Oil be Blowed!
17/10/2007
Well … I did say in my last column that we’d see bids in both the oil exploration and oil services sectors. It's really only just starting - and in earnest!
Those of you who read my last column will know that I scored with the bid for Sondex, which I'd held for quite a while. This netted me more than £15,000 in profit.
And lucky for me too is that I also had Burren Energy, which is subject to a proposed bid by ENI with other predators hovering in the background. I've held Burren for nearly three years since it was at 240p and so the current bidding war at around 1200p comes as good news.
I do think this is just the start and I hold a number of other sector stocks which I think could end up as targets – here they are in no special order:
Dragon Oil, Petrofac, Wellstream, Hunting, Velosi, Bowleven, Lamprell, Oilexco, Premier Oil and Tullow Oil.
I would expect to carry on holding these regardless of what the main market does for the foreseeable future.
I also hit lucky with some other companies recently - in fact I've had five in my portfolio bid for: Sondex, Burren, Broker Network, Foseco and Domestic & General. The bid for Foseco, an engineering company, was interesting. I wonder whether other smaller engineers like Fenner could soon be in play.
So, at the moment my general market view is to buy oil and oil services stocks, sell property stocks and be wary of retailers. I feel it's going to be a very interesting ‘end of year’ and if there isn't another bid in the oil sector by the year’s end, I'll eat my hat.
(Well I would … if I had one!)
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