Peter the Punter’s Political Pointer

In a light news week, the focus has been heavily on David Cameron’s past and the possibility he used illegal drugs. Have Dave’s ambitions gone up in a puff of smoke? Is his future on the line? Are his chances shot? Not a bit of it, if PB.com posters are anything to go by!

On the evidence of last night’s thread you would have to say his prospects had been if anything enhanced, as commentators from all sides of the political spectrum rallied to his cause.

We have taken the hint and put Dave up as a 1 point buy at 90.5, even though this would take him to his highest ever rating. The evidence of the first few weeks suggests that politicians in the news get a popularity bounce, even when the news is not obviously positive. We think the public will back Dave and we are doing likewise.

We also recommend a Boris Johnson buy, mainly because of his typically robust and witty support for his leader. Apparently, Goldilocks warned that he would not be best pleased if anybody insinuated he may not have taken drugs. Buy Boris – 1 point at 91.8.

Finally, we recommend a sell of Reid, again 1 point. He hasn’t done anything especially wrong for a while but after last week’s surprise rise, he looks hugely overpriced at 73.

Last Week’s results My first week in charge and our first loss! This is all the more irksome because we were bang on with our Blair recommendation. Sadly, this was outweighed by the better scores for Harman and Reid. The net loss for those who took the prices when we went to press last Tuesday was 1.7 (£17 at a £10 stake):

IG Price Result Gain/(loss)
Blair – buy 55.8 57.0 1.2
Reid – sell 69.8 71.7 (1.9)
Harman – sell 77.0 78.0 (1.0)

Net loss (1.7)

Those who got on a bit earlier will have made less of a loss, possibly as little as 0.2 points but it’s disappointing nevertheless. I guess the lesson, if any, is that if the leader has a good week then the rest of his Party is likely to follow. Against all expectations, Labour had a good week generally.

We will try to post our recommendations as early as possible in future, usually on Monday but this depends to a large extent on YouGov publishing results promptly. (They were very late today.) For record keeping purposes, we will always take the price available at the time of going to post, not any earlier price that might have been available. Thus, the 1.7 loss recorded as above reduces our overall profit since we began to a net 3.4 – not bad, but can do better.

This is the link to the YouGov index but make sure you check the dates! They put the wrong week’s figures up earlier, causing much confusion.

Good luck!

Peter Smith – (Peter the Punter)