My column at iPredict has just been e-mailed out. After last week’s column some of the stock prices more fairly significantly.

Buy

OCR.NC.10Sep will pay out on Thursday and the market expects no change with the stock at 96c. Worth buying some stock even at that price as a 4.1% return for a few days is an excellent return on an annualized basis. Of course Dr Bollard may surprise but I doubt it. [Ed: stock closed, OCR no change as expected]

Early buyers in June got this stock for 69c, so they will get a 44% return if the OCR does not move – equal to around 180% on an annualized basis.

Sell

MP.Tizard pays out if Judith Tizard returns to Parliament during this term. It is currently at 22c and is a reasonable long-term investment as it is very likely to close at zero.  The Labour Party went to great efforts to keep Tizard from returning to Parliament – forcing Phil Twyford not to contest Mt Albert so Tizard can not come in on the list (she is next in line). Even though there are rumours of National offering jobs or diplomatic appointments to Labour List MPs, to bring Tizard back in, I believe Labour won’t let this happen.

You’ll have to wait two years for a payout but it is a fairly safe 28% return over two years.

Polls

The Roy Morgan poll stocks proved popular (were 4th most traded by revenue) but some pundits lost a lot of money. The stock for National top drop in the latest Roy Morgan poll was selling for as high as 90c, and National actually went up 3%. Having hit a record high of 56.5% in the Morgan poll, the market is again predicting a drop with the price at 73c.

General

Of interest was VSM.1stread shot up from an initial float of 50c to 97c within a few hours. National has not yet announced how it will vote on this law making student association membership voluntary, but the market seems confident Sir Roger’s bill will fly through the first reading.

US.Bankfail.09 is also worth monitoring. It pays out 2c for every bank that fails in the US in 2009 over 100. So there is no limit to where this stock may close. So far 89 banks have failed and the stock floated at 10c indicating an extra 16 banks are expected to fail. However it is now at almost 80c, indicating the market expects a whopping 51 further bank failures by the end of the year.

Disclosure

David’s current iPredict positions are:

BROWN.RESIGN Short, DL.KING.09 Short, FASA04.REPEAL Short, GST.UP.JULY10 Short, LEAD.GOFF.09 Short, MAYOR.BROWN Long, MIN.DEPART2.09 Short, MP.ANDERTON Short, MP.PETERS.2011 Short, NAT.MAORI.09 Short, OBAMA.DISAP.4NOV Short, OCR.INCR.APR10 Short, OCR.INCR.JAN10 Short, PETERS.LEADER Long, PM.2011.NATIONAL Long, VSM.1STREAD Long, ZIM.MUGABE Short

Links to stocks in this commentary: OCR.NC.10SEP, MP.TIZARD, VSM.1STREAD, US.BANKFAIL.09, polling stocks.