Thanks Chalky for the positive feedback.  I also appreciate your input and content here, although I'm not personally interested in many of the companies you are posting on (like PointsBet, Dominos, AFG, etc.), so I do tend to skip over those posts and straws, but I do read (and often upvote) the ones I am interested in (like Nuix, CLDD, Redbubble).  

Just as a side note, I can not add images to forum posts - however, for those who are interested in broker views on Appen (APX) - which I do not hold - I've just posted a straw on them here: https://strawman.com/reports/APX/Bear77?view-straw=10645

You're right Grizzly.  I still own a bunch of them, and I'm up on most of them despite them being disliked by the majority of the market at this point.  One I'm looking at getting back into currently is MACA (MLD) who have come down a long way just on sector sentiment.  I already own Macmahon (MAH) and NRW Holdings (NWH) and those three (MAH, NWH & MLD) look like the best risk/reward trade-offs in mining services on the ASX for my money at this point.  I also like a number of engineering services companies, like LYL, GNG & SRG, and of course the big one, Monadelphous Group (MND), one of my all-time favourite companies, although Mono's is now more of a construction and labour hire and multi-service company.  Lycopodium (LYL) was actually originally MND's engineering division which they spun out years ago.  They're now back together via a JV called Mondium which is 60% owned by MND and 40% owned by LYL.  

In the case of MLD and MAH, the majority of their clients are gold miners and it is possible that the recent negative sentiment that saw gold miners' share prices fall a fair way has also affected MLD and MAH for much the same reason.  However, a number of gold miners seem to have bottomed (on 8-March-2021) and are starting to head north again now, but we have not seen that same move in the charts of MLD and MAH.  They will head north again, but I don't know when.

Although they both do other stuff, GNG & LYL both specialise in designing and building gold processing plants, but their share prices seem to move independently from the gold price and sentiment around gold miners.  LYL has had a really good 6 months, and GNG has had a brilliant 12 months.  I was underwater on GNG last year, but I'm well up on them now.  With both LYL and GNG it's all about their order book, and the share prices tend to reflect how much work they've got on their books.  Last year GR Engineering (GNG) didn't have a whole lot of work, and they were sold down accordingly, which is when you load up on such companies.  The thing about GNG, despite being a microcap and being illiquid at times, is that they always maintain a net cash balance, and NEVER have net debt.  Their management ALL own GNG shares, and they are very conservative with their accounting, their capital management decisions, and their guidance to the market.  A company like that, particularly a company that has zero debt, is NOT going broke.  They might go through some lean years, but they always come roaring back when the work picks up again.  You can trade in and out of such companies, buy low, sell high, or do as I do and maintain a core position and trade around the edges of that position.  MND can be categorised the same way.  They can have debt sometimes, but they always pay it off.  They USUALLY have a mountain of net cash, as they do now.  And they are a LOT bigger.  And they also have management with serious skin in the game who are likewise very conservative in exactly the same ways - accounting, capital management (including M&A) and guidance.  Lean years?  Sure.  Comes with the territory - contracting - lumpy revenue, it's going to happen.  But will they be around in 10 years or 20 years from now.  Bet your ass they will.  And they'll be trading at significantly higher share prices also. (in my opinion, DYOR, of course.)

By the way, when I added the forum post two posts up last night, I had searched the forums for "Broker Reports", because that's what I wanted to talk about, and this forum came up with that very title, so I posted in it.  It was only today that I realised that this forum, while indeed called "Broker Reports", is actually under Appen (APX), rather than being in the general forum section where I thought it was located.  So - in light of that - sorry to all you Appen fans who have NO interest in all of this other stuff we are discussing.  Hope your scrolling finger isn't too sore...

Yeah, I did buy 30,000 MLD (MACA) @ 94 cps today in one of my RL portfolios.  I didn't get the day's lowest price - they closed at 92 cps and traded as low as 91 cps at one stage and as high as 96 cps at the open - however I believe I paid a good price.  What usually happens is they go lower after I buy them, just to test my nerve and conviction, and then turn around and head north at some point, usually weeks or months later (sometimes years).  Meanwhile, they do paid a nice dividend yield to be going on with.

I also increased my exposure to MLD on my Strawman.com scorecard today, to bring it more in line with my MAH (Macmahon) position.  Having only $100K as starting money here and wanting to hold quite a number of stocks in my virtual portfolio, my positions tend to be a lot smaller here in the virtual world than they do in RL.  However, I also own a couple of stocks - like Codan (CDA) - that are not in my Strawman.com portfolio, and there are a number of companies in my Strawman.com portfolio that I do NOT hold in RL, so it's not really a good indicator of what I hold - it's more of an indicator of what I think looks like good value at any given time - the larger the weighting the better the risk/reward equation looks to me.  Riskier companies tend to be the smaller positions.

NWH is one of my favourtie companies @Grizzly.  Thing is they very nearly DID go bust back in 2015 - due to very high debt and not enough work, plus shrinking margins.  They are a LOT better managed these days, and I'm very comfortable that they won't make those mistakes again - particularly the debt thing.  They do use debt for acquisitions now, but they usually do a debt/equity funding mix which is sensible and they pay the debt down reasonably quickly.  They also keep their gearing at sensible levels when they do have debt.  They have made some very smart purchases in recent years, with Golding, the RCR Mining Technologies and RCR Heat Treatment businesses (for next to nothing from the RCR administrators/liquidators) and Primero being the standouts.  All earnings accretive, and all have propelled NRW to another level and given them a wider/larger addressable market.  You would have had to have had nerves of steel however to have held NRW (NWH) from their $4.15/share peak in March 2012 down to 5 cents/share at the end of 2015.  That was 4 years of relentless south east SP trajectory and very little positive news.  For those who bought near that 5 cps low, they then rose for 4 straight years to peak at $3.23 in December 2019.  It's been choppy since then, mostly due to Covid in 2020, but now due to mining services being an unloved sector at this point.  Anyway, I now see NWH as a long term hold.  They will continue to increase their dividends, albeit from a low base, and they are now a $900m company, and they were a $1.25 billion company just 4 months ago in early January, and nothing has changed between then and now except market sentiment.  I agree that the quality names (with the best management teams) in this space are great opportunities when they are absolutely smashed, given up for dead, and nobody wants to touch them.  The good ones always come back.  As you say @Grizzly, it can be a very profitable exercise when the opportunity presents.