All Change

I did a bit of a re-shuffle this morning after my ability to resist two of my favourite potential shares crumbled and I had to find a way to buy them. Monday also saw a major purchase as I topped up an existing share.

I've been waiting for the right time to sell my shares in RNK:Rank Group. The right time was actually about four months ago when they were making a decent profit, but after the crash they've been crawling back up like a snail and I really wanted to invest in something else. I sold them this morning for 252.5775p after buying them for 249.1023p about nine months ago. This made a loss of £10.30, but as I've had £29 dividends, I see it as a gain of £18.70. A bit puny, but I was desperate to get my hands on OPTI:Optibiotix.

As it was pay day on Friday, I had enough cash to prime my ISA now, and will withdraw the £1,200 from selling Rank back into my bank account to replace it after the settlement date. I purchased 1,350 shares of OPTI:Optibiotix at 77.7p costing £1,057.90. They are an exceptionally exciting company, developing a suite of food additives that help treat various conditions like diabetes and obesity. The additives modify the human biome to influence the body's metabolism and physiology, helping manage cholesterol, suppress appetite and change metabolic rate. Optibiotix are in partnership with several food producers and have enough cash for several years until profits are generated. The potential market is utterly massive, so this is up there with CWR:Ceres Power Holdings and TRX:Tissue Regenix as one of my potential global game-changer shares. They stayed flat today so I'm just losing commission and spread.

In anticipation of selling some more shares (which I've not quite got round to doing yet) I also added another £1,000 to my ISA after borrowing from my holiday account in order to buy more FAST:Fastnet Equity shares.  I bought 30,000 at 2.95p costing £893.95. The next day these and my existing shares were consolidated by 8 and became AMYT:Amryt Pharma, so I now have a total of 5,586 shares at around 23p each costing £1,298.95. I was really excited these would take off, but today they dropped 10.5% and I'm losing £177. Bugger! However, I am undaunted due to the prowess of the Board of the new company. It includes some incredibly experienced individuals so despite the disappointing start, I have great confidence in the future of this share.

Meanwhile, I wanted to add a new share to my SIPP. I've been looking at ALM:Allied Minds for a long time. They are not making profit, but have invested in startup companies using new technology developed in universities. They have loads of them, but all are at startup so not bringing in profits. The long term potential is terrific, and they have the backing of the great fund manager Neil Woodford, who is still adding more and considers them undervalued.

I had been concerned with the long-term value of two of my SIPP shares, so sold them this morning to free up the capital to buy ALM:Allied Minds. I bought 429 at 383.88p plus £8.23 stamp duty costing £1,664.03. I'm very happy to say they increased by 8.5% today and are already showing £64 profit - clawing back half of what I lost today on AMYT:Amryt Pharma. I like to think these could go sky high over the next few years as their companies start to deliver profit.

The first share I sold to pay for these was UTW:Utilitywise. This was the second time I had owned the shares, after making £366 (25.5%) profit the first time on a much bigger holding. this time I only made £41.69 (7.4%). I sold following their recent half-year results which I thought were OK, but debt is up and cash is down, so a worthy sacrifice to switch to Allied Minds, providing £552 of the capital I needed.

The second share I sold was ASHM:Ashmore. These have been really good, but I've been jittery for a while due to their reliance on emerging markets, which  ironically is the main driver for the recent upswing. I decided that a 15.8% profit of £149.92 plus £16.84 dividend was enough for me, and the sale provided another £1,097 towards Allied Minds. Given the resulting £64 profit in one day, I'm pretty happy - if I forget about the Amryt Pharma annoyance.

In theory I should do another "Woohoo!" as the result of all this is the portfolio cost going well over £46,000. However, I need to return another £700 back to my current account to re-stock my holiday fund, and the sale I have in mind will take me back under £46,000, so I'll hold fire on any celebration until the deal is done. I don't have to pay for my holiday for a few months, so I guess it's better off in here for now. However I'd rather have it ultra-liquid rather than risk having to take a loss to get at it - and the 3-day settlement period means it's not available instantly if required.

The pension fund is going bonkers now. £152 per month profit from sales and dividends gives a projected 17% return, and the sell value of the portfolio is up by £1,752 on cost which is 16.4%. That's in just under 5 months when the stock market has been a complete nightmare. It's certainly better than my main portfolio, which although making a projected 12% profit on sales and dividends, is making a paper loss of £2,376 which is -6.6%. A big chunk of that is down to house builders and my nemesis share AFG:Aquatic Food. However, nemesis shares have turned around before, and even the seemingly hopeless RDT:Rosslyn Data is on a bit of a surge this week after rumours Microsoft want to buy them out. Just need the share price to recover the remaining 40% loss before that happens!