Spread Betting
As clubs go; the $1000 Share Club is not the easiest on to get into. It’s not just a simple matter of pressing a few notes into the hands of an ex-SAS bouncer, sorry – door person, and slipping meekly in through the front door. No, this is much tougher; this is about convincing the markets that your company performance, in terms of both income and capital growth, makes it a good bet to shell out $1000 or over for just one of your shares.
This month Google have done just that and the value is still climbing, $1036 as of this morning, and there is no obvious reason why it shouldn’t keep on going. In truth, there really isn’t a reason. Google have an estimated one third of all online advertising revenues and a strategy, no – mission, of making Google the easiest to use information search and retrieval system no matter what machine you are using.
For spread-betters, taking a position on Google’s price going down is going to be a very brave bet indeed; and seeing them booted out of the $1,000 share club probably more suicidal than brave.
So, who else is in this club?
Well, quite a few that not many people outside of the share watching community or the relevant industry will have heard of. Take, for example, Berkshire Hathaway; admittedly an investment company, but one single A share will set you back some $176,000; a staggering amount unless we mention that it is, of course, run by Warren Buffet; no mean financial spread betting player himself. The only way to predict that one coming down is if you had your finger, literally, on the great man’s pulse.
A comparative minnow, if share price is your measure, is the Farmers and Merchant Bank of Long Beach with a valuation of just $5075. This bank was not immune to the financial crisis but a watchful spread-better probably would have noticed that their reported assets were improving and have now crossed the US mean.
Another member of the club who may have skipped your attention is the Seaboard Corporation, valued at a little under $2,800 dollars, this company is a surprising marriage of shipping and pork products. Is that price going to go up or down; without an awful lot of research roulette might give better odds.
If playing around the $1,000 a share club member adds zest to your betting, then it’s probably good to looking at the new names and those bubbling under. Priceline.com, a discount provider for travel and hotel bookings, is also newly in at $1,020 but will they be able to live up to the hype that has taken them there?
Groucho Marx once said “I wouldn’t want to join any club that would have me as a member”; for the $1,000 a Share Club he would have made an exception.