Acol is a 51 year old retired police officer who had to leave in 1993 after being diagnosed with MS. Has the misfortune to live in Bucks (Chalfont St Peter) which probably has the lowest prescribing rate for Beta Interferon in the western world! Consequently, he is neither taking the drug nor investing in Schering AG. Principal aim in life is to avoid being consigned to a wheelchair, writing pertinent letters to Health Authority/MP etc, investing and (of course) playing duplicate bridge. Specific areas of investment include IT warrants, property shares - RGLN and Oil stocks - SIA & ROS
anthonyjb is 48, and lives in East Anglia. Researching shares to find the truth behind the figures is an extension of his work providing accountancy and investigative evidence for civil and criminal litigation, and insurance companies. He day trades, mainly in UK small caps, using technical analysis to select stocks for more detailed review of their fundamentals.
Bigwig is 45 lives in Suffolk with Mrs Bigwig and the 4 littlewigs, and those who know him will testify to the fact that he is a barbers worst nightmare. His vocational time has been spent it Telecoms and IT and after 14 years investing in the small stuff, finally sold it all in June 98 but is climbing back in now. Passionate about the charts and Ipswich Town footie club.
Caradog is a family doctor in his mid forties. A Welshman who moved to a small town in Swedish Lapland in 1993 and survives happily thanks to a snowmobile and the internet. Made easy money in the mid eighties by investing in high flyers which later bit the dust - unerringly picking Polly Peck, Corton Beach, Ramar Textiles, FSM Properties, Campari and Sykes Pickavant, may they rest in peace. Survived the crash of 87 more by luck than judgement to become a more sceptical and cautious investor who is unlikely to give up his day-job. Still thinks shorting is like using a hairdryer in the bath.
Cheshire is 42 and undertakes Economic Development consultancy work for an American company. He lives in Cheshire with all the trappings - mortgage, wife and two kids. He holds MKS,RGE and PRO but is rapidly increasing his portfolio. He is a keen Man Utd fan and season ticket holder at Old Trafford.
CopyKat is a 30 year old banking IT specialist. He lives in Godalming, Surrey and the last two years have been spent commuting between Amsterdam and Frankfurt - if its Tuesday at 0730 it must be Heathrow airport. Loves good food and the odd beer or three, but his real love is motorbikes. Hates those serious types who have yet to realise that life is too short for this. He had a good 1998 but thinks that in 1999 he will make enough to buy Bill Gates lunch.
Danb is 50 and lives in Singapore where he works as a Control System/Instrumentation Engineer in the oil business working on that Y2K thing. Home in the UK is in West Horley. He says he does too much business travelling within Asia, US & Europe. He likes charts and all that good TA stuff, mostly using Omnitrader. He recently 'invested' in the latest ARM-2 system from Nirvana (returned 3*cost in 1st week!). Dan produces a 'Stocks Data CD' in Metastock format. His Wife is Vice Chairman of British Association in Singapore, so she is a good contact for anyone moving to Singapore.
DanNotDan is 35 and the head of IT in a specialist higher education institution. Has done quite well with the odd ad hoc buy and hold strategy, is now preparing for retirement at 55 on the back of the Buffet/Slater wisdom. He currently holds CCT, COL, NLS, and WCL.
DocProc is 55yrs young,lives in West Yorkshire and now a semi-retired ex company chairman of two companies making fitted bedroom and kitchen furniture. Also manage and trade a private portfolio of shares and various diverse residential properties also with the help of his wife. He loves the BB banter and admits to being a bit of a gambler with lots of the adventurous stuff and some cre ones too but needs to start buying low and selling high. Current holdings include gambles,CDE, CLN, DLG, EEN, GIM and certs, LLOY, NTX, NU. and SGE. His beady eyes are also cast on EID and CCT and longs for positive returns on SDG.
Epsilon is mid twenties and a full time trader in UK and US equities as well as equity options which he has now been trading for two years. Formerly a company Director in the retail sector he now enjoys the succesful fruits of his investments that extend to private and commercial property ownerships.
Erik The Viking is mid thirties and grey from the responsibilities of rape and pillaging, and says he prefers the former to the latter. Is an avid promoter of spam news/trend trader as opposed to fundamental/TA Trader. Trades across the short/medium/long term spectrum.
Garaineag is a 24 year old Irish Dental student who lives in Dublin and has given up his qualified aircraft engineer career so that he can do something he can really get his teeth into. Although he is only a small time investor he is determined to become a big time investor and accrue lots of the filthy lucre. Loves the small company stuff he can relate to i.e. Pharma`s and Aerospace and for sheer excitement is into CLN and NMT.
Gazza is 42, works as a computer programmer and lives in Worcestershire where they make excellent sauce which helps our Bloody Marys. He is into SDG, PIC, PTI, PTY and JBA (ouch!).
Goldfinger is a 30 year old sales rep in the instrumentation business and has also recently started his own business. His expectations of its success lead him to believe he will retire at 40 and this will be aided and abetted by investments in DLG, CLN, PEN, RST, TRA, and ALBK. He could have retired earlier if Tadpole had not done the dirty on him, and he now holds bigger companies both long and short term.
Goz is 35 years old and now works for a large UK software house. He is living in Northampton. He is the whole committee of an investment club and runs his own portfolio including Tesco,Travis Perkins,MDIS,VTY. Has foregone his interest in ION and will soon lose the phone too.
Greystone is 51 and an IT Consultant living in Derbyshire.
His modesty forbids him to include in his profile that he is a founder
of the B-B-Bugle and a link between ESI subscribers and ESI itself and
has done much to promote the board improvements. His 1999 non-trading ambitions
are to find a new job and move South to be closer to his family. He hopes
his recovery stocks will hurry up and recover in 1999 - CDE, MLB, GDS and
also hopes DLG will make him enough money to finance a start-up in US trading.
Hokitika is a freelance IT consultant who lives in Bedford but plies his trade in the City. He is a Barnsley supporter and has volunteered to switch the light out and he can then concentrate on his rugby playing. Success to retirement level while dealing in Options is a long time coming, but he keeps the posters of New Zealand on the wall to remind him that hope springs eternal.
Jerry is 46, and is into his third career, the previous two being as a Hispanist and a Magazine editor. He now has his own tiny partnership doing marketing consultancy mainly for IT-related companies, and has had a reasonable 1998 learning the hard way about how to be a frequent trader without losing all his shirts. Current holdings include PILK RGE MICF LIG GIM and LES, this last in recognition of his status as an exiled Yorkshireman.
Jon C is 41 and a Certified Accountant with his own practice in Cambridgeshire. Jon C suffers from Crohns Disease and is awaiting the outcome of Celltechs trials with great interest. Unmarried, Jon enjoys gardening and travelling to Spain, but not necessarily in that order. We wish you well Jon.
Jon L is 41 and is a geologist working in Australia. He is fond of growing his UK nest-eggs to be offline from the commodities roller-coaster that he rides for a living. His eldest son has an insatiable appetite for saving money for Mum to burn off. Jon will be a bear again in 1999 if Greenspan will only give him a chance.
Kermit is 29 and lives in London working in futures trading. He likes the high risk stuff, especially the techs and biotechs. He particularly likes Tradepoint and ML Labs and is keeping a keen eye on Division, Calluna and Dialog. His dislikes are stock sheet subscribers who will not share info from these sheets with non-subscribers on the bulletin board.
MartinC is 30, lives near Reading, and looks after computers for Imperial College by day, which interferes with his will to spend more time on his investments. He likes the glitzy things like CCT and TMS but also has some investment trusts to balance his portfolio. In the remaining time he has he likes playing the sax whilst brewing his own beer and following that up with a spot of morris dancing.
MartinK is 46 and lives in Fulham working as a Video Assist Op in the film industry. He has done well from VTY, VDO and MVT and waits for SDG but his personal favourite is HNN.
Martini is 52 and lives in a small Oxfordshire village. He has trained and worked for the same Automotive industry company for 30 years and can lay claim to being one of the people who helped to make the British motor industry what it is today. He plans early retirement this year due to being bitten by the investment bug through ESI bulletin board exposure. His interests include bridge, sports, PCs and messing about in his garage.
mw is 55, and a systems engineer living near Chepstow. He hopes to make his fortune on the stock market. Sadly this appears to be impossibly difficult. One of these days he must forget about all this Fundamental and TA nonsense and get back to good old guesswork. Deftness of touch and fleetness of foot is the aim – reality is more like wading through treacle.
Mug Punter is 37, lives in Oslo where he works as a consultant in the currently very depressed oil industry. Likes include the usual, and if pressed will confess to a fondness for the odd pint or three. His aim is to be in a position to stop working as soon as possible if he feels like it. Loves that VOD thing and also holds some of that IT stuff and is a regular T25er.
Nicola (aka Verdigris) is mid 30s and is the mother of the 1 year old author of "Nelsons column" which has been known to find its way on the Bugle weekly review page. She is a promotions manager and a part time artistic manager of her own music company. Her investment activity has been somewhat curtailed recently and she has been happy to sit on the sidelines during the recent turbulence having bailed out in April.The proceeds from these sales have been invested in her husbands record company but still keeps a toe hold in Loftus Road.
Offshore is 36 and lives in Jersey, CI, and is employed as a financial consultant with a leading IFA. His usual investment strategy is to close deals within 10 days and has a present holding of EEN, FFLU, COR, BARC, STW, SRA, and MICF but they are all a case of watch this space.
PeteC is 41 lives in Cambridge and works as a Computer Programmer / Systems Architect and has done so for the last 20 years with the same company. He is not sure whether this is due to lack of ambition or his feet being firmly under the table. He likes the small cap IT stuff (no lack of ambition here!!) but will buy anything that looks tasty, as says he is a long term investor - sometimes.
Pinsticker is 42 and an FD with a leading UK business. All the Pins live in Herts and Pin senior is a Saddlers fan (Walsall to you) His strategy is to stick to markets he is closest to and believes newcomers should have a core holding of Footsie stocks before investing in the likes of CDE, VDO and CLN. He believes in watering the flowers and averaging up and his aim is to make enough to be able to afford to do this full-time when he is 50. Current core holdings include NU, BT, RTK, BG ,MKS, VRD, PAG and HSBC. Speculative positions include VDO, CDE, WCL, and CLN (all a severe drag on 98 performance). Pin is a belated convert to the merits of DLG.
RABLE is approaching his half century with some trepidation - three Rablettes and Mrs Rable to support; his football team (Everton) are looking in dire straits; a recession just around the corner; the market for IT strategic planners going down the plughole; and the threat of the Millenium bug. Other than that he thinks life is great and will become greater if his small IT companies get their fingers out.
Rayrac (jack if ya loik) is a @@## year old proprietor of his own building company, based in Essex and is notoriously known as Bionut. He intends to retire soon as he makes more from his investments than his business and CLN, VDO, DLG and PON supplement the 17 Bios he holds. He loves playing golf and is proud of the fact that his Mum and Dad are in their nineties and still going strong.
Rick is a 28 year old software contractor living in Winchester, and is the B-B-Bugle tech expert who is responsible for the FAQs page. He did not have a good investing 1998 but fortunately work prevented him from investing and losing more. He thinks 1999 is his year thanks to CDE, NTX, and CLN.
Robin is 25, previously a Money Market and Futures trader
but has now set up his own interactive media design company. He tries to
stick to a mix of value and growth investment strategies, but has been
known to be distracted into trading index futures and options. He has previously
made on Dagenham Motors, Reed Executive, Brooks Service Group and Gaskell.
He loves, Music, Opera, Film and Photography. He invites you to visit his
web site for some detailed analysis on small caps, other articles he has
written on the economy in general and a guide to Paris.
Sands is 40 and lives near Dartmouth, where he owns and runs a cleaning machine supply and repair business. He is always on the lookout for small bankrupt businesses particularly in his beloved South West. He is looking to retire at 45 and to facilitate this he is invested in his favourite stocks, Carlisle Group and Millwall (which makes a lot of sense being an Arsenal fan), also loves dabbling in the Nasdaq stuff. He states that he his at his scribbling worst after the odd one or two and will now not turn on his puter unless he can pass a breath test.
Siva is 28 and a junior Doctor with an NHS hospital in Manchester. Started to develop interest in shares few years back and learnt lots of lessons after losing real money. For some obscure reasons he started to develop a particular interest in IT stocks and currently holds a portfolio of about 15 shares and 13 of them are IT related stocks. His favourite shares include Logica, Avis and Kewill Systems and has done both short and long term trading but now concentrates mainly on the long term stuff.
Smallchange is a 30 year old IT consultant/Accountant and plies his trade whilst living in the Wirral. His life's loves are scuba diving, riding motor bikes and pub crawling but not necessarily in that order. He only started investing in shares this year but hopes to make enough to buy a sunseeker with a satellite so he can buy and sail at the same time. He appreciates the BB for the information and the souls who inhabit it.
Star gave us the original idea for this section of the B-B-Bugle. He is 29 and currently in Tokyo on a two year posting for a bank in the equity derivatives section. He has had a bad 1998 and has fallen in love with VDO and believes his hard earned lessons stand him in good stead for the future by ignoring small companies. He made a bit this year on FTSE 100 short term trades and is going for broke with futures and options in 1999.
Steve is 47 and wants to retire in 4 years from his present position as a director in a US software and services company. He does not use a stop loss and does average down unless fundamentals change. CGT is his major concern and drives his trading strategy and his major holdings are Logica,MDIS and Tomkins. This year (1998) has been difficult but is still up 23% on the start of the year.
SteveB is 53 and lives in Dubai whilst plying his trade as a manager with the national airline of the UAE. He is brave enough to admit to being a Luton Town supporter and does not mind people laughing at his golf swing. He invests both sides of the Atlantic and currently heavily into IOMEGA in the US and Division, Mondas, Alizyme and Energy Technique in the UK.
TechNet is a 30 year old Microsoft Consultant who lives in London and invests mainly in US Technology and Banking stocks. He has been an active trader for around 7 years and tends to trade mainly on the Options market. For 1998 he made an average of 200% profit on all his investments thanks to the big dips in the US markets. He dabbles in UK TechStocks but finds their movements much harder to predict as UK Market Makers tend to move prices more on feelings than facts.
Toon is a Newcastle United and Warren Buffet fan. Has long term holds in 40 stocks including NXT, Arm, Trafficmaster, Helphire, Psion, Filtronic, Mayborn, Caldwell, Manganese Bronze, Comino etc., etc. Is 37, lives in Richmond, Surrey and is MD of a non-quoted food company.
Vertigo is 41, lives in the Highlands of Scotland and plies
his trade as a freelance trainer in programming, and also a semi pro photographer.
He says he is a novice trader who is learning fast and the BB has helped
him a lot. Favourites include VOD and EGS.
Zakalwe is an IT Contractor/Consultant/Project Manager/Chief
Opener of Post, just the wrong side of thirty, currently at an American
bank attempting to help them with their Y2K plan. He has a knack for buying
stocks just before a big drop and then having to sit around for a couple
of years seeing if he will get his money back and so is a longer term investor
by default.
Courtesy of SteveB