Contact Energy - CEN Chart

[Snoopy]

When going through my 'Contact' folder today I came across an extraordinary fact. I had thought of my self as a 'buy and hold' investor as regards Contact. It would be more truthful to say I am a 'buy and buy' investor. Incredibly I have now bought into Contact on 18 separate occasions and never sold any! Granted many of those buys were for very modest amounts when I was participating in the dividend reinvestment plan. So I am not quite the gazillionaire you might think. But it is an extraordinary record for me nevertheless.

The main objective of the trader as I understand it, is to sell out at a profit. By contrast the main objective of an investor like me is to gain the lowest possible average entry price. For someone like me, that means I have no plan to ever sell out of CEN completely. So the idea of a particular share purcahse having a 'beginning' and an 'end' ceases to have meaning. As long as the good dividend flow remains I will ride the ups and downs. If along the way my share starts to look cheap I will buy some more to lower my average entry price. By contrast, if the price goes up above what I deem fair value, I may look at selling a few to lower my average entry price (hasn't happened yet!).

It is true that in theory I could have sold all of my CEN shares back in May 2011 at $5.84 equivalent. But as a long term investor I would never have done that. As it happens my average purchase price today is $4.82, and back then it was even less. As I did not judge $5.84 to be overpriced at the time, there was no reason for me to sell at the time. As you can see my current CEN fair valuation is $5.87. So I am very comfortable with not selling at $5.84, even all these years later.

Fixing on a particular price on a particular date is to me not significant. Sure people remember their first buy in price and some, like me, keep a record of their average buy in price. But when you have bought into a share eighteen times, a particular partial purchase at $5.84 (nominal) on a particular day ceases to have any relevance. Of course from a traders perspective I fully understand that they may have a different view!

SNOOPY