April... including 'Results Roulette' and a 'Cannabis Bubble?'

At the April meeting of Investment we looked at an article by Marcus Padley called “Two trends creating results roulette” which had appeared in “The Age” Money section on Wednesday 8th March 2017. This article confirmed what we had discussed at our previous meeting in early March that large movements in share prices, in some cases up to 10% change in price, followed the reporting season. The article also contained information on high frequency traders who use algorithms to detect trends in other people’s trades in nanoseconds without any consideration for fundamentals. 

The Materials, Energy and Utilities Sectors have performed better than some other Sectors over the past 12 months. With energy very much in the news we looked at a few companies in the Energy and Utilities sectors which have performed well over 12 months and also over the past month.

In our final topic for the afternoon we looked at the most commonly traded shares in February 2017 by contract note volumes as shown on the CommSec website. CommSec have not posted a similar list to date for March. However they have listed one for the week-ending 4th April 2017. In that list there are five companies involved in producing medicinal cannabis. None of these companies were included in the February list. One of our members suggested it could be a “cannabis bubble”.

The next meeting of Investment will be on Friday 5th May 2017 at 1.15pm in W4.