Wednesday, 28 August 2019

Week of great promise turns to trauma and heartbreak

This was meant to be a week of great optimism and promise. Late on Friday Bury FC were given a reprieve from being thrown out of the football league, and there was enthusiasm on the OPTI:Optibiotix forums about the impending H1 results and the next stage in our march towards profitability.

This morning all that hope lay in ruin.

Late last night the EFL expelled Bury from the football league.

Early this morning underwhelming H1 results caused a 30% crash in the OPTI:Optibiotix share price.

Yeah thanks. Kick a man when he's down!!

I sat shell shocked as my football team vanished from the league and my portfolio value plummeted by over £18,000.

I was in a daze most of the morning.

There's only one thing I know how to do when I'm on the floor and battered. That's get back up and fight to the bitter end.

I've held AMYT:Amryt Pharma for many years, since they were FAST:Fastnet Equity. I sold a chunk a few years ago for £392.17 (6.5%) profit, but kept 1,385 shares. They have been suspended for months as they looked into a reverse takeover of Aegerion Pharmaceuticals. They re-listed yesterday, but to my horror I read that Harry Stratford was standing down as Chairman. The main reason I invested in the first place was for his experience on the board. I am also concerned that they are taking over a loss-making company, especially as I've been bitten by some disastrous junior pharma shares lately, with MTFB:Motif Bio and N4P:N4 Pharma losing me thousands with limited hope of recovery.

The news in the RNS set so many red flags waving I had to get out. Fortunately the share price had risen on re-listing and my loss was relatively small. I sold my shares at 100p after paying 111.2152p, so ended up with a £167.28 (10.8%) loss. This meant I still ended up with over £200 profit from my overall holding, but that's a very small percentage gain.

There's no need to ask what I did with the cash. I wasn't going to see OPTI:Optibiotix go below 50p and not do anything about it. I bought 2,937 shares at 46.7998p costing £1,386.46. The timing was good, as they ended the day on a bid price of 53p so have already made up most of the £167 loss I took this morning to get the cash, as the new OPTI shares are up by £146. I firmly believe these have a much greater chance of success than my AMYT shares would have.

This is part of my plan to get up to 100,000 shares in OPTI, and I'm not far off. This purchase takes my holding to 97,023 so every penny change in share price is worth £970. Eeeek!

Unfortunately the 12p drop prior to buying these shares cost me £11,280. It could have been worse. At one point I was losing nearly £19,000 in a few hours of the market opening.

So where are we after this day of traumatic events?

The combined portfolios have dive-bombed by £11,654 widening the deficit over cost and value to £31,927 and reducing the portfolio value to just £72,463. That's barely above the cash injection line and did cross it at one point during the morning. Fortunately I have 2 days before my snapshot, so there's hope that people will realise just how mad the drop in share price was today, and pile back in. I've never needed a good news story as much as I need one this week.

Meanwhile, regarding my other source of trauma, rumours are circulating that an international consortium has £7 million to buy Bury FC. It's too bloody late to come up with that now! They are appealing for the EFL to rescind the expulsion, but surely it's too little too late? There is a spark of hope. It's maybe just a fool's hope, but that worked for Frodo...

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