#BP Q3 - Holds dividend ( that is key) - good news on divestments
- 2015-10-27 00:32:08
UK 08:38 Monday, 5 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
Hello Share Chumeroonis. Wasn’t that another marvellous victory for the grumpy crusader? Uncle Tom did really well (again) by fending off a court case threatened by another aggrieved businessman?
Hello share sharpers. I don't think I will be alone in saying that my share portfolio has been decimated by the falling oil price. This is because the Footsie is dominated by big oil shares – BP (BP.) BG (BG.) Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) et al.
Hello Share Munchers. If you look at any old graph in Shareland, you will see that sudden massive dips are almost always followed by a recovery.
The New Year’s rapid increase in the BP (BP.) share price has been testimony to some old market truths; buy for book value and buy when the last man has heard the bad news.
It’s not been a pretty period for the oil price. On Monday (Monday 5 January) ICE Brent Crude Oil fell by a whopping 5.95% to just over 53 dollars a barrel. On Tuesday (Tuesday 6 January) it was down a further 1.05% to 52.50 dollars a barrel. The slide continued yesterday.
I tipped BP (BP.) last year at 484p on the basis that the shares looked good value and without the foresight of knowing that the price of crude oil would fall so far and so fast, particularly given the recovery of the US economy and the eternal problems of the Middle East. Not a good call in hindsight.
Shares can be a real rollercoaster ride. ‘Mr Market’ can perform such gyrations for no logical reason, but this can still have a serious effect on our wealth. This week £62 billion was added to the value of the FTSE 100, as the index enjoyed its best week in three years.
Hello Share Pushers. I know for a fact that you are probably stuck with a load of oil shares. I know I am. Like banks in the olden days, we were under the illusion that we are safe with oil. This was for one overriding reason – that so many things depend on it.
It’s been a shocking week for the FTSE and oil shares. The FTSE was down 2.49% on Friday alone. BP (BP.) has taken a battering too, with a fall of 3.3% and a fall of 6.1% over the previous four days. For some share writers, this might be a quirky thing to write about. But for me I actually put quite a lot of my own money into BP, so it’s more serious and real. However I certainly will not be selling any BP shares, and here’s the main reason why.
The US Supreme Court has piled more misery on BP (BP.) by rejecting its legal challenge to the compensation package over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
As regular readers of my financial research output will attest I am not a skilled technical analyst but the current level of the FTSE-100 index strikes me as interesting. The reason why is sourced in an article I published on this site a couple of months ago where I noted that back then the UK’s leading index was kicking around that 6,800 level. Now I know one correspondent found it to be ‘pointless’ but in the interim selling a few FTSE-100 futures short (as I did) was a sensible way to help protect the value of your portfolio over the last month or two.
BP (BP.) posted results which exceeded expectations yesterday. At the time of writing, the share price has been boosted to 440.1p. It wasn’t long ago that the shares dipped below 410p.
Hello Share Shovers. There are alternatives to the old-fashioned trading of shares when it comes to making a bit of money. Some of these ways become a bit more enticing when the old stock markets are a bit soft, as they are now.
Peter Lynch makes an obvious but interesting point about the PE ratio of shares in his classic One Up on Wall Street. “If you buy back shares in a company selling at two times earnings (a p/e of 2), you will earn back your initial investment in two years, but in a company selling at 40 times earnings (a p/e of 40) it would take forty years to accomplish the same thing. Cher might be a great-grandmother by then. With all the low p/e opportunities around, why would anybody buy a stock with a high p/e?”
Hello Share Mates. I’m beginning to regret holding so many shares in the big oil companies – like BP (BP.) Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) BG (BG.) Tullow Oil (TLW) et al
I’ve been buying a lot of shares lately. I’ve bought some every day this week- and in 2012 I only bought once, some BP (BP.) being the selection. I have a plan to get around 80% of my money into shares, possibly 90%. I am close to 80% at the moment, depending on how you define it.
The more than 5% drop in the share price yesterday of BP (BP) was clear proof that the market was not expecting a US district judge to come to the conclusion that the company had been “grossly negligent” in the Gulf of Mexico. Falling into the hands of the US judicial system, so far as BP is concerned at any rate, has the fantastic aspect that Lewis Carroll brought to Alice in the court of the Red Queen. Can it be real!
