share price, page-16

Yes Veecat, I agree. I take Jhu's point though- I have very few skills when it comes to charts but it is clearly a downtrend. Maybe the increase in volume today indicates some more buying interest- who knows. I will keep buying, in greater volumes as it keeps heading down.

Mike- to take the point about owner earnings a bit further. I think its an original Buffett concept- to work out the realistic earnings the owner (shareholder) is achieving. I notice in your posts that you like dividend producing companies- this is exactly why- it means they are clearly generating surplus cash. There are a lot of people out there who advocate growth, and that companies with exciting growth prospects should not be paying out dividends (and indeed re-investing profits for greater return). The flip-side is, with a zero dividend policy, it is difficult for the investor to know how much of the capital expenditure is for growth and how much is for sustaining capital expenditure. Very few (I have hardly seen any) companies actually split their capex in a transparent manner.

I've noticed you are heavily invested in gold.
Gold and oil companies are some of the worst culprits when it comes to opaque cashflow statements, reporting cash costs that do not include very necessary exploration and development costs (and in some cases even royalties). Ideally you need to know the IRR for each individual well or minepit to know if they are truly economic.