AIM Investments Share Discussion Threads

[notanewmember] 01/12/2008 18:53

Since the dotbomb. Traders made money in AIM by buying low, and ramping the hell out of the stock on bulletin boards. They sell on the spike and the punters are left holding on the hype. These guys IMO have fled.

Today, even a good RNS does nothing to lift stocks. There are no punters! Its all falling on deaf ears.

It is a good time for an investor who does not care about losing money or having their capital tied up for years unable to sell due to illiquidity.
But there aren't many about.

[notanewmember] 01/12/2008 18:08

Hey Mr Brown, AIM needs a bailout! How about AIM being CGT free?

[notanewmember] 01/12/2008 18:05

My advice would be to dollar cost average a position you can afford to lose, with the expectation of no recovery in 2009. I hold AIM shares but they are confined to the bottom drawer...

[tara7] 01/12/2008 17:54

Reason is this , to buy a cheap lump of AIM stock you want a punter dumping large amounts, you then buy [and buy big, without pushing up the price you have to pay for more of the stock.] No idea if we have 50% to go but buy on a foreward pe of 3 to reduce risk.

[notanewmember] 01/12/2008 17:49

The time to buy is at the low. The UK recession has only just started. Why buy now, when there is a further 50% fall to go?

[tara7] 01/12/2008 17:44

Fail to understand some here, the right price for buying on Aim is now, over the next year or two. You buy when others sell, the fact is others paid to much in the past. Just buy firms that are on a pe of 3 or under , upbeat directors buying, growing profits etc.

[notanewmember] 01/12/2008 17:38

UK punters are broke. City spivs are looking forward to queues at the job centre.

My new revised target for the AIM index is a new multi year low is 200 pts by the end of 2009.

Will the last one turn out the lights.

[notanewmember] 01/12/2008 11:22

Funny this AIM index.

Is there anybody left?

These bulletin boards hardly have any public partipants left.

Just brokers, market makers and CEO's talking to themselves left.....!

[notanewmember] 12/11/2008 00:46

YOO, SUB, OVD, ERX, BLR, DVS, BKE, MDZ, ACG, LED, VOG, CPNR, FRP, TAD, MIRA

[notanewmember] 12/11/2008 00:21

AIM for hell


free stock charts from www.advfn.com


Just see post 116 of this thread, money heading out of this goose.


free stock charts from www.advfn.com

[yikyak] 11/11/2008 09:12

This thread doesn't show up on the 'Latest Message Board Discussions'. Suspicious eh!

I could go into a rant but can't be bothered, I voted with my feet and climbed out of the AIM cesspool years ago.

This was the latest stockmarket promotion I called from one of many serial directors who swim in the AIM waters.

[asparks] 23/9/2008 11:27

JOIN THE CAMPAIGN TO BAN SHORT SELLING OF EQUITIES


Please sign the petition



sign up, it ends 25 September 2008 (2 days time)
pass it on to many as possible

[stuart14] 10/9/2008 16:45

Good article. Thoroughly agree. I really hope they do something to help the AIM soon. Tax relief for investors, a new SETS system for trading, maybe even relief to institutions to tempt them back in the market. The AIM has been dying for 3 years now, currently the resources sector is going through its final breaths. What will rise from the ashes? Who knows.

[yikyak] 10/9/2008 16:24

September 08, 2008

A Toothless Market That Offers No Liquidity And Locks Its Directors Out - Just What Exactly Is The Point Of An Aim Listing?


By Alastair Ford



What is it with the Aim regulators? Are they blind, ignorant or simply somnolent? To many it seems that amid the summer's conflagration of valuation all the Aim authorities did was fiddle while the market burned. It may be more to do with the market itself, of course - structurally flawed, the regulators are powerless to make a difference. One way or another, resources companies listed on Aim took a beating over the summer. And the whole year hasn't exactly been a bed of roses. Of course, it hasn't been easy elsewhere either. The Toronto market sank under a deadweight of disinterest this summer too, and after some tentative steadying of the ship over the last couple of weeks, is now waiting nervously to see what autumn has in store. The picture's not been too much better in Australia, although overall it's to Australia that most of the surviving near-term bulls seem to have migrated.
Across the globe, weaker commodities prices and the wider withdrawal of cash from equities in general has hit hard, but on Aim the crunch was especially pronounced. Two factors really put the squeeze on. One is the structure of the market itself, and the way trades in most Aim-traded junior companies go through the market maker system rather than being settled on a matched-bargain basis. This is a question of a liquidity, the perennial weakness of Aim, but one that has looked particularly pronounced this summer. And regulators take note: one that is far less of a problem in Toronto and Sydney. When juniors in Canada complain of thin trading, they do not mean no trades at all for days on end. The second factor is that those in charge of Aim have little or no understanding of junior resources companies. This has several ramifications, including a constant befuddlement on the market's part as to what constitutes price sensitive information. No-one at Aim really seems to have worked that one out, so the consequence is that virtually any information is deemed price sensitive. In fact, and especially this year, not much has moved markets, not in the way of company-specific information anyway. You only have to track newsflow against volume for a company like African Eagle to know that whatever good news the company had was released into an indifferent market.

In recent years London's junior market has gone global, marketing in all sorts of glamorous and exotic overseas locations. It's managed to pull in listings from all around the world. But the real success has been in resources companies, in mining and oil & gas, and particularly those from Australia and Canada, with a few from the USA and elsewhere thrown in for good measure. The attraction for these companies is the vast pool of capital that the City has access to. Regulators take note: it's the City's money that interests these companies, not the Aim market per se. Many City institutions, especially the generalist funds, want a local listing, and that means Aim. Good for the Aim market, but not so good for the companies concerned, as Aim's inability to draw in any retail interest means that unless the market is constantly drip-fed, the trading pressure is almost always on the downside because there just isn't much interest – and it doesn't matter how good the story.

The way it works is as follows: a company lists on Aim, raising a certain number of millions of pounds from institutions along the way. Those institutions will have heard the company's story in a pre-listing roadshow, and will surely have liked that story if they've put money in. They will, therefore, not be particularly disposed to sell any shares once the listing gets away, although the early seed money and the hedge funds do sometimes take profits. More likely though, a small resources company listing on Aim will be viewed by those funds that take a favourable stance as a "buy and hold", to be tucked away until some really big news comes along.

So far so good. The problem comes when anyone actually wants to trade the shares. Where are these shares supposed to come from? Who's marketed to the general punter who ought to be relied upon to drive volume? The answer is: no-one. And where's the volume? There isn't any. It's the same old story. And there aren't many other places to go. Directors often have sizeable stakes, but for reasons we'll get onto in a minute, aren't often in a position to trade. The institutions don't want to sell, especially into a market where there's so little volume that a major transaction will trash the share price at a stroke.

Easy as ABC, a liquidity vacuum is built into the heart of the structure of the Aim market. Canada and Australia don't have this problem for the simple reason that retail and small-time investors are actually encouraged to buy in. In Canada and Australia the small time punters drive the volume and the price, while the institutions bide their time, sitting on profits or losses as the case may be. Not so in London, where brokers aren't allowed to market companies to anyone outside their own specific client base, anyone, in short, who isn't something called a "sophisticated investor". The catch with that is that by definition an existing client base is already in the market. Getting new buyers in is therefore something that market regulations effectively block.

So Aim has its own self-inflicted liquidity problem. How to get around this? The answer is the market maker system. This is actually in theory the perfect solution for Aim, in that the junior market ends up licensing other people to make a market within a market. The idea is that market makers build a book in a company's shares, which they then price up with a bid-ask spread that ensures they can make a little bit for their own trouble. Any investor going into the market will then find instant volume in the form of the market maker's book. The more market makers, the more competitive the spreads, and so efficiency is regained even in the face of general illiquidity.

But the practical reality reveals several drawbacks. First, market makers don't always like to build their own book, especially in markets like these when they may well be sitting on lots of shares that nobody wants. As Aim grew it was intriguing to watch the number of market makers grow too. In theory that was even better for volume, as they would compete on price, and so spreads would narrow. But in fact they now mark their prices to match each other, and if one slashes prices in order to find a buyer, instead of hoovering up stock in order to pass on to their own customers, all the other market makers slash prices too, for the simple reason that they don't have any customers. So if anyone does come into buy, a market maker will often find, contrary to the original idea, that it's necessary to go out into the market to secure shares to fulfil the order. And the way to secure those shares is to mark the price up dramatically enough to attract someone else in. Likewise with a sell order: the price is marked down and down and down, until the shares are so ridiculously cheap that some "sophisticated" bargain hunter can't resist. Hence extreme share price volatility on virtually no trading. Hence, killer spreads. And that doesn't make anyone feel relaxed.

Directors, of course, can usually be relied upon to buy shares. Investors want to see their directors backing their own companies, and directors, to their credit, tend to want to back them. When directors do move into the market, the impact can be immediate, as director buying instils confidence, and gives the market makers something to work with. But the Aim regulators are less sure it's a good idea. Minesite carried out an unscientific, but fairly extensive, survey of directors of Aim-traded resources companies, and found a high degree of frustration about reporting requirements and allied restrictions on directors' dealings. One director commented - perhaps inadvertently summing up the whole mentality of the regulators - that the rules are set up in such a way as to assume a director is guilty until proven innocent. Thus directors have their hands tied for much of the calendar year, prevented either from buying or selling shares in their own companies by what's termed a "closed period", an arbitrary two month ban on trading shares ahead of a given set of financial results, be they interims or finals. Directors are also, rightly in the opinion of virtually all that were surveyed here, restricted from trading when they have access to price sensitive information. But the irony for Aim's resources companies is that financial results are generally not price sensitive, since the majority of companies are explorers and will book a loss every time. What is price sensitive are the results of drilling or other exploratory activities. And since these activities are the meat and drink of explorers and are ongoing most of the year, directors are locked out once again.

This matters, for several reasons. From Aim's point of view, the restrictions are much more onerous than they are in Australia, where the rules sensibly focus simply on price sensitive information, and don't lock directors out of the market for long arbitrary periods ahead of financials that have no material impact. Many Australian company directors are sick of Aim's restrictions, because of course it means they are locked out of their own market too, while directors of their non dual-listed peers can, with far greater frequency, support their companies. Lots of Australians are considering de-listing from Aim. Tianshan Gold has already gone. More may follow.

One problem is that the restrictions on directors' dealing are not widely known. Investors find it bemusing that company directors don't go into the market to prop up an ailing share price, and often get on the phone to demand an explanation. All in a day's work for a director, you may say, and you'd be right. But the net result is that you're left with an unhappy investor and an unhappy director. Again, not great for the Aim market when it's competing on a global stage.

So we come back to the simple fact that the Aim regulators don't understand resources companies. Another company director comments succinctly, that "the only financial number of materiality for exploration companies is cash in the bank". Broadly speaking that's true. Investors need to know if a company can afford to keep exploring, and if not, how long it's got before the sharks start circling. The profit and loss account bears little relevance. Even less a cash flow statement. In light of this, many directors feel that a reduction of the close period, by, say, a half, to one month, would be a sensible move. It's to be doubted whether the Aim authorities will take note, however, or even understand the argument. Back in the day, the London stock exchange used to employ a dedicated resources specialist to oversee companies trading in London, but also, crucially, to provide a voice for them at the regulatory table. But that was long before the current boom got going. The stock exchange does say it has somebody on post, but no-one knows who it is. Or if there is anyone, what they do.

Now and again if there is a transgression of the rules, Aim does call in a panel of so-called Wise Men to advise it. These Wise Men like to keep their identities under wraps, partly, one suspects, because although the advice they dispense is indeed wise, it's not always acted upon. Thus, in the recent shenanigans involving Meridian Petroleum, although consulted, the Wise Men were given such limited scope for action that they served as little more than a rubber stamp for the wrap over the knuckles that Aim eventually dished out to Meridian.

So, it's hardly a regime with teeth. Which is probably another reason why directors suffer from so many restrictions, under the old totalitarian maxim that if you prevent people from doing anything, you are also preventing wrong-doing along the way. Nevertheless, the directors that Minesite consulted did have some sympathy with the market's predicament. No-one wants their shares trading on a shonky market with a reputation for dodgy dealings. So several suggestions were proffered, the most popular one being, as mentioned above, a shortening of the close period to one month. Other helpful ideas for the Aim authorities to consider included a special dispensation to trade to be given by the market on application, and on the assurance that all price-sensitive information was already out in the market. One director suggested some sort of tie-in with Germany, possibly through Euronext, where the retail interest is much greater, and the liquidity issue could be tackled head on. Another suggested that directors could have their share dealing accounts locked in escrow for a given period in order to ensure that trading wasn't just occurring ahead of specific, as-yet undisclosed events.

All of which goes to show that Aim isn't dead in the water yet. The number of new listings may have dried up, but there is plenty of willingness to try to make this market work, through the bad times as well as the good. But let's hope that the powers-that-be wake up and realise what an asset its stable of resources companies is – before it's too late.