Week 21 Review

It's been a complicated week. I took a look at some of my more volatile shares yesterday and decided to protect the profits by placing some stop-loss orders. I haven't used them before, as I was nervous of spikes in the price resulting in me selling for a loss when I didn't want to. However, in this case I used them to protect my profits. Within 30 minutes of trading this morning, both had triggered and I was faced with a dilemma, as I hadn't planned for this scenario. It was very much a "just in case" move.

BYG:Big Yellow Group is one of my favourite shares, but it has been incredibly volatile, with swings of up to 70p a share in a few days. As this was currently showing a nice profit, I decided to protect it. The share dropped 24p today, so the stop loss triggered at 823.9p before hitting 806p at the end of the day. I banked £169.03 profit which was 8.7%. I felt robbed though - I wanted to keep the shares. I resigned myself to the fact they were gone and started looking at my "next buys" list.

Top of the list was CMCL: Caledonia Mining. Despite the price of gold they are doing well, and everything is green on my spreadsheet. Add to that a 7.93% dividend and I was hooked. I bought 3000 at 38.9999p costing £1,181.95 with commission. Now I just wait for that juicy dividend...

That left another £1000 from the Big Yellow Group sale - what should I do with that? As the price of Big Yellow dropped, I realised I could buy back in at a lower price and not lose out. Seeing as I didn't want to sell them in the first place, I bought 127 at 812.4p with £5.16 stamp duty costing £1.048.86. I'm not exactly sure how all that ended up, but I think it's favourable. If I had kept the shares, I would have lost £54.48 of my profit. I've had to pay an extra £23.90 commission for my 2 purchases and have ended up with half as many Big Yellow shares, but do have a load of gold mine shares instead. I think at the very least I've not lost out, but maybe it's marginal.

The other stop loss was triggered on my pension fund. I've not held UTW:Utilitywise for long, and I do really like the company. However they are spectacularly volatile, so I was happy to bank £366.10  (25.5%) profit as they fell 13p (6.9%) today. I may return to them at a later date, so will keep a watchful eye. However, I've decided it's a risky one for the pension fund so have kept £800 to add to the £1,000 I intend to add from my StockTrade sales, and spent £1,025.83 on 1200 SLI:Standard Life Property Investments Trust shares at 84.49p a share. These are another sea of pure green on my spreadsheet. They are in good financial health and paying a 5.5% dividend. Although a slight concern that the dividend has been decreasing, it's still very high and could decrease a bit more and still be above most. The share price has been a bit volatile recently, but is going slowly upwards as a long term trend and there's no reason to suspect this won't continue.

So, after all that lot settles down, how has this week gone?

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£33,743.41		+£209.40
Portfolio value (share price)	£31,825.11	(-£1,717.26)	-£48.70
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£30,708.03	(-£3,035.38)	-£35.25
Dividends	£241.09		+£0
Profit from sales	£695.01		+£244.10
Average monthly cash profit	£189.38		+£43.42
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

So the portfolio cost has gone up as a result of profits being re-invested, but the overall value has gone down slightly. However, this can be accounted for by commission and spread of new shares, so it's been a pretty much break even week.

The big positive is on the average monthly profit, which is up by £43 a month and not far shy of £200. Given my target is to keep over £100 a month then I have 4 months where I don't need to get a dividend or sell anything to stay above my target. That makes the current paper deficit of the portfolio seem much easier to tolerate.

Here's the latest SIPP performance

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£2,901.96		-£396.12
Portfolio value (share price)	£2,986.02	(+£84.05)	-£518.89
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£2,932.17	(+£30.20)	-£514.39
Dividends	£0		+£0
Profit from sales	£366.10		+£366.10
Average monthly cash profit	£317.27		+£317.29
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Very complicated after the Utilitywise sale. There is £800 waiting in the account to be re-invested, so although the portfolio value is down by £500 this week, next week it should leap as the extra £1000 is added and the £1800 spent on shares. The key thing is the dramatic improvement in cash profit from the one sale, going from a 2p deficit to a £317.27 per month profit. This is a great baseline as it gives me another 3 or 4 months before I'll feel the need to add to it.

That's it for this week, and for 2015. My first 21 weeks have been very exciting and I'm really pleased with the profits at the end of the year. The main portfolio is suffering from a combination of bad decisions early on, and investments in companies that are suffering unpopularity now, but which I believe are strong and capable of making me profit when their next results are published. I may do a portfolio review over the next few days as a proper review of the year.

A big decision

Today I sold one of my favourite shares. SHB:Shafestbury for 930.6p. This was only a 3.5% profit of £62.05, but freed up £2,000 of capital that I thought could be doing better. Having so few shares at this high price meant that dividend payouts were small, and although one of the most sound companies I had invested in, I think a small player like me needs to focus on cheaper shares at higher quantity. If I ever make any money out of this lark, then I will return to Shaftesbury, but only when I can afford to buy 1000 shares.

The first thing I did with the freed capital was buy 2000 shares in DOTD:Dotdigital at 51.89p costing £1,049.75. I've had my eye on these for a while, as although over priced for the profits they currently earn (PE ratio of 30), there's a strong indication their profits are about to soar. They have been recently made Global Platinum Partners for Magento which is used all over the world for e-commerce, and this should open up a massive customer base. They have increasing revenues, are cash rich, have no debt and their dividend ex-date is in 8 days which will granted only deliver £7.20 but will be good for my monthly cash profit stats.

My use of the remaining free capital could be regarded as mental given the roller coaster ride GLEN:Glencore has taken me on. However, I still have faith in this company and I've been contemplating taking advantage of their current share price for some time. Now I've done it - with 1000 shares at 91.8819p costing £930.77. This brings my Glencore holding up to 1900 at an average price of 130.8813p. This is only just over the 125p that the recent listing to institutions sold at, and has been my baseline for what I don't think the share will be allowed to fall below long term. I'm hoping this will improve my chances of making up the £770 loss so far - but that's being pessimistic. The optimistic view is that I've just bought a bargain that will soar over the next few years.

The cash from my StockTrade account sales was available for transfer today, but it will take 3 or 4 days to hit my account, so the pension fund has a little while longer to wait for a new injection. My target shares have not gone up in price today, so I'm hoping they will stay where they are for a few more days when I swoop for the purchase.

Goodbye GB Group

This morning saw a fond farewell to my GBG:GB Group shares. They are a great company, and I bought the shares based on their amazing chart of steady growth. However, with my new investing criteria I cannot hold onto a share with a PE ratio of 26 when I look for 15, a 22.5 rule score of 191, a market to book ratio of 7.23 when I look for maximum of 2.5, and a price to net tangible asset ratio of 369 when I look for 1.2. The upshot is, these shares are over priced even if you factor in substantial growth, so I fear the next correction will cause a big fall. "Be fearful when others are greedy".

I immediately re-invested the capital and teensy £11 profit in TRX:Tissue Regenix. This is a speculative purchase, but based on a company that has its key product in clinical trial, no debt and a potential niche market worth $4bn. At 15.405p a share I was able to buy 3600 costing £566.53. I believe these are more likely to give me substantial growth than GB Group as they have a lot further to go, but given the risk of buying my first pharma shares, I'll be happy to stick with a small outlay and relatively small reward should things come good.

Today was one of the best days ever for my portfolio. Almost everything was blue and the deficit was improved by £450. My dream of getting it below £2000 before Christmas may not have been fulfilled, but we're heading in the right direction. Given that I got substantially more than the bid prices for my three recent sales, shows that using the bid price for my performance calculations is pessimistic, which is good for focusing the mind, but gives me confidence that the true picture is somewhere between the bid price and share price. Amazingly the share price calculation is £1,300 better than the bid price calculation, so in reality I'm probably through the £2,000 deficit already - but I'll still use the bid price as I'd rather operate on minimum possible portfolio worth.

Tomorrow is settlement day on my BAE Systems and Halma share sales, so I should be able to withdraw the money from my StockTrade account and top up my SIPP - and reveal my next pension fund purchase...

Week 20 Review

Things were looking really good this week, with a mini Santa Rally. Until Christmas Eve when nearly everything that bothered moving decided to move downwards.

There was much festive gladness when I logged in to discover I had indeed purchased the PAF:Pan African shares in time, and there was a £90.29 dividend waiting for me.

I also decided it was time to wave goodbye to a couple of my oldest shares. These are ones I bought before developing the new stock picking rules and using my colour coded spreadsheet.

BA.:BAE Systems had been dropping ever since I bought them. They were laying off workers and slowing down production of the Euro fighter. I was most concerned however by their whopping great debt. They fell down on loads of my other measures for buying shares too. PE ratio was high at 22, ROCE below 10%, Market to book ratio 7.56 when I look for below 2.5, assets to liabilities ratio of 1.1 when I look for over 1.5, 22.5 rule of a staggering 167. I had been fretting for some time about how I was going to get rid of them, but didn't panic as their order backlog is huge, so I hoped they would become profitable at some point. I hate to say it, as it was such a ghastly crime, but the announcement of increased Government defense spending following the Paris atrocity was the catalyst that sent the share into profit. I sold at 498.98p which was a 5.9% profit of £33.26 plus a £10.92 dividend. Not big bucks, but marginal gains, and above interest rates.

HLMA:Halma was my first share. It was meant to be a long-term dividend earning share, but I couldn't bring myself to keep a share with PE ratio of 31 when I'm looking for 15, and a 22.5 rule of 190. I feared that if there was a stock market correction, these would plummet. As I only held 100 shares, the dividends didn't add up to very much anyway. I thought I could make the capital work much better for me. I sold at 871.40p which is up 9.9% with a £74.78 profit. If I had held for a few more days I would have got a huge £4 interim dividend, so I didn't bother.

So, here's the result of my changes

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£33,534.01		-£1,387.03
Portfolio value (share price)	£31,665.41	(-£1,667.55)	+£112.36
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£30,533.88	(-£3,000.13)	+£22.50
Dividends	£241.09		+£90.29
Profit from sales	£450.91		+£108.03
Average monthly cash profit	£145.96		+£37.55
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

One slight change to my calculations. The weekly change of the portfolio share price value and sell value now takes into account the increase or decrease of the portfolio cost, so it's effectively how much better or worse the difference is between the cost and value of what's left.

This week wasn't too bad. Up on last week despite over £100 of profit being banked.  The most satisfying result is the average monthly cash profit rising by £37.55 a month thanks to the big dividend and selling a few. Now it's double the best interest I was earning beforehand. Still very titchy in the big scheme of things - but it's moving in the right direction until I'm forced to sell something at a loss, and as the portfolio slowly grows in size, so should the profits on each transaction.

The plan for the £1,495 profit from the two sells is to bank £495 to pay for a deposit to go to Peru next year, and transfer £1,000 into my SIPP to start gradually building that up. The settlement date isn't until 30th Dec, so I won't be able to do that for a few days. I've already identified the perfect share to add to my pension - more on that soon...

Talking of the pension, this is how we're doing

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£3,298.08		+£0
Portfolio value (share price)	£3,901.03	(+£602.95)	+£151.34
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£3,842.68	(+£544.60)	+£203.84
Dividends	£0		+£0
Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.02		+£0.01
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Another great week, with the sell price increasing by more than the share price. That might have been the HGM:Highland Gold spread narrowing, and may also be influenced by the artificial non-existent spread on AA:Alcoa, as I only have the Hargreaves Lansdown current selling price to go on, as they factor in the exchange rate. This has been going for 4 weeks now. £544 profit in a month on a £3,200 investment - wow!! The 2p fee for the last few days of November is divided by 1 (ish) rather than .75 (ish) last week or .5 (ish) the week before. When December's fee is levied, the performance will be much worse until I decide to sell something - which may be some time! Looking forward to adding another £1,000 and then the additional £1,000 from the tax man in January - woohoo!!

Not back at work until 4th January now, so I may have some fun tomorrow. I've spent a lot of the Christmas break studying potential new shares and have discovered a few that I'm very excited about. I may take a long hard look at some of my in-profit shares and see if I think the capital could be put to better use elsewhere...

Week 19 Review

Week 19 looked as if the Santa rally had finally arrived, but a dip on the last day put a bit of a dampener on things

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£34,921.04		+£0
Portfolio value (share price)	£32,939.08	(-£1,860.28)	+£238.22
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£31,898.41	(-£3,022.63)	+£323.79
Dividends	£150.80		+£0
Profit from sales	£342.88		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£108.41		-£6.03
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

No new shares this week so it's nice and easy to see that things have gone quite well. Unusually the selling price of the shares has increased more than the share price, so some of the spreads must have narrowed. If things had just kept up with the trend of this week I'd have cracked the £3,000 deficit. Given that a few weeks ago I was aiming to crack the £2,000 deficit shows how torrid a time it's been.

I've made a change to the way performance is measured. I realised that the previous way just wasn't right. You can't try and account for both cashed in profits and portfolio value in the same measure as there is overlap when some profits are re-invested. Therefore I've developed a new performance indicator which shows the average monthly profit. All I need to do is enter the week number into my spreadsheet as I prepare this update, and it calculates how much I've cashed in from profit and dividends minus the fees charges by the brokers for account management.

When I get no dividends or sell now shares, the monthly performance declines as I add another week. It should be bolstered by sales and dividends. I was making a maximum of about £70 a month from interest and premium bond prizes, in fact many months significantly less. Unfortunately I don't have baseline measures - although I guess I could trawl through old statements and come up with an average I can compare against.

The key thing is that it's over £100 a month which is significantly better, and if I can keep that up will give a nice profit even after paying interest on the loan.

I'm keeping everything crossed that the PAF:Pan African Gold purchase went through in time for the dividend. My purchase date was 8th December, but the settle date was 10th December, which is the same as the ex-dividend date. I won't know if this was in time until 24th December, when I'll either get £107.92 or I won't. Fingers crossed for a nice Christmas present! Suffice to say it would massively enhance my performance stats.

Another encouraging sign is that my Hargreaves Lansdown standard share account is in profit (unlike my ISA and StockTrade accounts). This was the account I opened after developing my new stock picking process, so fingers crossed is a sign that it's working.

Let's see how the SIPP is doing

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£3,298.08		+£0
Portfolio value (share price)	£3,749.69	(+£451.61)	+£573.56
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£3,638.84	(+£340.76)	+£538.56
Dividends	£0		+£0
Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.03		+£0.01
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Ah - a joy to behold. UTW:Utilitywise has gained by 24% since I bought the share, HGM:Highland Gold has gained by 4% and AA:Alcoa has recovered some of it's losses and is now only 1% down. Gaining over £500 in one week with just 3 shares in the SIPP is wonderful. Roll on January when the tax refund turns up in the account, and will be enough to buy another share.

The average monthly profit from sales and dividends is a bit daft at the moment. I had a 2p account administration charge, and at 0.69 months it means my monthly performance is -3p and is 1p better than when I had been going for 0.5 months. With this being a pension fund I'm much less likely to sell shares, as they are chosen for being the most likely income stocks or steady performers. However, when I do sell it will be good to keep tabs on the monthly "cash" performance.

So all in all a positive week, with 14 stocks in profit, 2 only losing by commission and 26 making a loss. The loss making percentage is coming down and apart from BLUR:Blur Group and TRK:Torotrak which I suspect are both doomed, I'm still highly positive about all the other shares in the portfolio.

Week 18 Review

There was a bit left from the loan money which I was saving for potential Christmas costs, but as it's pay day on Tuesday, I decided some of it would be better invested. I added £450 to my standard share account and bought 5,700 shares at 8.3375p of APC:APC Technology costing £487.19. Although APC are making a loss overall, I was fascinated by their "Minimise" subsidiary, which supports companies in meeting sustainability targets. Earnings in this part of the company are doing really well, and with the Paris summit about to chuck loads of money at tightening up companies carbon footprints, this could easily take off in a big way. Worth risking £500 for anyway. Normally this company would have failed nearly all my investment criteria, but every now and again I feel a spot of speculation isn't too cardinal a crime.

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£34,921.04		+£4,660.67
Portfolio value (share price)	£32,700.86	(-£2,098.50)	+£4,364.46
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£31,574.62	(-£3,346.42)	+£4,269.64
Dividends	£150.80		+£0
Profit from sales	£342.88		+£0
Overall profit	-£2,660.67		-£391.03
(Portfolio sale-cost+dividends+profit from sales)

All a bit mixed up with the extra shares. The FTSE 100 was down relentlessly all week, so I'm not too upset that overall performance is only down £391 when there's commission and spread for new shares, and no new dividends or sales. The portfolio has certainly performed a lot better than the FTSE 100 this week.

The weekly performance was helped hugely by TON:Titon holdings. These had lit up my whole spreadsheet greener than just about any other share, but had been running at a £43 loss until this week, when a good trading statement made them surge and they are now at a £195 profit and my most successful share. My other 7 in-profit shares all dwindled quite badly in comparison, and SHB:Shaftesbury went into loss after being in profit for weeks.

Other disasters were WRES:W Resources which were in profit last week and are now back down by £142, and AFPO:African Potash, which looked as if things were improving but is still down £219. AFG:Aquatic food have perked up a bit thanks to a director buying shares. These are still down £413 but I'm convinced will come good when the market's suspicion over them de-listing is proven wrong after a few years of good returns. GLEN:Glencore continue to be a roller coaster and are still down by £834. I'm still keeping the faith - copper will recover at some point!

Here's the SIPP summary

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£3,298.08		+£2,500.90
Portfolio value (share price)	£3,176.13	(-£121.95)	+£2,409.19
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£3,100.28	(-£197.80)	+£2,145.29
Dividends	£0		+£0
Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Overall profit	-£197.80		-£155.61
(Portfolio sale-cost+dividends+profit from sales)

Added two more shares with resulting spread and commission, plus AA:Alcoa is down this week. I was hoping the pension fund would get into positive territory quickly, but given the torrid week it's not surprising it starts in the red.

Fingers crossed next week will finally bring some seasonal cheer to the market...

More additions to the portfolio

The loan money came through late last night, so I was able to add to the portfolio this morning. It arrived just in time, as my failure to sell any existing shares meant my SIPP starter money had come from my bank account, and with 7 days until payday it was getting perilously low. Now it's much healthier.

First off I added £2,600 to the SIPP and purchased the following

HGM:Highland Gold Mining. 2,000 shares at 53.35p costing £1,078.95. Gold is rock bottom but I don't believe for a minute this can continue. Three years ago these shares were trading at 200p before sliding all the way down to 40p in August. Since then they've been recovering gradually despite gold still suffering. When the inevitable turn-around happens, I have high hopes for these shares. Even if the share price doesn't recover for a while, they pay excellent dividends.

UTW:Utilitywise. 1,000 shares at 141p costing £1,421.95. Utilitywise is a business service provider. Basically energy consultancy, which in a time when everyone is trying to use less of it would seem to be a growth area. Profits are up by over 20% a year and they pay a reasonable dividend, but inexplicably their share price has been dropping from nearly 400p in early 2014. I can't understand why. It looks like a good growth company with healthy finances and a market for which there is growing demand. Needless to say, after buying this morning the price dropped by 10% - grr!!

Next I added £4,200 to the share account and bought the following

PAF:Pan African Resources. 20,000 shares at 7.6732p plus £7.67 stamp duty costing £1,554.26. For the same reason as Highland Gold Mining, now seems to be a good time to get into gold. There was also an imperative to buy these quick, as it's ex-dividend day tomorrow and it's a healthy dividend indeed. I stand to make more from the dividend of these shares than I will from my best return after selling stock. I just hope that any transactions that need to happen to secure these have been completed before the cutoff, as I don't know if it's from the moment you do the deal, or whether money has to have changed hands. As mine is still sitting in my bank account, albeit not available, I'm hoping I got them in time. If these go up to just 12p I'll make £800 so quite excited.

LOOK:Lookers. 800 shares at 173.64p plus £6.95 stamp duty costing £1,408.02. I already had some of these which I bought at 179p so the chance to increase my holding at a cheaper price was irresistible. I liked them lots at 179p so I like them even more now.

GVC:GVC Holdings. 300 shares at 399.7499p costing £1,211.20. GVC is a bit like Playtech which I already hold. I believe this is a mega growth area and they seem underpriced. Their share price has been falling since late 2014 but their profits are rocketing and they pay an excellent dividend. They lit up every field in my spreadsheet green, so I had to buy some. It also looks like they may be about to take over another big company, so their growth could become even more impressive soon.

So, Friday's weekly summary will be even more confusing now. Clearly my performance will have dropped off badly. Lots of new spread and commission, and today was a disaster for the rest of my portfolio. Where the hell's this so-called Santa rally?!

Week 17 Review

This week I realised that my maths for calculating overall performance was flawed. I was double-counting dividends and failing to take proper account of money withdrawn from investments. I've changed my approach to keep track of cash in (including dividends) and cash out, and keep the portfolio calculations separate. I'm also undecided about how to keep tabs on the SIPP. I think it's different enough to consider separately, so I'll have one portfolio review and one for the SIPP.

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£30,260.37		+£0
Portfolio value (share price)	£28,336.40	(-£1,802.29)	+£34.40
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£27,304.98	(-£2,955.40)	-£35.92
Dividends	£150.80		+£15.42
Profit from sales	£342.88		+£0
Overall profit	-£2,269.64		+£171.58
(Portfolio sale-cost+dividends+profit from sales)

No new shares in the main accounts this week. Interesting that the share price value is up £34 but the bid price value is down £35. That can partly be accounted for by the increase in spread of AFG:Aquatic foods to a ridiculous 50%. How is anyone meant to be encouraged to by a share with a 50% loss the second they get them?

Here's the SIPP performance

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£797.18		+£797.18
Portfolio value (share price)	£766.94	(-£30.24)	-£30.24
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£754.99	(-£42.19)	-£42.19
Dividends	£0		+£0
Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Overall profit	-£42.19		-£42.19
(Portfolio sale-cost+dividends+profit from sales)

Just the one share in this, and with it being American, I suspect the value is slightly less than showing here as there is bound to be a loss on the currency conversion. The lack of transparency with American shares is troubling, so I think I'll stick to UK shares in future, but it's nice to have one.

The loan paperwork came through yesterday and I got it in the post, so it should be with them today. Hopefully the cash will arrive early next week, as some of the stocks I want to buy dropped in price over the last 2 days so the timing would be perfect for a bit of a bargain.

Time to set up a pension

This week I decided to set up a SIPP

I'd been thinking about why I'm investing. Some of this is for buying my new Honda Civic Type R (in 5 years when they are sufficiently cheap), but some of it is long term investment. I still have 18 years before retirement, and although I have a healthy work pension, if I'm planning on keeping some of my investments for the long term, then the extra 25% chucked in by the tax man makes a very attractive offer.

So with that in mind, I opened a Hargreaves Lansdown SIPP and added £800. That means in January I get £200 from the tax man. I also added a £100 per month standing order so I'll be topping up by £125 per month. In the short term I want to get £10,000 transferred in there as I sell other shares, which will be instantly £12,500 with the tax contribution. I'll reduce my monthly premium bond standing order from £200 to £100 so I won't be any worse off - in fact the tax rebate of £25 is the equivalent of a premium bond win every month!

It still leaves me with £20,000 in the more liquid accounts, and that's soon to be topped up to £27,500 after my bank sent me an irresistible offer of a 3.6% loan. I thought long and hard - my plan is to invest about £300 per month into my share accounts. As I've topped up an existing loan and lowered the interest rate on that too, I'll be paying £288 per month over 4 years for effectively £12,000 up front. That's only about £800 interest over 4 years. Given that I've sold £340 worth of shares and received another £146 dividends (total £486 in 4 months), I'll cover the interest in no time. Why not get the capital up front and use the payments as my monthly investment?

Just waiting for the loan to come through - already decided what to buy with it, so the portfolio will grow again next week!

Another new venture was buying American stocks with my SIPP. I'd been reading up about renewable energy, and the money that's going to be available for development in this sector following the Paris conference. AA:Alcoa make aluminium - but they have been working in partnership on developing aluminium-air batteries. These are getting 1,000km from a single charge, and although there are still loads of issues, they have backing from Renault and Nissan with the research. If this takes off then demand for aluminium will go mental. They have also spent loads of resource restructuring over the last few years, which will hopefully see their share price start to rise again, as they appear under-valued. There's a bit of uncertainty as they may be about to split the shares into 2, so we'll see what happens with that.

I bought 124 shares for the equivalent of 633.2507p at a cost of £797.18. They're down to 611p today so not a great start. Must admit, I do feel a bit blind with them. I was also looking at ABB Ltd, as they are doing a lot of work with batteries, and these will be vital if we're going to rely more heavily on renewable energy. The ability to store energy at times of surplus and release it when the sun goes in or the wind stops will be in high demand, so the company that makes the next great breakthrough in batteries will shoot up in value. However, I need to find a web site with better stats on American companies before I buy any more.