Most BG readers will be familiar with the idiom, “as sick as a parrot”. I am tempted to paraphrase the undertaker in the 1999 movie, “A Christmas Carol” that was based on Dickens’s novela of the same name when upon Scrooge remarking that his late partner Jacob Marley was “as dead as a door nail”, the gentleman commented that he failed to see what was particularly dead about a door nail as opposed to another piece of ironmongery associated with door furniture such as a door knob, prompting Scrooge to remark, “Door nail or door knob, he’s [Marley] dead!”
Thus: Why a parrot? Why not another bird such as a hummingbird or a peacock?
Parrot, hummingbird or peacock, I still feel somewhat sick!
Why?
Is is something I ate?
No.
It was a page on the internet!
Each morning I check my stock prices. Recently when what used to be Royal Dutch Shell reached just over £19.25, I sold my shareholding. I have previously blogged that I would do this. Why?
Because the shareholding accounted for over a third of my equity portfolio and it had at one point crashed down to £8.68 on the 28th October 2020. At that point a friend suggested that I cut my losses and sell and put the money into a unit trust which would likely increase in value rapidly. I did not take the advice. If I had I would have got my money back and more. As it was, I waited and eventually I did succeed in getting my money back plus covering the stockbroking costs involved on both transactions.
Had I have waited I could have sold the shares for £20.61 on the 7th February 2022. Had I kept the money in my bank account and purchased the Dunedin Income Growth Investment Trust shares trading at one point today for £2.59 I would have been able to acquire far more than the number of shares I did. As it is these shares are worth £18,697 less than they were worth when I purchased them.
Not that this will prejudice my income. This because the dividend income I will receive on the shares will exceed (not by a gigantic amount though) what I received from Shell following the reduction of the dividend.
In other words, I am no worse off in practice!
It ill behoves me to moan about my situation however!
This because as shown in the inserted image to the left of the parrot, there are many unfortunate people who at the time I sold and bought shares on the London Stock Market had settled lives, steady employment, homes and cars. Now they are refugees with only the clothes they are wearing, such personal possessions as they can carry.
These woman and children are truly justified in saying (in Ukrainian) their equivalent idiom!
À propos of the Shell shares I owned that are now owned by unknown others, I am not at all distressed about the prospects of Shell PLC increasing the dividend as a result of the soring oil and gas prices.
Why?
Because two factors are likely to mitigate any increase.
Firstly, huge companies such as Shell PLC are conscious that they must project a public image that will not annoy (too much) such as my former fellow SDP party member, Ms Polly Toybee!
Secondly, notwithstanding the fact that we have a Tory government, IF the oil and gas prices reach lunatic levels and the profits of BP and Shell reach giddying levels, the Unfortunate Rishi Sunak will have the uneviable prospect of having to face the determined Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer across the dispatch box! Mrs Nicholas Joicey will doubtless be on virulent form and should the Unfortunate Sunak not introduce a “windfall tax” at the upcoming spring budget on Wednesday 23rd March, on the soaring profits of the UK based oil companies he will have to bear the full force of the lady’s excoriations!
If the oil and gas prices do not come down substantially and quickly, I confidently expect a swinging level of windfall tax applied to them. This will inevitably impact upon the money the companies will be able to pay their shareholders!
This of course will be popular with the hard pressed members of the British Public – which is one of the reasons why Mrs Joicey is advocating it – for they will be bearing the increasing burden of increasing utility bills and of course costs of filling up their vehicles with fuel!