As Urszula's company had offered her the same sort of deal; a monthly contribution with limited interest and the option at the end of three years, to purchase shares at a price agreed at the outset; we both enrolled in our respective schemes.
I watched the company shares plummet; almost from the day I joined the scheme. They had been valued £6.40 at one stage, the offer I was on, priced them at £3.80 and I sincerely thought, in three years time (just when we needed the money for our bigger boat) if they only get back to somewhere near the £6 bracket, we shall be doing well here!
Then the Dot-Com bubble burst:- Dropping to
£1.80 at one point, it became a daily "fun
game" at work, watching the shares go up and down, then down
some more.
When they reached £0.66p each, I said to
Urszula "This has just got to be a good time to invest some
more money? Shares once worth over £6 now valued at £0.66p?"
"They can't go much lower
surely?"
And so it was, that on the morning of September 11th 2001, at just after 09:30 (BST) Urszula purchased a "substantial amount" (no, I'm not telling how much) of shares.
Shortly after that - Well most readers will know what happened in the USA that day.
The effect on share prices in the UK was not immediate, since all share dealing stopped in the US for some time, but none the less, they fell slightly almost within an hour of purchase.
Once US share dealing started again, they fell dramatically of course, along with most stocks.
This graph shows the situation over the period; the share price falls dramatically, until the beginning of Oct, then rallied to almost £1.00 at one stage, before falling again. As the global turn-down in trading (particularly in Data-Comms) really starts to bite:-
You will see that the lower graph showing the daily movements of shares, note the significant gap, midway between Sept01 and Oct01 when nothing was trading.
Our loss is as nothing to that felt by friends, relatives, survivors and I am not belittling, or trying to make light, of that terrible act in any way.
It's just that we were obviously never intended to make "big" money, at least not without having to work for every penny ourselves!
(For the record, since I penned this page, due to various on-going banking problems the company shares are now worth £0.15p and it looks as if it may not continue trading, in it's present form - February 2002)
Well, it is now late March early April. Another 450 redundancies have been announced, the share price has reached circa £0.03p (not even worth watching anymore) and I very much doubt if I am likely to survive the next "cull" of staff, so we might just be leaving sooner, rather than later?
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