Monday, February 25, 2008

What stocks I my investing in

Shanga has asked me what stocks I'm investing in at the NSE. Firstly a general comment about the current stock-investing environment. Its tough worldwide. Reason. Hotmoney aka money from western funds; sentiments about the US economy and of course, credit crunch are all making guys run around the world stock markets like headless chickens. Thus making quick bucks is not an option. In some markets, only risk-takers and those with a one yr+ view are buying.
As for the NSE, the positions I've taken so far this yr have either been based on companies with long-term prospects or for defensive reasons. By defensive I mean averaging. I haven't sold anything yet this yr because apart from Equity, the others haven't reached fruition and I believe they'll.

TPS- Because despite the tourism issues and the fact that 67% of its revenue is from Kenya, nobody does hospitality better in the whole of East, Central and Upper Southern Africa than Serena.
Athi River because it has a good base to go forward. And its not exclusively dependant on revenues from cement.
EA Cables, because Mugo the CEO is not yet 40 and has plenty of good ideas

  1. Fibre-optic to take advantage of TEAMS, SEACOM and other under-sea cable projects coming online from 2009 onwards. And of-course, copper is expensive
  2. Regional expansion. Most of its turnover growth for 2007 came from outside Kenya
  3. Linchpin of Transcentury, therefore has strong shreholder support
  4. Any price below Ksh40 is a buying ooportunity for this stockDiamond Trust because trust me its going places.
Barclays for defensive purposes and also because its very tempting when its under Ksh65 as it was a
few weeks back. EABL for the dividend tu.
On my watchlist remain AccessKenya and KCB.

3 comments:

The Black Mamba said...

From most comments on the blogsphere, a lot of people are at a loss as to what to invest in.

I believe there is an opportunity for an edward jones/merill lynch type of shops to cater for the masses.

Old Mutual et al should lower the amounts required for unit trusts for people who commit to invest monthly as opposed to one time investors.

This will be a huge sell for Diasporans and the working class at home.

MainaT said...

Bwana Ssem, I belive that investing in stocks in Kenya could if handled in the right way be as huge as it is in the US.
Zimele do offer low thresholds to enter unit trusts but probably aren't that good at the returns.

shanga said...

@Ssem,
Old Mutual are at the moment accepting Kshs 200,000 for the one time investors