Finally bought Lloyds Bank

I've been watching LLOY:Lloyds Bank shares for ages now. After expressing interest in the government sell-off, I was intrigued to see the price slip below the minimum threshold that would enable the Government to sell. I believe this is 73p, so with the 5% discount offer, the minimum price you could buy the shares under the scheme is 69p. When I saw they had slipped to 65p I decided the time had come to act.

This morning I added £700 to my SIPP and purchased 1204 shares at 65.36p plus £3.93 stamp duty costing £799.81. That's £48 cheaper than I'd be able to buy them under the Government scheme in spring (assuming they get back to 73p by then).

Although it is being stated that the bank will be slow to return to reasonable profit and high dividends, I believe the fundamentals of the business are that much stronger, and there's an outside chance that not all the money put aside for PPI mis-selling will be required. They flew through the recent stress tests so should be able to survive any future financial uncertainty.

These are now locked away in my pension fund as a long term dividend payer.

Meanwhile the interim sell-off money came through from PUR:Pure Wafer but my StockTrade account won't let me withdraw it yet. It's taken them significantly longer than other broker services for the cash to appear, according to the Pure Wafer bulletin board. When it is available I will transfer it straight into my bank account to replace the cash I added to the SIPP this morning.

I've accounted for the cash as if I had sold the shares at 163p after purchasing at 169.95p. I will then flag the outstanding shares as costing £0 and being worth 25p but leave them in the portfolio until the cash is paid in September. This means I'm showing a £33.35 loss on the sale until September, when it will become £42 profit, assuming they pay out the full 25p.

Aside from all that it was a relief to see shares creep up a little today. I've started clawing back some of the losses from last week, but it's going to be a slow painful process.