My understanding of short selling is that it involves borrowing a stock, selling the same, and then buying it back at a lower unit price to return it to the owner. Hence, shorting ought to be first enabled by the NSE before players can play. It is really not the brokers' call in the current scheme of things. Forget pedestrian journalists or brokers who are forever peddling unfounded info. Some broker guys crave to sound educated when making presentations at investors' forums. I recently asked one such young lady (the so called reseachers/ financial analysts) who kept bandying buzzwords in her presentation to lend me her Jubilee shares so that I can short'em and she went blank.

@Balaa you are the one in the woods on this one. Shorting in the case of NSE involves standardized contracts to sell/buy underlying stocks at specific prices in future. The lending (margin) is provided by brokers.

Thanks for the titbit @Sparkly. Glad to keep on learning even at my age I'll stick though to my longerm investing strategy.

"Going Short" and "Going Long" are technical terms which are not necessarily connected to investment period. Going short means you sell an expensive stock believing price will fall. Going long means you buy a cheap share believing price will rise.


Now with these kinda news what's your take Sir on BAT? https://www.tobaccofreek...ritish-american-tobacco
Am heavily invested in the firm and have been averaging down, currently @548 in terms of ABP.


Biggest threat to tobacco industry is government regulation and taxation. However cigarette smoking is addictive and so long as it remains legal, people will smoke and BAT will make money. The new regulations, just like the Ngilu Regulations will depress the share price and provide a buying opportunity.

...............following.

The mantra is.... go hard or go home.

Of course after 2 years, you know what will happen to enforcement. BAT is one of the corporate giants in Kenya. My fear is that they will one day wake up and chase us (buy us out) anytime they feel like - Uniliver style.

Loss-making tyre distributor Sameer Africa emerged as the best stock in 2019 at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) with Kenya Airways ranked as the worst in a year when the bourse is in line to make a 16.6 percent return.

Sameer Africa’s share has gained 81 percent since the start of the year and closed trading at Sh3.35 Thursday, meaning an investor who invested Sh1 million in the stock on January 2 has gained Sh810, 000.

In contrast, investors who bought Kenya Airways shares worth Sh1 million, suffered a loss of Sh773,000 given the share has shed 77.3 percent since the start of the year to stand at Sh2.02 at close of trading Thursday.

This analysis is based on investors who buy shares at the start of the year and measures their return at the end of the trading season in a review that does not capture speculators who enter and exit stocks in short periods.

Sameer, whose a half-year losses widened to Sh182.8 million, offered better returns than Safaricom and top banks like Equity and KCB—which have recently emerged ass the jewel stocks for investors seeking returns.

Topic should now change to 2020

My purchases in q4 2019 were:

BAT abp 475;
I@M abp 50;
Centum abp 30.50