Sigh. If it's only predictable after news is released then it's...

Sigh. If it's only predictable after news is released then it's not predictable at all. I don't know whether you're aware of this, but in gambling (which is what share investment essentially is), to make cash you have to place your bets BEFORE the results are known, not after. If it's already known by the market then it is completely priced in. But don't worry- when we need someone to tell us something we already knew, and was obvious to everyone to begin with, you'll be the first person we call.


As for my list of investment calls, I've made a few decent ones on this stock, and I was telling you all to sell RMP at 30p+. I even posted on the RMP board that their stock price could well fall even in the event of a discovery, and was laughed at by the £1 brigade- but was proven totally right in the end. There's 2 sides to making money in the stock market- one is choosing good investments, and the other, often overlooked factor, is timing- as proven with Range here- you can now buy twice as many shares as you could have done a few weeks ago.

In my first 6 months of investing I made some bad calls (not on this stock, but on a couple of others). One of those was holding onto a stock awaiting drilling results- guess what- it was a duster and I lost quite a bit- hence why I always warn people about the risks of holding for results, especially for wildcat wells. I'd certainly never do so again in any case. In the last couple of years since then my 'mistakes' have basically being limited to selling out too soon or not buying in at precisely the right place- i.e. I made some money, but not as much as I could have done had I called it perfectly. I prefer to be conservative and make less money however, than to be too ambitious and risk losing a lot.

AIM Oil and Gas (across most shares) has been hit quite hard over the past 18 months, and so conservatism has paid off so far. Just about everyone employing 'buy and hold' strategies during this time has lost money, while those who invest on fundamentals, but are not averse to selling and buying back in at strategic points (I'd put myself into this category) have often made money.

With that said, no one gets it right all the time- I certainly don't, nor have I ever claimed to. Hell, I bought into Xcite Energy at 102p a few weeks ago and now it sits at 89p. I'm not worried in the slightest as I'm confident in the fundamantals over a 18 month period, but there's no denying I could have had more shares had I waited.

I do consider myself to be a good investor- as is proven by my higher than average profits when viewing the whole 2.5 year period I've been doing this- but I'm certainly far from perfect.