Shopping spree

Today was a torrid day for most of the portfolio, but despite losses for 60% of the shares, I ended up better off by £300. "How on earth?" I hear you cry. Well, the mystery of the RCI:Rapidcloud inexplicable price rise was revealed as they posted news that they have teamed up with Alibaba Cloud Computing. This news has clearly been leaking from somewhere over the last few weeks to cause the rise in price, although there was a big drop yesterday. The formal release of the news caused the share price to rise another 29.7% today, which sent it to £472.50 profit and obliterated the poor performance of the rest of the portfolio.

I ran out of time yesterday to say where all the cash had gone from selling GLEN:Glencore and half of my TSG:Trans Siberian Gold shares, so here's the low-down.

1,000 of the Glencore shares were in my ISA, so I wanted to get some shares that had potential for big growth in this account as any profits would be tax free.

The fist purchase was a top-up of KIBO:Kibo Mining. I'm excited about the prospects of their coal to power project and the shares have dipped lately, so buying 15,000 at 3.725p plus £5.59 stamp duty cost just £576.29. Added to my existing 8,500 that I purchased for 4.5p takes my total holding to 23,500 costing £975.12. They are currently losing £235.27 between them, but a great big chunk of that is the despicable 13% spread. It may take a few years, but one day these will do great things.

The next purchase was topping up my holdings in UCG:United Carpets. These have been a really steady share, hardly moving during the crash. Granted they hardly moved during the good periods either, but have paid a healthy £22.50 dividend. My original holding was 6,000 shares bought at 11.388p for £707.73. I added another 4,000 for 11.725p costing £492.90 to take the total holding to 10,000 costing £1,200.63. Between them they are currently losing £74.53 which is a fraction over the spread and commission. I'm confident these will be in profit following the next results.

That spent the capital from the Glencore sale and left the profits to spend, which I thought would be appropriately invested in a miner. A new miner for me - EMH:European Metals. They are active in the Czech Republic and have a project to mine lithium and tin. There's a lot of interest in this share, and I thought I'd missed my chance when they climbed 20% a few days before my purchase. I decided to buy them anyway, so used up the remaining capital in my ISA to buy 5,784 at 9.75p costing £575.89. It was a good move as they have risen 8% since yesterday and are already £19 in profit. Given that Glencore tanked by 18% today, I'm more than a little relieved I jumped ship.

That sorted out the ISA - now it was time to re-invest the cash in the normal share account.

I purchased 2,000 shares of NTBR:Northern Bear at 41p costing £831.95. These were added to my existing holding of 999 shares that were 55.8p, taking the total holding to 2,999 at an average of 45.93p costing £1,401.89. I bought these for several reasons. For one, I really like the company. They are good, solid, paying off debt, pay a dividend, and seem to be very well run. On my analysis spreadsheet they tick every box except ROCE of 7.22 when I prefer 10 (but it's still not bad) and debt 7.5 times earnings when I prefer less than 3 (but they are actively paying off debt). The other thing you notice when studying the charts, is that for the last few years the price tends to leap around the time they submit their results - in March. Will we see a repeat this year?

My final purchase yesterday was another existing share that's fallen on hard times, but where I can't see a reason and consider them to be cheap. I already held 225 shares of SGRO:Segro in my ISA that I bought at 451.26p plus £5.08 stamp duty costing £1,032.37. I added another 150 in my share account costing 412.956p plus £3.10 stamp duty, making £634.48 with commission. That leaves me with 375 costing £1,666.85. This is light purple in my analysis spreadsheet, failing only on lack of free cash flow. This appears to be because they are aggressively re-investing it to achieve growth. Their recent focus on big box logistics is a good move too, with ever increasing internet sales fueling the demand for these premises. Add to that the fact that the dividend ex-date is only 16 days away paying 10.6p a share, and the resulting £39.75 will be most welcome. The share is being hit by the crappy market at the moment, with my combined holding losing £184, but at some point this will do much better.

This still leaves me with £474.52 in the account. I've decided to wait until tomorrow when the settlement date passes, which will allow me to transfer it to my SIPP to join the £100 monthly standing order from my bank account. This will give me enough to top up one of my existing pension shares, but which one? All will be revealed tomorrow...