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i have contemplated purchasing GW stock.

the Price seems to stay pretty stable and pretty high.


anyone had any expierence with this sort of thing?

"Stable" isn't likely to make money...

Warning: I am not a financial advisor! Or a lawyer! or a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker!

Stocks make money in two basic ways: dividends and resale.

Resale is simple: Buy low, sell high (hopefully). Keep in mind broker's fees, as buying a stock at X and selling it at X+1 could lose money if the fees are high.

Dividends are tricker. basically, you're paid a small bit on profits. it's income, but you'll generally need to hold it for a long time to break even on the pruchase. As an example, AT&T stock is currently around $26-$27 a share, and pays dividends of around .40 cents per share quarterly. So that's 1.60/year. So, sure, in about 17 years you're making a profit! Assuming the company is still around, still making money, etc.

Dividend payments are taxed, by the way. Stock in a company that is likely to be around for a while can be an interesting gift for a child as it has some immediate payback (Sure, it may only be $5/quarter, but that's practically "free money") with some backing value (...And the kid cans ell it for a few hundred or thousand when he needs cash down the road).

Looking at GW... http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=GAW.L

You missed the big opportunity around the end of last year, but it looks pretty healthy.

Here's the GW Investor site: http://investor.games-workshop.com/

Looks like they haven't paid dividends in a few years. Not surprising... They probably say in the annual reports something like, "We could have paid dividends, but spent the money on capital investments instead."

It's certainly done some jumping around, though. The question is: "Is this a trend that will continue or is the stock peaking?"

Honest answer: I have no idea.

My bro in law is semi high up for a big national bank and he works in stocks and stuff like that. I mentioned once that I wanted to buy GW stock, and he got mad at me and said you should never buy stock in a company just because you like the company. I asked why and he didn't give me a very straight answer but his general philosophy is the only real way to make money in stocks is to buy low and sell when it goes up a few %'s then move onto the next low company. when I said I was thinking more like long term investing, he said my money is better off in a regular savings account.

Necros wrote:My bro in law is semi high up for a big national bank and he works in stocks and stuff like that. I mentioned once that I wanted to buy GW stock, and he got mad at me and said you should never buy stock in a company just because you like the company. I asked why and he didn't give me a very straight answer but his general philosophy is the only real way to make money in stocks is to buy low and sell when it goes up a few %'s then move onto the next low company. when I said I was thinking more like long term investing, he said my money is better off in a regular savings account.

One of the reasons why you should not do this is because of the fact that you're mixing finance with things you could have some level of personal emotion attached to. Having a background in "stocks and stuff like that", forcing me to deal with traders on a daily basis, I can say that day trading is as he describes, and that you should never hold on to a stock as long term investing, because (among the plethora of reasons I don't have time to go into) if it isn't constantly increasing in value, then you're probably not beating out the inflation rate. That is, say you have one share in GAW.L priced at 100 USD (not accurate, but pretend), and you held onto it for 5 years, from 2004 to 2009, and during that time, the highest it got up to was 105 USD (again, pretend land). You sell it now at it's "high point", well, contrats, it's now worth less than what you paid for it, as inflation will make that $100 now worth about $112.

Now let's say you put that money in a savings account for that period of time. At a cursory glance, I found one currently for 1.34%. 5 years later, you'd get $106.92. Still not great, but at its a guaranteed low risk means of saving money.

I'd think that GW would be a stable investment, but not a fantastic one for the purposes of reaping huge cash rewards over time.

They're a British company that prides itself on stability and long-term planning. Invest in their stock if you want something that will average slow, continual growth.

Personally, I think I'd only do GW stock to feel like I was a more involved member of my hobby, as if I were looking for stability and low growth, I'd probably just put my money in a bank, but that's just me.

Balance wrote:
It's certainly done some jumping around, though. The question is: "Is this a trend that will continue or is the stock peaking?"

Honest answer: I have no idea.

I'd say the biggest determining factor is how successful the movie deal/franchising works out for them. Needless to say, it's something worth keeping an eye on.

It also depends on what else you have in your portfolio, and what your plans are. Don't think of investing as "pay in now, get money later", think of it in terms of achieving specific goals. Once you have the goals in place, including the schedule for achieving them, that's when you work backwards to figure out what sort of investments you need to make to help you achieve those goals.

If you're working in finance, that's when, like Necros' brother-in-law, you start churning clients so that your commission account gets regular credit and your clients get the immediate gains that makes them happy clients in the short run. In the long run? Who cares? You'll be retired and their sub-par returns wo't be your problem.

The movie deal, optimistcally, would only have a temporary effect then revert back to previous reasonable level. Unless, of course, the film ends up as popular as the Terminator Movies, Titanic or, heaven forbid, Avatar, in which case even selling your mother wouldn't buy a share!

Elmodiddly wrote:The movie deal, optimistcally, would only have a temporary effect then revert back to previous reasonable level. Unless, of course, the film ends up as popular as the Terminator Movies, Titanic or, heaven forbid, Avatar, in which case even selling your mother wouldn't buy a share!

And the goal would be to buy the moment the movie didn't COMPLETELY suck, and hope that you beat market inertia in time to buy for $$ to sell for $$$$. And then the latter is an unfortunate thing, but you're not entering into the market without the expectation that you could lose big, unless you are, in which case, you're probably better off just going down to the boats.

Heh, beating the market...

the idea would be long term.

it seems that GW stock is pretty stable with a minor upward trend compared to most stocks.


if they ever did start paying dividends again...

GW have unstable sales strategy with unpredictable out come. Rather than a long term strategy they seem to do what ever it takes to make sure the anual report is satisfactory.

Now the question is , how flexible is this franchise and how many time it can withstand such strategy.

IMHO , such actions makes bad investment.

daedalus wrote:And the goal would be to buy the moment the movie didn't COMPLETELY suck, and hope that you beat market inertia in time to buy for $$ to sell for $$$$. And then the latter is an unfortunate thing, but you're not entering into the market without the expectation that you could lose big, unless you are, in which case, you're probably better off just going down to the boats.

Trying to beat the market by relying on internet hype, publically available box office data and a discount brokerage account is a losing strategy. Basically, to beat the market you need an incredibly sophisticated and fast arbitrage scheme with a couple of billion dollars in backing, or you need inside information. The rest of us have to trade the risk of uncertainty for greater than base returns.


GW might be a nice addition to a share portfolio, it could turn into a reasonable cash cow once they've recapitalised. But it's not going to offer significant returns above market and it isn't ever going to be as stable as a blue chip. It could be part of a reasonable portfolio, but the only reason to favour it over safer investment really is the novelty factor.

Grey Templar:

Buy-and-hold isn't predicated on beating the market, it's predicated on the market gradually rising over the long term following the historical trend. If you're going to follow Warren Buffet's method, then you make sure you know the business and make sure that people you know know the business are in charge. Buffet missed out on the dot.com boom because, in his own words, he didn't understand how such business were run. Not a bad standard when you consider the bubble was the result of nobody knowing how such business were run profitably. Conversely, unless you're an industry analyst (and occasionally when you are...), buying purely for the sake of turning an undefined profit via buy-and-hold is a great way to throw money away. The analysts get away with it because it's usually not their money, and they're playing with a much bigger pot than individual investors.