Week 12 Review

I decided to do a review of each week and see how things have changed since the previous week. Unfortunately my first retrospective was only a few days ago, but lets go with it and see what happens

Portfolio cost	£25,946.46		Weekly Change
Portfolio value (share price)	£25,330.84	(-£533.50)	+£69.02
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£24,502.57	(-£1,443.89)	+£5.99
Dividends	£82.12		£0
Profit from sales	£108.18		£0
Overall profit	-£1,253.59
(Portfolio sale-cost+dividends+profit from sales)

 Better than I thought. After 2 days of general redness and the FTSE looking glum, it's a massive £5.99 up from Wednesday. Interesting that the share prices are up by £69 suggesting the spread must have widened somewhat

Yesterday generated much excitement when PTEC:Playtec shares went bonkers after a strong 3rd quarter statement. Unfortunately all my housing stocks crumbled and negated much of the gain. GBG:GB Group had also performed well, but  today they've lost 14p and Playtec have lost 17p, presumably as people took profits from yesterday's rise. Meanwhile the housing stocks between them have slipped another 1p. Mortgage lending data seems to be messing them up,

Biggest gainer today was JLB:Jubilee Platinum. A 6.6% increase! OK it's only 0.225p, but the gain is nudging me back towards break-even. LOOK:Lookers was the next best, with a 4.1% increase. I was hoping for a little more after a strong trading statement.

GLEN:Glencore climbed 1.7p. Woohoo!! Every day they sneak up is a happy day and nibbles away at my £558 loss. It may take years to wipe it out, but there will be some serious celebrating the day these shares go into profit!

The weekend beckons. Time to find the next great share...

First retrospective

OK - it's time to review the first 2 months of investing.

Portfolio cost	£25,946.46
Portfolio value (share price)	£25,261.82	(-£602.62)
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£24,496.58	(-£1,449.88)
Dividends	£82.12
Profit from sales	£108.18
Overall profit	-£1,259.59
(Portfolio sale-cost+dividends+profit from sales)

I guess that's not too bad after 2 months. Around £750 of the loss is commission, as it includes the cost of sale. There's still a big loss from the spread where the bid price hasn't caught up to the offer price I paid, the market has been incredibly volatile with the China slow down and uncertainty over interest rates, and Glencore alone is down by £500.

It will be fascinating to compare this summary over the weeks (for me at least!)

Writing this summary did remind me of something. When I got back from Brazil and set up my new spreadsheet, a couple of shares appeared to be over-priced given the profits, growth and current share price. As these were in profit, and my system reckoned they were way, way overpriced, I decided to sell.

Given that my new system has absolutely no track record or evidence to back it up, the sales may be a huge mistake, but they allowed some of the other recent purchases to happen where the companies were straight greens, so I'm comfortable with the decision.

ISG:Interior Services Group. I bought at 168.8p and sold at 235p making £173.60 which was 33% profit. As ISG made a loss last year, I had to make up some figures so my formula would work. Based on their previous year's profits and at 20% growth my system calculated a fair share price of 166p which was just less than I paid for them. Since I sold them the selling price has dropped 19p to 216p, so although I'd love to see them continue to grow, I'm happy with what I got.

REDD:Redde. I bought at 158.51p and sold at 177p making £20.16 which was just 5%. I'm still not convinced I made the right decision. Their graph is evenly upwards, and they have only gone down 2p since I sold. My new system had their fair price at 133p which is what caused the big rush to sell, but there's a lot more than company accounts to drive a share price so I maybe should have ridden it a bit further.

I have a few others in my portfolio targeted for a sale, but I'll keep quiet about those until the deals are done, for fear of jinxing them. I also have a few more star shares I'd like to buy, so more on them when the deals are done. Meanwhile I need some way of validating my new system, so maybe try a few more tweaks to the algorithm to smooth out the extremes, and maybe calculate growth over 3 years instead of 1. Hmmm...

My first dividends!

I didn't realise I had some dividend payments until I looked at my transaction history when I started writing this diary. There were a load of payments that had mysteriously appeared in my account, totaling £82.12. This felt like real interest at last.

Up till this point I had regarded dividends with some disdain. A few pence a share here and there - how could that be worth anything?

Well - quite easily when you get £80 out of the blue.

What was even more amazing was the £35.65 from Glencore. The share that was losing me most money finally gave something back. What puzzled me was that I thought they had withdrawn the dividend to pay off the debts - maybe that's the next one?

Now I've added a column for dividend yield into my spreadsheet. It doesn't impact the colours in the conditional formatting, but if I'm comparing two similar shares, then it will have an influence.

Meanwhile my stock searching found another must-have share, and as I was really close to my ISA limit, I decided to take another £1000 out of premium bonds, and transferred in £1080 to my account. That leaves £1300 available, except it's not available as that's how much I had put in my cash ISA this year.

So that's it - I have my seed fund and I'm not putting any more in. My remaining premium bonds will stay and I'll start building up my liquid savings again, especially as I need a new garden fence. From now on my share dealing will be restricted to money that I make from selling my existing shares.

The final purchase from my savings was this morning. SGRO:Segro provide warehousing and offices. Their chart is a little volatile, but generally heading upwards, they pay generous dividends, and they are confident of future growth this year, especially with internet shopping requiring more and more warehouses. I bought 225 shares at 451.26p and £5.08 stamp duty, costing £1032.37. In just one day they have gone up enough to cover the spread, so I need another 15p rise to pay the commission. My target is a whopping 1500p.

That brings the whole history up to date, and means I can start using this as a more traditional diary

Holiday reading

Just before my holiday to Brazil, I decided more research was required, so downloaded "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham, and absorbed its wisdom over the 16 days.

I came back invigorated and keen to try out my new measures. There were so many columns to add to my spreadsheet and so many conditional formatting rules to flag those great shares.

I applied my new thinking to my existing portfolio. It wasn't a pretty site, with KIBO:Kibo Mining the only one to turn every category green.

After the initial disappointment, further scrutiny made me feel a bit better, but what would be the ultimate test of my new method? I looked at all my watch lists and added all the new info from their financial reports, and a few of them really stood out - green everywhere.

I acted almost immediately - with so many great new shares, I had to get some. I still had credit from my premium bond withdrawal so set about spending it

On 19th October 2015 I made my biggest ever purchase. 225 shares at 887.96p plus £9.99 stamp duty costing £2019.85 in SHB:Shaftesbury. They develop and rent out expensive premises in London and are on a steady climb in share price. Normally I wouldn't touch such an expensive share, but with such steady growth I could see them topping 2000p a share. In just 9 days they have risen to 938.5p and I'm already £90 up. Could the new system be working?

On 23rd October 2015 I decided £2000 wasn't an unreasonable sum for one stock, in fact if I'm to whittle down my portfolio to a more manageable size, then I ought to be nearer £2000 on each transaction than £1000. So with that in mind, my next all-green stock was TON:Titon Holdings. 2400 shares at 82.4p plus £9.89 stamp duty costing £1999.44. Titon Holdings make ventilation systems and door knobs, and they seem to be very good at it, with increasing profits and regular dividends. In 4 trading days their share price has gone up a few pence, but with a huge spread and commission I've got £90 to go before I break even. Not a problem when my review point is 500p!

On the same day I bought 550 shares in TND:Tandem Group at 194.75p for £1083.08. Tandem make bikes, which are going through a boom at the moment. They also sell franchised toys, and with Star Wars coming out soon, there's tons of potential. My review point is 600p so I have high hopes. Unfortunately this is another with a great big spread, so although the price has risen slightly the sell price is 180p and I'm £105 down. I need it to go up to 200p just to get into profit, but it will.

My next purchase was a top-up of MMX:Minds + Machines. I'm so convinced this is a brilliant business model that I added 12000 shares at 9.25p costing £1121.95. Since applying my new scoring, my potential price has gone up from 200p to 285p, but that's based on current growth which isn't going to happen, so my actual review point is 85p.

My final purchase from the big premium bond pot was RCI:Rapidcloud. 3400 shares at 28.9p costing £994.55. This is a scary share, as the chart is plummeting. Problem is, I can't see why. Cloud computing is taking off, with more and more companies strategically moving systems off their premises. Rapidcloud provide the building blocks to allow companies to do this, and they are making good profits. The share price fall may be the China slowdown effect as they operate in Asia, and some changes in Malaysian tax laws will hit their short term profit. However revenues are up in the first 6 months of this year, and they are about to start paying dividends. My review point is 150p so I'm anticipating a reversal in fortune - at some point. The price has gone up in the last few days, but this is another share with a massive spread, so if I wanted to sell now I would lose £88. Good job I don't!

Next post features a very pleasant surprise...

Dawn of the ISA

Since reading the Naked Trader book, it was nagging at the back of my mind that if I were to make too much profit on my shares, I would be liable to pay tax. It has to be said, the way things were going so far, there wasn't much chance of me making more than £11,000 profit - if any at all.

Anyway, I had already decided that the premium bonds had to be invested, so why not open up a stocks and shares ISA and transfer some of them into there. I cashed in a load of bonds and then had to wait what seemed like forever for the cash to appear in my account. Meanwhile I looked at several options for an account, and my favourite was Hargreaves Lansdown. The money appeared and I opened up my ISA with £12,860.

I had spent the last few weeks going through the A-Z of stocks starting with L (I figured if everyone started at A and got bored or ran out of money, then L-Z might have a better chance. I had immediately discounted any with debt, and when I found one in profit did a quick check on their profit to debt and profit to market cap ratios for ones that looked reasonable. When I found one, I went and checked out their accounts and web site to see if I liked them.

Needless to say, there were a few other investments that didn't match these criteria - once again speculation had crept in where it shouldn't. These are the shares I purchased with my premium bonds between 16th and 22nd September 2015

TFW:Thorpe (FW) 500 shares at 194.76p costing £973.80. Thorpe make LED lighting and their chart had been a steady rise. They paid a reasonable dividend and profits had been growing gradually. This seemed like one of those sensible shares that would plod along nicely for a few years. Happily this has proved true so far, with an increase to 214p and £70 up.

JLP:Jubilee Platinum 15000 shares at 3.71p costing £568.45. I was impressed with Jubilee Platinum, because despite platinum prices going down, they had a production method that means they can produce at well below even these low prices and so should remain profitable when other producers are not. I also liked the fact that they went from extraction right through the process to smelting and refining, although they have since sold some of these interests. The share did really well for a while, increasing to over 4p a share, but now it's back down at 3.5p so I have £60 to make up.

WRES:W Resources 60000 shares at 0.698p at a cost of £430.75. W Resources mines and produces tungsten. There seemed to be lots of promise in their operations, so although a bit risky I decided that for under £500 and getting a whopping 60000 shares, it was worth a risk. Unfortunately after being up for a while, they have dropped to .6p and I'm £94 down - but I am confident this one will turn around.

STL:Stilo International 20000 shares at 4.13p costing £837.95. Stilo is a software company with some massive customers like IBM and Cisco. They are in a niche market and seem to be on the way to dominating it, so I have high hopes for these shares. Currently they are trading at 5p, which leaves me up by £150

RDT:Rosslyn Data Technologies. 2000 shares at 17.5199p costing £362.35. Rosslyn provide cloud analytic services - a rapidly growing market. Their share price has sunk since they floated, but they seem to be close to turning in a profit, and were so cheap I felt a small purchase was justified. With hindsight, I shouldn't be spending £360 on one share if I want to stand much chance of getting the commission back! Unfortunately these are already down to 15p so I'm £75 down, but I think long-term they will become profitable.

SSY:Scisys 1000 shares at 70p costing £711.95. Scisys are another company with a very niche market, providing IT services and equipment for various areas, but including space exploration. They had a drastic drop in share value from a gradual increase to 90p, and I see no reason why they shouldn't go back to 90p and continue to grow. I've got 200p as my review target.

TW. Taylor Wimpey 600 shares at 200.24p plus £6.01 stamp duty costing £1219.40. I already had shares with Barratts and was convinced the housing market had more room to grow. These shares have stuttered a little, as have Barratts, and are currently priced at 195.2p, so I have a £60 loss and a while to wait for my target price of 250p.

GBG:GB Group 200 shares at 246.55p costing £505.05. GB Group deal in cyber security, so there is huge demand for their services and their chart is a dream. Since buying they have continued to rise despite other shares falling, and are currently trading at 270p so my commission is payed and there's £23 profit. Still a long way to go before I get bored of this one. I'll do a review at 350p.

That was my big splurge, but there was still some capital to save for when I got back from holiday. There was just one last task for September, which was to sell my PTY Parity Group shares. I purchased them at 7.5p and sold at 8.31p, so after spread and commission I made a massive £7.40 profit. I didn't care that it was tiny. I'd finally made some money from the stock market, and chipped away a little at the £92.99 loss I made on OCDO:Ocado.

Time to go on holiday and read my new book...

Just a few premium bonds and watch those charts

I couldn't help myself. £1900 premium bonds cashed in and transferred to my trading account. This would allow me to buy the new shares I had spotted and really liked. This was using a new technique - find shares with relentless growth on their charts and jump on for the ride. 3rd September 2015 was the purchase day.

PUR:Pure Wafer 300 at 169.95p costing £522.35. Pure Wafer clean industrial silicon test wafers. It's an incredibly niche market and they seem to have it to themselves. They were making a good profit for the share price and the chart was practically vertical, so I decided they would do well. in fact, I think they will continue to soar and my review price is so far off the chart I wonder if my sums are wrong. I very much doubt it will get to 2000p a share, but that's what my calculations ended up with. **Since writing this I discovered that my growth rate was wrong, as it included profits from the sale of an asset. My new review point is a more realistic 250p

MSLH:Marshalls 200 at 351.337p and £3.51 stamp duty costing £718.68. I'm a gardener, so the thought of a garden related company with a beautifully ascending chart was too much to pass by. They pay dividends every 6 months and profits are rising, so this seems sound. I don't think it's one that will go bonkers, but appears steady so I'll do an initial review at 400p and hope I get a dividend by then.

LOOK:Lookers 359 at 179.392p and £3.22 stamp duty costing £659.74. Lookers sell cars on the web. They seem to be very popular and their profits have been growing steadily every year. The chart was a pretty even upwards slope, so I had to get some. The one dip seems to have occurred just as I bought them, and the value has dropped to 171p so I'm £60 down. However, I'm sure this is just the dodgy market at the moment and my target review price is 266p so I'm confident there is more room to grow.

On 9th September 2015 I bought 244 shares at 158.51p of REDD:Redde costing £399.26. Redde are a services company specialising in accident management support. Their chart is absolutely soaring, but I have now sold them, as I developed a new system for evaluating the value of shares and based on their profit and growth, I decided they were trading at 30p a share above what they were worth. I made £20.16 profit after commission, which was about 5% in a month, so better than my old savings account rate. I suspect they will continue to soar so I will keep an eye on them to see how wrong I was to sell.

I mentioned in a previous post that I'd bought more AFPO:African Potash shares just as they hit their peak and started to plummet. That was also on 9th September and marked my last purchase on the Stocktrade web site. I realised that my profits were going to be limited (should I ever make any) by capital gains tax, so I really needed a stocks and shares ISA. That's what the next post will be about.

A whole new direction

The date is 30th August 2015. I've now read the Naked Trader book and have been researching stocks and adding them to my spreadsheet. I've found companies with low debt and charts that are on the rise. I just need capital to buy the shares.

My plan was to invest a little every month, but with commission to pay, I realised that I needed to up the minimum order size to at least £500, preferably more. That would mean waiting months before I could buy any more shares - but the market was still low after the China crisis, so I figured I needed to get them now. I still had loads of money in premium bonds, but that was my safe pot. I wasn't prepared to raid it.

There was one answer, but I was unsure. I could borrow the money. Borrowing money to buy shares that could go down in value - was that really a good idea?

I went to my on-line bank account to see how much a loan would cost. I was amazed. I could borrow £5000 and pay it back at just over £200 a month, which was the amount I planned to regularly invest. The interest over 2 years was only £270. Ten minutes later I'd made the application and a few days later there was £5000 in my account

It went straight into my trading account and I started buying the shares I had marked out beforehand

UCG:United Carpets. 6000 at 11.388p costing £695.78. I was convinced these were way too cheap. There was really low debt too, and reasonable profits. I still really like this one. It's broken even from the spread and commission, so every rise will result in profit. I've set a target of 20p before I review it.

UTV:UTV Media. 250 at 174.3p costing £450.43. UTV Media own Talk Sport radio, which is very popular. They have also just agreed to sell off their Ulster TV company to ITV, so I'm hoping this will give the price another boost. It's up to 185p so I've already cleared the spread and commission and have a few pounds profit. My target is 237p before I review it.

PTEC:Playtech. 100 at 846.28p costing £858.78. Playtech provide the applications for mobile gambling amongst other things. Although I'm not really in favour of the relentless advertising of these gambling "games", there's no doubt they are very popular. Playtech also have a strong acquisition policy, so I figure there's lots of potential for growth. Having said that, the shares are being bought for 811p at the moment, so not doing too well. I would lose £60 if I sold now, so I won't.

RNK:Rank Group 500 at 249.1023p and £6.23 stamp duty costing £1264.24. I bought these mainly on the strength of the chart. It seemed on a relentless rise. Rank Group run things like Mecca Bingo and Grosvenor Casinos. They pay dividends twice a year and are making good profits, so I have high hopes. So high I reckon they can treble in value, so I'm in this for a long time.

KIBO:Kibo Mining 8500 at 4.5p costing £398.83. I figured a mining company that was actually making a profit was like a gold mine - quite literally! There seemed to be high hopes, and a very positive outlook. The share has done quite well too, climbing to 5p and currently leaving me up by £13. I'm convinced it has a way to go yet, and my review price is set at 9p.

MMX:Minds + Machines 6000 at 8.3p costing £510.50. I'm dead excited about this share. They have purchased the rights to domain names that can be used instead of .com or .net. Thinks like .law and .miami. Now they have purchased the names, they are focused on marketing their rental. This seems like a great business model to me. They have already gone up to 9p so I'm showing £17 profit and the marketing and revenues haven't even started yet. I think these could easily top 200p a share eventually. That would be £11,000 profit!! Maybe a tad optimistic, but it's fun to dream.

WRL:Wentworth 2000 at 32.49p costing £662.30. This one's a bit of a risk. I bought it on the back of news that they had started supplying through a new pipeline to Tanzania. I figured they had been through all the exploration and drilling and losses, so now it should all be about reeling in the profit. The price has dropped slightly, but not enough to worry about. I'm setting 70p as my target for review when they start making a detectable profit.

NTBR:Northern Bear 999 at 55.8p costing £569.94. I was led by the chart on this one, and stable profits over the last few years. I decided construction was still a booming area, at least until interest rates start going up. I've set my review price at 150p so I'm either optimistic or delusional.

So that was it - my £5000 seeder fund was sown. Problem is, I'd found more shares I really liked, and the excitement of the research was intoxicating. Did I really need all those premium bonds? Surely I could cash a few in...

A few more shares

On my last post I jumped the timeline a bit, as I wanted to write about buying and selling the Ocado shares. Before reading the Naked Trader book, I did buy a few more. I added another £1500 to my account, which pretty much cleared out my Building Society savings.

On 21st August 2015 I bought 130 shares in BA.:BAE Systems as I figured they would still get lots of business. That set me back 451.9p a share at a total of £602.91 with the addition of commission and £2.94 stamp duty. Things have been a bit up and down for them, but I think this one could go up a lot as they have a massive order book.

On 24th August, after watching Countryfile and a slot on the potash mine being developed in the North York Moors National Park, I bought 1000 shares in SXX:Sirius Minerals at 17.32p costing £185.70. This was before I'd read the book - now I would buy no less than 30000 of these to make it worthwhile. At the time I thought it was risky buying shares in a company not likely to make profit for several more years. In fact, with what I know now, I'd probably have waited 2 years to buy them when the company was showing it could make money. For now I'll keep them as a reminder of what not to do. I could sell them now at 17.75p which is more than I paid or them, but would lose £20.70 on commission, so I'll keep hold.

On 28th August I bought what could have been my biggest profit-making share. AFPO:African Potash was selling for 1.876p a share. I bought 15751 at a total cost of £307.99. They rocketed up to 3.2p each. I could have sold them for £183 profit, but I was so impressed with the stock that I bought another 12109 at 3.2p for £399.99. You can guess what happened next. They dropped back to 1.85p, which was less than I'd paid for the original lot and is currently giving a loss of £205.07. This taught me that AIM market shares can be extremely volatile.

However, sticking to my guns about research, I still like this share and I still think it will give big gains. The company have signed up a whole batch of contracts to supply fertiliser. To begin with they will be commodity trading, and using the profits to fund the potash mine so that they will be able to switch to supplying from there when production is up and running. This seems like a really sensible approach, so I'm fastening my seatbelt and sticking for the long ride.

The next post will see me take a whole new direction.

Finally read a book

20th August 2015 and I'd been looking at OCDO:Ocado. I'd never heard of them before, but since buying the shares I've noticed their vans more often. There seemed to be some concern that they may be affected by competition from Amazon Fresh, which was about to be introduced to the UK. However there was also speculation that Amazon couldn't be bothered setting up their own systems and may just buy out Ocado.

I added another £350 to my account, and bought 227 at 371.796p. With commission and £2.36 stamp duty that came to £487.04

It was not long after that I decided I really need to know more about what I'm doing, so I downloaded The Naked Trader by Robbie Burns. With hindsight, I should have done that before buying any shares, although fortunately I don't think I did anything too catastrophic as a result - just a few daft things that taught me a lesson early on.

The book opened up my eyes to what spread was, what market cap meant, and the importance of research. It also gave a few good pointers - like avoiding too much debt and spotting over-priced shares.

This was great - I could  set up a spreadsheet and start putting summary stats in it. Naturally I was horrified when I saw the state of Glencore's debt, and realised that blindly buying shares just because they were at their lowest prices ever wasn't a sure fire way to make money.

The book also had a mantra given many times over - that you have to lose money in order to make money. I discovered what a stop-loss order was. I didn't want to risk an odd market movement selling my shares prematurely, so instead set up a stop-loss column in my spreadsheet that would turn orange when the share fell to 15% below what I had paid. Glencore was already well past this, but it was too late to sell - I was determined to see that one through the roller-coaster.

However, Ocado had been plummeting. It triggered the 15% stop-loss on my spreadsheet at 332.76p and so I decided to sell my first shares. They sold at 320.12 and with commission I had lost £92.99. I had very mixed emotions. Partly relief that they couldn't fall any further, and partly misery that my attempts at making money with shares were already in the red, with the threat of Glencore making things worse.

Ocado shares are currently selling at 370.7p, just 1p less than I paid for them. Why didn't I hold on? There was no particular reason why the price had gone down, other than the market was generally down at the time. I realised that I am not a day trader - although there are messages to take from the book, selling out automatically at 15% loss isn't the right thing to do unless there is a clear reason why the price is dropping and is likely to continue dropping.

From now on, I will do as much research before selling the share as I do when buying. If there's no reason for the drop, then I will hold.

The roller coaster begins

19th August 2015. A significant day marking the beginning of a roller coaster ride that has stretched my emotions in every direction. Misery, relief, excitement, despair, disbelief, incredulity, shock. All thanks to my decision to invest in GLEN:Glencore, a mining giant with a plummeting share price that I convinced myself would be bound to turn around imminently. This view was despite the plummeting commodity prices and China, Glencore's main customer, cutting back drastically as the economy slows.

I added another £1800 to my account from savings, and bought 500 shares at 181.325p and then as the price continued to plummet, I thought "great - lets get some more" and bought another 400 at 165.325p so the total cost was £1,592.93.

Unfortunately the price continued to fall, mainly due to investors concerns at the $30bn debt - more than many small countries. Every day I looked at the share price and it had dropped some more. Glencore finally decided to act to cut their debt, selling some assets, halting production in some mines and issuing new shares to institutions. I breathed a sigh of relief as the share price sneaked up, but it was short lived, as on 28th September the share price took a dive to 68.62p. I was losing £987.85 on my original investment.

Since then the price has slowly risen to 119.2p so my loss is now at £530.83. I remain confident that it will continue to improve. Commodities are always needed, but there's been a glut of supply and demand has eased off. Demand will have to pick up at some point, as the world can't do without copper and coal.

No doubt Glencore's profits will take a hit this year, but my cunning calculations reckon their shares are worth 300p-400p so I'm in for the long haul. In fact, If I had loads of cash I suspect I'd be topping up while the shares are stupidly cheap, but my emotions couldn't cope with putting even more into a share which is currently making my portfolio balance look pretty bad.

Amid the Glencore excitement, I added another "lowest ever price" share with the cash leftover in my account. 400 shares in BLUR:Blur Group at 24.225p a share, costing £109.40. Yes - another ridiculously feeble amount that's going to take forever to pay for the commission.

Blur Group support cloud solutions which is a growing industry. As recently as January 2014 they were trading at 820p per share. Unfortunately they keep reporting a loss. The little devil on my shoulder says if it goes back to 820p a share, my £100 will turn into £3000. I very much doubt that will happen, but it's a fun one to have lying around and a better bet than buying 100 National Lottery tickets! The shares are currently trading at 28.5p, which is more than I paid for them but the increase hasn't covered the commission costs yet.

19th August will go down as a landmark day in my fledgling investment career. The experience has taught me quite a few lessons - and coloured my thinking when faced with my next share purchase, but that's another day...

A new tactic

On 17th August 2015 I found a link to a report on shares that had hit an all time low price. Surely these must be a great buy? They are bound to go up at some point aren't they? I repeatedly kick myself as I look back at this crazyness.

Convinced in my logic, I transferred another £1050 from my savings into the share account and looked for rock-bottom bargains.

The first was PTY:Parity Group. I was surprised their share price was so low, as we had used them at work for developer aptitude tests and found them to be very good. Without bothering to research why their share price was low, I merrily purchased 4000 of them at 7.5p for a total cost of £312.50. Subsequent research showed that until this year they had made a loss for the last 3 years and had been through a major re-structure. Dividends dried up in 2004 so things hadn't been great for a while. Until there is some sign of turning to reasonable profit, the low share price looks justified. Oops!

Then I moved to TRK:Torotrak who make KERS systems for vehicles and whose shares were trading at 6.2272p - a bargain. I snapped up 1500 for £106.38 without even considering how much they would have to increase in value just to pay the commission. Unbenown to me at the time, I was "over trading". A common mistake for rookie investors buying small quantities of peanut shares, a tactic only likely to benefit the stockbrokers. If I'd looked more closely at the accounts, I would also have seen that the company had been making a loss every year, so the low share price had no imminent prospect of improving.

To counter balance the speculative investments above, on the same day I decided to buy 100 shares in BDEV:Barrett Developments. The house building market was looking good, with demand far outstripping supply, and Barratt's shares had been increasing steadily in value and paying dividends every 6 months. Thank goodness not all my decisions at this point were mental. The share price was 656.82p and there was £3.28 stamp duty, so the cost was £672.60 and left me with just £55 in my trading account.

I was beginning to develop a portfolio. One with widely differing prospects, but I was very proud of my list of shares, despite them all showing a loss thanks to the commission and something I hadn't appreciated at the time - the spread between buying and selling prices. Every time I bought some shares, I was immediately losing even more money than I thought. At this point I was still focused on the share price, not realising that if I wanted to sell my shares, I wasn't going to get the share price - oh no - I was going to get the bid price. That realisation would take a while yet to dawn.

Over the next few days, things were about to go spectacularly wrong...

Starting out on the Stock Market

This is my first ever blog post. The excitement is impalpable!

A few months ago I looked at my ISA and the measly interest it was earning, and decided saving money was a waste of time. At around the same time Honda launched a new Civic Type R, and as I currently drive a 2004 EP3 Type R, I toddled down to the showroom for the launch event. The car was amazing, but at a £30,000 price tag, I was going to need to make a lot more interest than my ISA was generating.

Around the same time as all this was going on, I was on jury service in a case that involved stock market trading. Weeks of poring over bank statements and stock portfolios sparked an interest. I have always been a very risk averse investor - but where has it got me? Shed loads of premium bonds that are barely keeping up with the feeble rate of inflation on my ISA. Maybe now would be a good time to explore the world of the stock market?

I logged into my Building Society account and followed the link to investing in stocks and shares. This led me to the Stocktrade web site run by Brewin Dolphin Ltd. I registered an account in a matter of minutes, and transferred £1000 from my current account. This was it! I was ready to trade!

Unfortunately I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I browsed the web for safe shares to purchase that generated good dividends. One that popped up on several searches was HLMA:Halma. They specialise in products for health and safety and protection. They pay dividends every 6 months and at the time I bought the shares on 13th August 2015, their share price had been steadily increasing. So, this was it - my first trade. I purchased 100 shares at 767.78p per share. I was a little miffed to see that I was charged £12.50 for the transaction, plus stamp duty of £3.84, bringing the total cost to £784.12. Never mind - I was now a shareholder.

Next day I had an idea - why don't I just find some shares that are doing badly but are now doing better. I can't remember exactly how I found them, but ISG:ISG came on my radar. ISG stands for Interior Services Group. Their main work is fitting out shops and offices, and their stocks had plunged when they started making a loss during the recession. The order books were picking up, and so was their share price, so I figured now was the time to buy. These shares were considerably cheaper than Halma, at 168.8p a share, so I decided to buy 300, but first needed to raid one of my savings accounts for £400 to add to my account. There was no stamp duty this time, but still a commission, so the shares cost me £518.90.

Meanwhile I signed up to uk.advfn.com and set up a monitor for my shares. It was slightly hypnotic watching the colours flash as the FTSE index waxed and waned. I was feeling levels of excitement way exceeding anything I had done for ages. The thought of shifting my ISA and premium bonds into shares was growing rapidly.

Over the next few posts I'll write about the next shares I purchased, the (slightly mad) rationale behind some of them, and how I learned the hard way about the dangers of buying shares when you don't really have a clue what you're doing...