here is the good news so please get upset, page-86

This is Mr Lincoln Augustus, first second cousin of Holymagimon.

I was intending to end this thread at my last posting, and so it would have been,if Uncle Tobias had not reminded me of something that happened long long ago.

A long long time ago, when we were more innocent and trusting, and computerised trading was not even thought about, some in the family decided to play the options market. And so it happened that one fine Thursday before the last Friday of the month, they found themselves holding a fair whack of call option contracts for a particular share that were in the money by about 80ct a share. And each contract was for 1000 shares, and there were a lot of contracts involved, so that was worth a lot of money.

Anyway, being plain novices in apool full of shark, they did not close their contracts in the morning when they could have, waiting to see if the price would go up in the afternoon. Just on 3.00pm, the share price ever so suddenly fell by about 90 cts, so that the contracts eventually expired out of the money, totally worthless, leaving the contract holders with very burnt fingers. And the next day, the share price was back where it had been at 2 pm the previous day.

We found out later, maybe true, maybe not, that that late afternoon price drop had been for those call option contract holders' benefit, to artificially close them off at a loss.

Why do I raise this issue?

Because Eastern Star appears to have been treated the same way. It was traveling along well in May, going above 90 cents, till it suddenly hit a big brick wall and went backwards.

Just about the time, I would presume, when HGO and Santos were negotiating their deal. It would appear on the surface that it would have been most beneficial for Santos if Eastern Star's price was kept down during negotiations for HGO's shares and Gasstars 35%.

It must be that Hillgrove is aware that Eastern Star is substantially undervalued at $1, but HGO needs to sell, and that would explain why the price that Hill Grove sold for had an escalation clause added on.

So, what does all this this mean? I interpret this to mean that Eastern Star's price has been artificially held down these last six weeks, and that Santos has promised HGO a sweetener to sell out at the price of $1

And it means that HGO fully expect some sort of price war to be fortcoming in the next 18 months. For, I am sure, they must have had offers from all parties interested in ESG, and they will be in a very good position to guage the state of play.

So, if ESG had been let to run its merry way, it should have been well above a dollar when this move from Santos came about. And if Santos had approached HGO with an ESG price above a dollar, I am sure that they would have had to pay out at least $1.50.

so I would expect the market to awaken to this fact pretty soon, and I would expect ESG to be at $1.50 or more in the vey near future.

And we expect a battle royal to be brewing by and by.

I suppose these are just the collective thoughts of the family.

Blessing of the Lord
MLA