richjfool
Although I don't know what DE were recommending as I wasn't a susbcriber, I still believe that Tesco's selloff was very overdone and was largely due to investment fashion at the moment.
This was underscored yesterday by the market's euphoric reaction to Imperial Tobacco's medicore results, which, personally, I thought were rather disappointing; Imperial Tobacco continue to see sales declining (think of it as Tesco reporting "like-for-like -4.1%) and, for now, it is simply price rises which are offsetting what would otherwise be a sharp decline in profits.
But IMT, like ULVR, will find that they can only raise prices so much in a recessionary environment before people cut back or switch.
"Ah, but baccy's a legal, addictive drug with dependent customers" I hear people saying.
That may be true, but why, then, did the market offer IMT shares for £17 a year ago, compared to £25 today? It's certainly not due to a proportionate increase in profitability, nor the likelihood of such a large rise in profits in the years ahead.
Investors hate a share when it's out of fashion; finging any excuse not to buy the shares because the crowd is also avoiding the shares - and that's why they rarely "buy low" but they do tend to "sell low".
Similarly, investors fall in love with shares which are riding high on a wave of positive sentiment - frequently "buying high".
But it is easy to make positive or negative arguments for almost any company. The share price at any given time reflecting what investors want to hear, while they conveniently ignore what they don't want to hear.
In 1999-2000, the likes of AZN, GSK, TSCO and VOD were riding high, while the likes of BATS, SVT, UU etc were dogs of the market.
The former have gone from darlings to dogs, while the latter have gone from dogs to darlings.
My suspicion is that many investors will be wondering why their current market darlings followed the path of GSK, VOD and the like between now and the 2020's.
The answer: sentiment, valuations and mean reversion.
