Should i sell my hmv shares

He says another option would be to sell its bookstore, Waterstone's, which should raise enough to pay of the group's debts. Sales at Waterstone's appeared to have stabilised according to the trading update, and were unchanged during the Christmas period compared with a year ago.

The company attributed this "pleasing" result to turnaround actions implemented last year. Separately, fellow retailer Games Workshop also saw its share price dive as it faces tough trading conditions in the entertainment market. The company further warned that "difficult trading conditions since that time mean that this shortfall is unlikely to be recovered by the year end".

Last year they relaxed payment terms in return for a small parcel of shares, and in the crucial trading period before Christmas they provided help worth tens of millions of pounds. Among the lifelines under consideration is a further extension to HMV's credit lines, with some suppliers considering slashing prices, sources said.

If HMV were allowed to go under, the big labels would cede even more power to Amazon and to Apple, whose iTunes store now dominates the music industry. The stakes are even greater for Universal Music. Universal could face a rental bill of millions of pounds if the stores are left vacant. The administrators are convinced HMV can be rescued. Administrators to Blockbuster also hope to find a buyer for the rental business despite the closure of stores yesterday with the loss of jobs.

These closures were in addition to 31 that had been announced earlier. Retail analysts are sceptical about the chain's future. I don't claim to be an investment genius but you're not one either. The one thing montyhedge said on here that was right is that you were sitting on the fence here and didn't declare any position short or long.

You post on three maybe more websites and I have seen no evidence on any of them that you have selected any stocks that have gone well for you. Before and since selling hmv, I have gone into a few stocks which have done rather nicely.

Check it out on lse. You were saying that hmv would go bust before July , January and numerous other dates. The chances are that you would eventually have selected the right date. It didn't go bust though till I didn't think it would whilst it still had waterstones and then the Live venues to dispose of and the suppliers probably weighed that up and decided to back them fully at the start of last year. You might say that it was silly of me to buy other tranches thereafter but they weren't an investment and I traded them on spikes which hmv had in February, March, May, June, Ausust, September, October and December last year.

After reading the rns in December with the interim results, I decided not to buy any more hmv shares unless and until there was some good news in the way of a positive Christmas trading statement or some fresh supplier initiatives or banking agreements. Don't come on here preaching to me.

As I said to you on lse everybody and their granny knew that hmv and the other retailers you have posted about were in serious trouble in their final weeks.

You showed no particular expertise in predicting the outcome that many people in the country had foreseen. The only skill you have demonstrated is that you would make a good undertaker chasing an ambulance with its sirens on. I still laugh at how late you arrived on the Mouchel bb on lse. Now please ply your tacky trade without addressing any further posts to me.

Deloitte, which has been advising HMV's lending banks, is being lined up as administrator to the chain, putting 4, jobs at risk. The expected administration continues the grim start to the new year for the high street, following the collapse of Jessops, the camera retailer, which closed on Friday, with the loss of 1, jobs.

But the proposal has been turned down, raising fears that the company will be forced into administration. A year ago, suppliers stepped in to support HMV, taking a 5 per cent equity stake in the company to secure its position as the UK's leading entertainment retailer.

According to Verdict, HMV's share of the combined music and video market, defined as physical and downloaded products bought on and offline, was HMV's market share and its sales peaked in , following the closure of Woolworths in Its market share remained steady for the following few years, despite falling sales, as other competitors such as Zavvi fell by the wayside. HMV warned last month that it was poised to breach its banking covenants, sending its shares down 40 per cent on the day, and putting the future of the entertainment retailer under threat.

The company looked at options, including a Company Voluntary arrangement - a deal with creditors to prevent administration - to shed part of its store base. KPMG has been acting for the company. It employs 13, people. It has stores in the UK. And it is responsible for more than a third of all music CD sales here and more than a quarter of all DVD sales. It owns the only remaining chain of recorded music stores in this country of any size, the eponymous HMV shops.

And its Waterstone's chain is the dominant force in specialist book retailing from real shops by a country mile. On the face of it, HMV is an important employer and it is pretty important to our creative industries. Smaller record companies, for example, find it hard to shift their back catalogues at a profit anywhere else Tesco won't take stuff outside the charts; online margins are wafer thin.

Here is the jaw-dropping statistic. That means the banks have the right and ability to demand all their money back. So unless HMV can reach an accommodation with the banks, its directors would have no option but to call in the administrators under UK insolvency procedures.

HMV - a legendary name in the history of the recorded music industry - would be bust; the shares would be worthless. Yes, downloads were all the rage and Amazon was rampant, but my theory was that people would always still want to browse and buy music and books and HMV could.

The problem was HMV totally stuffed it up. It failed to capitalise, decided to focus on flogging more t-shirts and made a daft move into music venues. The dividend was unsurprisingly cut.

I sold out at a 60 per cent loss. The lessons learnt were not to overestimate a company based on what I thought should happen but to look at what it was actually doing, to beware dividend traps, and to not have a portfolio of just one stock Artistic licence here, I actually had two stocks.

With a smaller companies gold fund I was plain greedy and daft, won over my the smart m oney claiming miners had to catch up with the price of gold There were some very persuasive — but in hindsight not as smart as they thought — people banging on about it as a sure-fire winner. At the time a sizeable chunk of my savings. I think the claimed gap might have briefly narrowed slightly, but only because the price of gold fell.

And it then widened again, as barring a brief respite in the summer of , gold continued to slide and risky gold mining tiddlers fell even harder. The fund was an absolute dog and I backed it at the worst possible time. Every time I opened my account the loss was staring at me, but I held on in a vain hope it would go back up.

I instantly felt much better. I missed out on lots of other opportunities while that money was ebbing away. It turned out to be cheap for a reason, it was highly iffy and delisted from Aim.

Even a proven fund manager can let you down, as Neil Woodford did his investors. Unfortunately, one of those professionals was Neil Woodford: lesson pay attention and ditch fund managers who drift off-piste.

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