what I owned at the time. I bought 9600 Telstra shares in March 1998, from memory at about $3.9o something, and sold them 4 days latter for $4.47. I made around $4000 very quickly and got bitten buy the stockmarket bug.

The brokerage was around 600 bucks, no internet trading and getting a broker was akin to joining a secret schoolboy club.

My second investment was made in 1998 (7 April to be exact), was for 1000 shares in the Restaurant Brands [RBD.NZ] IPO at NZ $2.20 per share. If I had held on until last week I would have been able to sell RBD shares at around 80c each. If you include dividends and tax credits totaling around $1.20 I would still be short 20c per share! (see chart below for the sad story)

I sold out years ago at around $1.30. Interesting that I was to pick the buy and hold approach to investing because since these two purchases stockmarket investors have seen: *The Asian meltdown of the late 1990s *The tech bubble bursting in 2000 *9-11, where stocks dropped afterward for many months *The accounting scandals in America in 2002 *2007- ? The credit meltdown and associated recession I have learnt along the way and I am still learning. I bought one internet stock that I lost money on (around $3000) sold all my shares on September 11 and lost a little and then started investing in Sky City Entertainment [SKC.NZ] shares in 2002 and then sold during the accounting scandal for another small loss. Looking back I can see how much of an A-grade moron I really was. I shouldn't have bought the internet stock, that was greedy and I shouldn't have sold in 2001 or 2002. They were mistakes but I learnt from them. I started my current portfolio in 2002 and haven't looked back since. Seven years latter it is still in the black (when dividends and tax credits are included) even after all the recent stockmarket calamity-among the worst in living memory-and I am looking forward to a good return as the years go by. It took me until 2002 to develop my investment strategy, a full five years after my first stock purchase, and it has been from my mistakes that I have learned the bulk of what I now know. I knew nothing of the stockmarket 11 years ago, the most I had heard or seen about it was when I saw Michael Douglas in Wall Street 10 years previously and even then it was as foreign to me as a brain cell is to Al Gore. After 11 years, knowing what I know now would I still invest in the stockmarket? I will keep you posted. Recent Share Investor Reading The Headliner: 2 April 2009 Edition Emotional Refuse A Hickey in Bernard's Advice Nuplex rights decision a dilemna for shareholders Share Investor's 2009 Stock Picks: Looking Back Dead Cats and Vicious Bears Long VS Short: Freightways Ltd Related Amazon Reading The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition) (Collins Business Essentials) by Benjamin Graham Buy new: $13.25 / Used from: $9.24 Usually ships in 24 hours c Share Investor 2009