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£133 or £158k

Honest reporting on shorter-term trading activity and ideas
PrincessB
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£133 or £158k

#19485

Postby PrincessB » January 2nd, 2017, 3:03 pm

I'm getting a bit fed up with having to withdraw money from portfolio. Unfortunately the house still requires attention and with great reluctance, I've liberated another £25k from £158k with a view towards getting it finished at last.

The result is starting 2017 with a portfolio value of £133k on what looks to be a fairly toppy market with a large chance of the FTSE100 will end this year proportionally lower than higher - In other words, we're more likely to see 6,000 than 8,000.

It has been wonderful to see a board that on the old Fool was very quiet spring into life. It appears that among the more exotic ways of making money, a number of posters are using a combination of high yield, growth and value shares to provide a lower return in dividends and a higher return in capital growth.

I look forward to seeing what I can manage over the next year and as ever I've got some lifestyle changes to make. Give up booze for a while, do some research, take a very hard look at an oversized and chaotic portfolio etc.

Will report back, in the meantime.

Happy new year to you all.

B.

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Re: £133 or £158k

#19627

Postby wyndrum » January 3rd, 2017, 6:52 am

Hi PB,

Are you risk adverse or are you looking for an annual 10% or greater returns or what?

(I only mention this as many retail companies will be reporting in the next 3 weeks or so and there may be good initial gains if you want to take a punt.)

I think Dixons Carphone, Supergroup, Greene King and Morrisons all look possible for quick 5% plus over the next 4 weeks (in order of my belief in them which clearly is not worth a jot.) Less risky might be BAE Systems for th year? Looks good for dividends and capital growth.

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Re: £133 or £158k

#19672

Postby YeeWo » January 3rd, 2017, 10:58 am

wyndrum wrote:Hi PB,

Are you risk adverse or are you looking for an annual 10% or greater returns or what?

(I only mention this as many retail companies will be reporting in the next 3 weeks or so and there may be good initial gains if you want to take a punt.)

I think Dixons Carphone, Supergroup, Greene King and Morrisons all look possible for quick 5% plus over the next 4 weeks (in order of my belief in them which clearly is not worth a jot.) Less risky might be BAE Systems for th year? Looks good for dividends and capital growth.


http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/detail? ... discussion

I thing INCHCAPE, currently 700p-ish, is good for £8+

PrincessB
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Re: £133 or £158k

#21205

Postby PrincessB » January 8th, 2017, 3:13 pm

wyndrum wrote:
Hi PB,

Are you risk adverse or are you looking for an annual 10% or greater returns or what?


Hi there,

I'll sort of duck that question by answering it. I used to target a return of 20% per year with little concern as to how that was achieved - As an example, I have a standing order which feeds £300 per month into a spare bank account which is used to buy more shares when it accumulated sufficient value.

This does tend to massage the figures as there's money going in and the lower the value of the portfolio, the more of an impact it will make.

Lately, I've become more focussed on the total value of the portfolio from year to year and rather than mess about with a spreadsheet to calculate my returns, I've gone back to basics and am attempting to make money by not worrying overly about it.

On that note, I've done the first two trades of 2017 and as I've been stretched to find any time to do any research, I just went with instinct and boring and bought 250 Greggs (GRG) and 100 Royal Dutch Shell B (RDSB). I would be the first to admit that neither of these two are going to make me rich, what I'm expecting them to do is quietly chug out dividends while perhaps growing gently - I shall now ignore them for the rest of my life unless I find something that is bound to do something spectacular at which point they will be sold to provide funding.

Hi YeeWo,

I thing INCHCAPE, currently 700p-ish, is good for £8+


Thanks for the heads up, I had a quick look at the numbers which don't look at all threatening. I'm a big fan of medium growth companies with a half decent yield. I maintain that boring companies are usually more fun than the racy ones and the combination of a 3%+ dividend and some growth is a relaxing way to make money.

I suspect that many investors are looking at the extreme ends of their screening tools or losing money with jam tomorrow shares - Does anyone here have Torotrak? Down there in the middle of the screener is where the gold is, you've just got to sit down and screen your way through it.

Many thanks,

B.

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Re: £133 or £158k

#21673

Postby wyndrum » January 9th, 2017, 8:00 pm

Hi PB,

it does not sound to me as though you want to trade too much? Which even allowing for your £300 input still means a 17% return year on year and without trading much's not likely (all IMO of course) I mention this because you have bought 2 shares that you admit won't make you rich and 17% annual growth is pretty damn good.

My experience fwiw is that even very large companies can generate 3-5% plus moves in a week (either way of course, look at Next last week!), and as a result picking out shares maybe for 2-4 weeks holding can prove profitable. I know its easy to say, because you have to pick the ones that go up and not down. If you really don't want to trade as much as I suggest then I think smaller companies rather than mid size might do better over the medium term and of course its higher risk but you want higher than average returns.

(Of course you may have regularly got 20% return in which case whatever you were doing then carry on!)

All the best W

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Re: £133 or £158k

#21954

Postby spock » January 10th, 2017, 7:12 pm

PrincessB wrote:
As an example, I have a standing order which feeds £300 per month into a spare bank account which is used to buy more shares when it accumulated sufficient value.

This does tend to massage the figures as there's money going in and the lower the value of the portfolio, the more of an impact it will make.

B.


Hi PrincessB,

If I understand correctly, you are counting the money you invest into your account, as part of your returns?

If so, I should really suggest that the standard understanding for "return" really ought to exclude moneys paid in. As an extreme example, if my portfolio is worth £50,000, and I get a big bonus at work and I decide to invest a further £50,000 into that portfolio, my funds have doubled, I'm £50K richer, but my investment return is precisely 0%, and not 100%.

Obviously you're free to track your portfolio in any way you want, and if you think that accounting separately investment returns and cash paid in is too much hassle for you, and you only target total wealth growth whichever way it came in, that's perfectly fine. But to be clear, that's not what would be understood by most as "investment return".

Apologies if misunderstood you. Other than that clarification, good luck to you, I personally follow similar investment strategy. To put your mind at rest, I'm far lazier than you, since I don't even track portfolio value. Or money paid in, for that matter. My metric of choice is [living expenses minus mortgage capital repayments]/[divis and interest received]. Everything else I could find out easily, or even track, but life is too long to be doing spreadsheets outside my working hours!

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Re: £133 or £158k

#22427

Postby toofast2live » January 12th, 2017, 11:16 am

If I understand correctly, you are counting the money you invest into your account, as part of your returns?


Surely not! That would be a nonsense. I assumed the OP was talking about her investment return and not counting the £300pm transferred into the portfolio as return - that would be disturbingly bizarre. In fact I'm not sure I would invest at all if that were my thinking.

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Re: £133 or £158k

#22578

Postby StepOne » January 12th, 2017, 5:46 pm

toofast2live wrote:
If I understand correctly, you are counting the money you invest into your account, as part of your returns?


Surely not! That would be a nonsense. I assumed the OP was talking about her investment return and not counting the £300pm transferred into the portfolio as return - that would be disturbingly bizarre. In fact I'm not sure I would invest at all if that were my thinking.


I think he's including the monthly savings as part of his targeted 20% annual return. He makes it pretty clear in his second post where he says he didn't really care how the target was achieved. I think as long as you know you are doing it and are aware of the limitations it's not so bad.

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Re: £133 or £158k

#22975

Postby wyndrum » January 13th, 2017, 11:03 pm

well, ignoring the danger I am talking to myself. its been 2 weeks since I posted my idea on 4 stocks moving 5% in a month and so far all have achieved and more except GNK (about 2% since 3/01) and I am waiting for their Xmas update. I let SGP go on results this week and timed it pretty well, as the share shot up and then fell back throughout the day. There is always an element of luck in these things but I have a plan to mitigate the luck element: once I have made my money I get out. I don't worry it can make me more. I am still holding DC. as I am waiting for their xmas trading to come out too. (Unless of course it goes to my target figure beforehand which is 372p

So now I am in DC., GNK, LCL (Ladbrooks) at 120.28p and SPH at 34.42p(Sinclair Pharma), both reporting next week. anywhere between 3and 5% will do fine.

Cheers

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Re: £133 or £158k

#23284

Postby PrincessB » January 15th, 2017, 3:34 pm

Hi wyndrum,

So now I am in DC., GNK, LCL (Ladbrooks) at 120.28p and SPH at 34.42p(Sinclair Pharma), both reporting next week. anywhere between 3and 5% will do fine.


Sorry about being a bit quiet this week - Work has been more awfully bonkers than usual.

My one trade this week was perhaps bought on by the amount of insanity that has been happening recently. Along with no time to do any research and a generous prosecco or three when I managed to get away early... I've bought 10,094 in BooHoo (BOO) @ 145.2650p for a total consideration of £14,633.05.

This I will admit is perhaps a bit reckless, however Paulypilot AKA Paul Scott wrote an extremely interesting piece on Stockopedia a week or so ago giving his reasons why bizarrely high P/E ratios don't apply in certain cases. On the principle that the burned finger teaches best, let's just see what happens to them over the next year or so.

As we've had some discussion about how I work out what's happening to my portfolio, I can state that the money to buy BooHoo came from a reserve fund of capital and should not be included.

As a final point, I did a quick run of the numbers at SPH (Sinclair Pharma) and they look dreadful. No dividend, no profit, shrinking revenue, overpaid CEO, small market cap etc.

On the plus side, the chart is swinging nicely upwards and one of the few articles of interest I heard this week related to the bit of charting which has been proven to work well enough to be statistically better than guessing - In this case, being able to draw a line through three data points to indicate an upwards or downward trend mean the fourth data point is possibly going to be reached.

Regards,

B.

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Re: £133 or £158k

#23391

Postby wyndrum » January 16th, 2017, 6:55 am

Hi PB,

SPH is my off piste moment. I normally stick to large cap and in a perfect world low or debt free companies so even if the results are below expectations the underlying fundamentals are normally strong enough to eventually bring the SP around.

My research in SPH shows a turnaround in trading and some markets (South Korea) apparently coming back. A director has bought some and as you say the chart with the indicators I use, says its got more chance of going up then down.

I am already at breakeven from my purchase on Friday the slight move up in the PM wiping out my costs and levy. (A 1p move today would be 3% so I would probably sell then anyway, who knows. (I have complicated things for myself as I am not close to a screen at 8:00am or in fact all day tomorrow so would not have the chance to sell in any circumstance.)

FWIW I have mixed views on P. S's ability to pick winners. Sure he gets some right but he also has his fair share of duds too. I get the high PE argument but its Russian roulette. At some time the law of gravity will apply so I don't mind an in and out trade on very high PE's but long term its too risky for me. (one bad quarter and the re-adjustment can be savage.)

Still, its only money.

Good luck W

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Re: £133 or £158k

#24325

Postby wyndrum » January 19th, 2017, 6:58 am

Well done PB, Good call on Gregs. (Under my system I would sell and move on banking that 5% plus for just a few weeks and find something else.)

Ladbrooks worked out well and I sold at 128.45 making 6%. I will have to wait for Sinclair to move but the figures out performed the market but being a small cap its not really on the radar, however it looks ok to me to wait as 40p plus is on the cards. We shall see.

GNK is a bit up and down with no direction but I have a hunch the sellers are running out of steam but with Dixon's there is still a bit of a fight going on. Hopefully the xmas trading update will put the both sellers to flight.

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Re: £133 or £158k

#35134

Postby PrincessB » February 28th, 2017, 2:26 pm

Hi all,

Rather than start a new thread I'd like to offer a mini update as I'm unlikely to trade anything until autumn.

I've commented on a number of occasions about my frustration at continually having to raid my portfolio for various house related projects. I've already raided £25k from the pot for house renovations and now thanks to further circumstances beyond my control, I've had to do a massive sell off to buy a flat for a close relative.

On the plus side, I started the year with a £158k portfolio which put on a spurt after New Year's day and gained a further £8k until sell off day. I won't pretend that I realised all of the gain. I put through 29 sell orders in the space of 40 minutes and have just completed trade 30 to realise the last £11k I needed to satisfy everyone I can actually afford all of this.

For the time being I'm dealing with a relatively simple but very messy job on my house for the next couple of months as well as the purchase of a flat 150 miles away which means driving about a lot.

I'm off to the DIY board to talk about radiators and heat load calculations.

I look forward to returning with some ideas, banter and not feeling there are too few hours in each day.

Regards to you all,

B.


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