Keep calm and carry on
The Punter has great pleasure in announcing that he got it completely wrong last week.
Having written of doom and gloom and having seriously considered selling most of his investments, he then sat back and watched the value of his portfolio rise five per cent to a record $80,475.
If he were a professional investment manager, he could now boast that his portfolio is up around 60 per cent since he started, an average gain after all expenses of almost 9pc a year. (He could also point out, but probably wouldn’t, that there have been times he has been down 30 per cent).
The reality is that a great deal of his recent success is due to pure, unforeseeable good luck.
Tyrian makes a comeback
He “sensibly” invested in Tyrian Diagnostics (ASX code TDX) more than six years ago, largely because of the potential of its technology to enable vets and even human doctors diagnose TB and possibly other diseases quickly, accurately and cheaply.
It went nowhere, and The Punter lost 80pc of his dough. It is just lucky for him that TDX has been chosen as the vehicle to give a boutique investment company an easy way to get a stock market listing and raise a lot of new money.
Tyrian will become Contango Asset Management, and its shares will be consolidated on a 300:1 basis, which will cut The Punter’s holding to 250 shares.
It plans to raise $16.9 million by offering consolidated shares at 60 cents each.
The Punter suspects that this juicy deal will be reserved for the rich and well connected, through a private placement.
If the offer is opened to ordinary shareholders, however, he will be happy to jump in, if only because James Packer and his business associate Robert Rankin have already promised to buy nearly 20pc of TDX.
Data processor makes good returns
The Punter’s biggest gain last week was the stock market debut of data processor Pointerra (3DP), following its reverse takeover of what had been Sub Soil Technology.
Based in Perth, Pointerra specialises in advanced storage and visualization software for massive 3D point cloud data sets.
With buyers queuing up to buy 3DP at 4.8c each at the time of writing, The Punter is happy to let his profits run on this one.
He has postponed all his possible sells, at least for a week.
• The Punter has no financial qualifications and no links to the financial services industry. He owns shares in a number of these companies.