(binned per thread starter's request) The big... IF

and I was thinking that it has been brighter as of late it's been out most nights over the past few weeks

Some good views lately, that's true. I happened one night a few months ago to catch sight of Orion and think "I thought all the stars (in the belt) used to be the same". Then Brian Cox made a remark on the TV recently, so I have been watching.....

I think I saw Venus a couple of weeks ago their was quite a few helicopters in the sky if it was Venus I can see why some people see it and think it's a UFO I was so bright it looked artificial and did not move

Beware of exif data in your photos Exodus.

You want to delete all of that before uploading, do this by taking a print screen of the photo and uploading to sites like imgur.

For example if you take a picture on an iphone and don't delete your exif data, it will have your name, your location and perhaps other information like home address too.

I understand you are taking this with a Nikon so it won't have that information, but other camera devices with GPS will show location, and any other information too.

Thanks for the warning.
I went here to check (http://exif.regex.info/exif.cgi), there is a staggering amount of information all of which is harmless.

Jupiter Dividend & Growth Trust, has struggled in recent years but appears to be coming good.
Elsewhere I have indicated that the ZDP shares are/were worth a punt based upon their end-of-life redemption value.
The market has caught-up with the ZDP shares in recent days so the return is much less than it would have been 3 or 4 weeks ago.

The income shares look as thought they will churn some solid dividends between now and end-of-life in November.
The ex-dividend date is tomorrow, so is this an epic fail on the part of someone who has lost £4875 by not waiting until tomorrow?
GBX3.50 is the current sell price.
The ex-dividend price mark-down tomorrow will tell the truth....

I was following one of these you mentioned, can't remember the name now.

Shortly after the last div. the spread widened dramatically so I didn't really want to submit a market order, and with a limit and such low volume there is no guarantee you would ever get filled.

Interesting what you are doing, basically it is pure arbitrage plays, rarely see anyone doing that - but should be money there for those who do.

The ZDP shares are a low-risk play, and deliver a reasonable no-rush return.
I have none of my own money on the ZDP shares at the moment, although I did have.
My daughter's ISA on the other hand has been holding these since November 2015 at an entry price of 119p (including trading costs).
Chosen as an introduction for her to stock market investing, she might start paying attention when she notices the positive return.
Also, since I promised to underwrite any losses, this looked like a no-lose play for me.

On the other hand the income shares are a much wilder ride.
I have been holding some of these since 2014 with the most recent buy during early 2015.
This is a calculated bet to see if I can get out in profit.
After the current dividend (ex-div tomorrow) my eroded break-even price will be 1.38p.
I have a hawk-eye on the company's total assets....

edit: sorry I made a mistake on the JDTZ buy price.

The published spread is a disincentive to trading.
You have to get onto the LSE website and see what people are actually paying.

On which subject, I did put a below published-entry bid on ALF a few months ago and was filled the next day ... just before a capital return was declared.

Maybe I need to be putting in my orders anyway and hoping for the best.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was Yahoo Finance (as in uk.finance.com)

I used to be able to extract graphs or charts such as depicted here http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=9393847#post9393847
I used to have bookmarks that would give me a page with charts of things of interest, such as all the banking shares
My bookmark produced a page of charts a bit like a toilet roll, scroll down and spot when some news had affected one of the combatants ... or the whole market sector.

Then some bright spark decided that it needed improving....
Some bright spark who presumably never traded, who looked beyond offering a useful product to where the competition was floundering.
Some bright spark who may have been motivated by that silly bitch who failed to sell the business to Verizon a couple or 3 years ago when they were talking in tens of billions, and who through blind stubbornness finally capitulated for around $4bn ... what an own-goal.

So now I feel blind. As though somebody has nicked my SatNav when lost in Birmingham. A bit like whizzing around a corner into a fog-bank.

__bastards__

Well .... from the look of today's trades I'd say whoever made this sell (http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=9478516#post9478516) did themselves out of £4k
Prices seem to have held up today with the stock trading ex-dividend.

Understanding Investment Trusts

Of all the different types of investment vehicle which could be used to make money one of the easiest to understand is the Investment Trust. This is a UK term for an investment company, equivalent structures exist around the world with different countries having different 'names' for similar things. In the USA an equivalent description can be found here: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/closed-endinvestment.asp

So an Investment Trust is simply a company that collects money from people by issuing shares, and invests that money in a variety of different company stocks, maybe in metals or other commodities, anything that might be considered a legitimate investment vehicle. There are a great many Investment Companies and each has a stated strategy for how it will attempt to make money for its investors, and a management team who execute the strategy. The closed-end funds are of particular interest to me.

Aside from the field-of-investment there are three categories of Trust.

Type-1: the simple Trust
This type of investment company simply does what has been described above, it buys shares in other companies. Typically a selection of companies such as Shell, Chevron, Wells Fargo, HSBC, Walmart, Coca Cola, Diageo, .....etc..... which would normally be of interest to an investor. The Trust may also buy shares in unquoted companies such as family-owned businesses seeking capital for expansion.

Type-1a: the leveraged simple Trust
This is a Type-1 Trust which is allowed to borrow to make investments. Any desire or intention to borrow is stated in the company's strategy document. Anybody on the forum reading this who does not understand leverage should save their money in a piggy-bank.

Type-2: the split-capital Trust
This type of investment company has a fixed life (for example 10 years) and issues two types of share; a share type called a Zero-Dividend-Preference share (ZDP) and an Income or Ordinary share. The monies raised by issuing shares are employed in the same manner as for a type-1 Trust. The two share types have different purposes as stated in the company's strategy document. The ZDP shares have first claim on the companies assets when the life expires up to a pre-determined amount, the redemption value, and are therefore a lower-risk investment than the ordinary shares. The ordinary shares receive everything that remains. The ZDP shares receive no dividends, but are contracted to grow capital value at a defined rate such as 7% (in the strategy document). Throughout the life of the Trust the ordinary shares receive all the dividends that are received from the company's investments.

Type-2a: the leveraged split-capital Trust
This is a Type-2 Trust which is allowed to borrow. This type of Trust is less common, maybe even unusual, because the two share types already provide a degree of leverage for each other. The ordinary shares receive a much higher dividend return than would normally be possible without the need for further leveraging. However opportunities may arise that are tempting, consult the strategy document for clues.

Type-3: extended split-capital Trust
This type of investment company issues three or more types of share and has a fixed life. Since I am not aware of a Trust with more than three share types I will confine my description to the three-share-type structure. The overall strategy is the same as a type-2 Trust, but is complicated by the different share types. A typical company structure would contain ZDP shares, Income shares, and Capital shares. The ZDP shares have a predetermined capital-value growth rate, the Income shares have a defined maximum redemption value and receive all the income from the under-lying investments, the Capital shares receive no dividends but receive everything that is left when the company's life expires. There is an order of precedence for distributing the company's assets upon termination (defined in the strategy document) which is usually ZDP shares first, then Income shares, then Capital shares.

Type-3a: the leveraged extended split-capital Trust
I am not aware of any type-3 Trusts that use additional borrowing, but you never know.....

So who might use the different types of Investment Trust?

Type-1: ordinary smaller investors who desire exposure to a range of investments and who use an Investment Trust to achieve this without having to pay the dealing costs associated with buying small quantities of shares in different companies. Some Trusts invest in instruments outside the Trust's native country, so an investor could buy Asian-focused investments without having to obtain an account in another country. Also this is a hands-off investment which is entrusted to the Trust's manager, thereby allowing the investor to get on with their day-job.

Type-2: this Trust brings together different categories of investor. Those wishing the make investments which deliver only a capital-return (for tax reasons perhaps) would buy the ZDP shares. Pension funds or wealthier investors seeking a lower-risk stock market investment vehicle might buy the ZDP shares. A 7% return should double your money in 10 years. The Ordinary or Income shares would be bought by, for example, retirees looking for a better yield with a more likely preservation of initial investment capital. Also companies with a requirement to pay dividends or other income to clients might hold the Ordinary shares, and there is a reasonable possibility that the capital value will also grow in the absence of Black Swan events.

Type-3: attracts the same type of investors who would use a type-2 Trust. The type-3 Trust offers ZDP shareholders even more security than the type-2 Trust with a typical 7% growth rate. The Income share holder now has the possibility of even greater yield from their investment, for example three times the normal stock market yield of ~3.5%, and a reasonable expectation that the original investment capital will be preserved. The Capital share holder is making a bet that the stock market (or whatever the underlying investment embodies) will return some minimum growth. If the number of shares in each class is the same then the Capital share holder can make stellar returns from an average asset value growth of 5% (which would match the ZDP growth in this example). The oft-voiced average growth of stock market investments is typically more than this, the figures I have seen range between 10% and 15%. A 10% average annual asset-value growth would deliver a total growth of ~370% for Capital share holders. However recent years have seen catastrophes which have hammered stock market investments and therefore an average annual growth rate of 0% would see the Capital share holders lose all their investment. Less than 0% annual growth (i.e. an overall loss) would also see the Income share holders losing some of their investment capital. The figures make some assumptions, the main one being that the Income share redemption value equals the original investment cost.

Further to assertions that the (UK) stock market delivers an average growth of around 15%, or any number that you may wish to choose, I have found a little evidence to back it up....
"Between 1955 and 2015, for example, the Numis Smaller Company Index delivered a 15.4% annual return, compared to 11.7% from the large-cap dominated FTSE All-Share."

At last! Not wishing to be too disparaging, a decently worded article (https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/small-cap-ultimate-variety-box-075924450.html) from The Fool (http://www.fool.co.uk/) whose journalistic style normally makes my teeth itch.

What are the returns from those in the last 20 years? - if you have them to hand. I have always been under the impression that the US outperforms the UK shares, but not on those numbers it doesn't

I don't have other numbers. I happened on the article which is brave enough to quote Numis.....

Obviously it includes all the years of misery such as 2003....

I want to start cost averaging some money into the main UK indexes, not at these prices though.

...wait for a return to ~6950

That assumes that it is going to happen

This great man died yesterday of Pancreatic cancer, but what a list of achievements and contribution to society.
(video sponsored by a well known manufacturer....)

https://youtu.be/YpKbO6O3O3M

...and this one for a great entertainment experience.

https://youtu.be/Sm5xF-UYgdg

Never heard of this guy before. Will check him out later.