I like Bryan Dobson’s response! Pretty professional - rapidly distancing himself from BB’s comments in the few seconds available. Is it against the law and/or broadcasting rules to run that kind of ‘advice’ unchallenged on a news programme? Dobbo was probably in a major panic. Not only might he have thought the advice was bad, but he had nobody to balance BB’s view and had no way of knowing what conflicts of interest the ‘expert’ had. Did the expert have a load of shares himself? Who knows. “On your head be it!”
I think Dobbos raised eyebrow at the end was his standard “we’ll wait and see”, he’d do it to someone if they said it would probably rain at some stage next month. Standard “we at RTE are impartial, can you not tell by nods and winks!”. As yogi said it was Dobbo that brought up the “buying opportunity”.
In fairness to ‘Le rat’, it is the third anniversary since BB made the recommendation to buy bank shares and it would be a shame to allow the passing of such an anniversary to happen without a celebration.
I’m not going to show it my husband though, as he bought 6k of BoI shares around that time on the basis that they were at a ‘historic low’. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer and all that.
1] In relatively good times, when banks apply alot of leverage to low lending margins you can make 15%+ per year on your equity investment
2] In Bad times, you will lose your entire investment
3] Book Value ( the most traditional metric to value a bank) is meaningless. Its management’s assessment of future loan losses. (Their track record in predicting the future is not exactly stellar, so take it with a pinch of salt)
4] The same bank can be recapitalised several times, wiping out shareholders again and again when the economy hits the next road bump. I’ve lost count of the amount of times BKIR has come to the table asking for more capital, those who participated in the last one being subsequently wiped out by the next one.
Why anyone would want to own a bank share as we engage in the unwind of a 30 year credit bubble is beyond me!
Ask Warren Buffet. Has he not just ploughed 5 billion into Bank of America! Now that that i think of it, they he not admit to getting burnt on irish bank shares during the rout. He must have been listening to Brendan as well.
He bought preference shares, though, with a fixed 6% coupon. He’ll only get burnt if they really do go tits up - not just if they look for a equity recapitalisation.