Game Group hasn’t had the Xmas price run up as wished, so I have sold it. I sold it around a month ago at around 170. There are two main pressures on it as I can see. Firstly, the supermarkets have been undercutting the selling prices e.g. Modern Warfare 2 is £47 in HMV or GMG and only £27 in Tesco or Sainsbury. Secondly, digital downloads are on the horizon and this will destroy the business model of GMG. Time to get out and never look back.
SIPP is now up to around £17,300 – so going well.
Today IG Group (IG:LSE) reported that their UK market has reached saturation. I find this disturbing news considering the market expected growth. I am surprised the stock price has only fallen 4% in early trading. Therefore, I have sold out today at £3.57.
Although I gained around 20% on this trade, it saddens me as I thought it was a long term hold that would provide great gains.
It seems IG Group’s revenue is hampered when investors favour stocks, especially long over short positions. This coupled with lower market volatility makes these spreadbetting firms uncompetitive, when compared to ISA accounts in the UK where investors can fund up to £7200 per year. All my stock holdings are now in either a SIPP or ISA wrapper.
However, GMG is doing well at £1.85 after buying at £1.52 and with the blockbuster games pipeline, including Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2, I expect this stock to be a great performer. I’m currently up around 20% on it but hope for more. Incidentally, my SIPP is now £16,200. A decent recovery, but only around the same level I started with 3 years ago. However, my ISA has more than made up for it, but that’s not the focus of this site and listing it’s details feels like cheating as this is a SIPP site dairy site for my Pension investments.
I’m very pleased that I bought Lloyds shares around a month ago and seemed to have timed the purchase nicely. But now I’m selling. I don’t want to ride on the back of a slow drift price slide. This may be a mistake, but as confidence is coming back to the market, smaller cap stocks are set to provide good opportunities. This brings me neatly to the next stock I’m adding to my SIPP.
Game group is a bit of a seasonal stock performer and it has shown some recent price appreciation. The price is at a low point after a rundown from earlier in the year. So, I’m buying some of these to hopefully catch a price run up to Xmas.
Earnings will be driven by the new games in the Sales pipeline, like Call of Duty and Guitar Hero V, providing focus to the gaming sector in the coming months when these market bursting games arrive.