Disastrous Start to Trading and Week 51 Review

First of all the elephant in the room. My catastrophic start to a trading account. Such a brilliant idea to buy SLP:Sylvania Platinum a few days before their results, with platinum prices soaring. There was even talk of re-instating the dividend.

What a load of old tosh that was!

Results weren't that bad, but after paying a load of taxes and some debt, the company ended up with less cash than they had at the last update. That hit the shares horribly, and they tumbled 24% when you factor in spread and commission.

So my new trading account is down by £122 after just a few days, and my £500 is now trapped in a company that's likely to stay at this share price for at least 3 months until the next results, which hopefully will reflect the current price of platinum and not have a load of tax and debt payments.

Where's the fun in that?!

Oh well, I guess it serves me right. I'm sticking to my guns though - this account will never have any more cash added to it, so it lives or dies on the performance of SLP:Sylvania Platinum over the next few months.

Over the week in general I thought things were going up, but sometimes perceptions can be false.

There were some double digit losers this week. Worst was SLP:Sylvania Platinum in my trading account. The losses were less severe in my other accounts as there was a rise early in the week, so the drop was just 10% for them. Next worst performer was BLUR:Blur Group, which continues to be utterly rubbish and dropped another 17%. So glad I hardly bought any, as this company has no hope whatsoever. TRX:Tissue Regenix is one of my top favourites, but that dropped 12% this week for no reason.

Very few double digit climbers to celebrate. KIBO:Kibo Mining has been doing well, climbing 12% and now making £352 profit. However, Share of the Week goes to SXX:Sirrius Minerals, which climbed 16% and is making £67 profit. Why oh why didn't I buy a load more when they were cheap? A share that climbs 36% and I only have £67 profit to show for it because I only spent £185 in the first place! It was however one of my first ever purchases, so I didn't have a clue what I was doing.

Here's the performance of the main portfolio with just one week to go until my first annual report

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£38,064.66		-£1,028.77
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£33,668.18	(-11.6%)	+£352.81
Potential profits	£2,503.17		+£75.15
Dividends	£667.93		+£0
Profit from sales	£3,829.16		+£34.57
Average monthly cash profit	£377.30		-£4.55
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	11.9%

The huge decrease in portfolio cost is down to me selling AVM:Avocet Mining and returning £1,000 to my current account (minus the £500 nicked to start the trading account). With existing savings, that gives me £1,100 towards my holiday, tucked up nice and safe until September. Slight problem is that I still have to find another £1,000 to add to that - in about 6 weeks!

After taking into account the £1,000 removed, the rest of the portfolio went up by £352, which is quite satisfactory. Potential profits also rose slightly and helped make up for the lack of dividends or sale income. Average monthly profit dropped a tiny amount despite the small profit from AVM:Avocet Mining, but as a percentage of portfolio cost increased by 0.2% thanks to the cost coming down.

The graph shows a little dink where I extracted the £1,000 but the drop in value is shallower than the drop in cost

The SIPP now looks like this after week 35

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£14,382.18		+£1,103.00
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£14,534.60	(+1.1%)	-£134.29
Potential profits	£854.89		-£68.71
Dividends	£262.15		+£0
Profit from sales	£2,345.25		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£319.64		-£9.40
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	26.7%

The LGEN:Legal & General purchase took the cost up by £1,103, but the value of the portfolio dropped £134 after that had been taken into account. Potential profits also dropped by £68 as the shares drifted a little. No dividends or sales, so the average projected monthly profit drops by £9.40 but is still over 25%.

OK - it has to be done - here's the first update from my new trading account after week 1

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£499.95		+£499.95
Cash	£0.05		+£0.05
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£377.52	(-24.5%)	-£122.43
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Dividends	£0		+£0
Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£0		+£0
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	0%

So, we seeded the fund with £500, of which £499.95 was used to buy SLP:Sylvania Platinum shares, and is now doomed to fester for months. This also has a cash row, as cash will be an important element - if I ever make any profit!

I'll do a graph when there are a few weeks of data, as it doesn't show very much at the moment

That's it for Week 51. Next week it's the big one - my first annual report. Haven't a clue how to approach it or what to do next year. I guess there should be a snapshot of the year and then start a new annual performance figure for 2016/17 in addition to the overall performance. Can't wait!

SIPP Decision, Sell More Gold and a New Venture

Lots has happened over the last few days.

I spent much time contemplating the £1,100 in my SIPP over the weekend, and in the end decided that the key to pension investing is to have a core of solid, blue-chip big-dividend payers. No more risky growth shares - time to get sensible.

Once I had made that decision, it was a no brainer where to invest the cash. I had switched my monthly savings to LGEN:Legal & General because I felt Brexit had been unfairly cruel to the share, and with a dividend yield of 6.5% along with growth prospects, I bought 554 shares at 196.5p costing £1,103.00 with the commission and £5.44 stamp duty. That takes my holding to 642 shares at a weighted average price of 194p costing £1,262.37. Happy to say they've gone up and are £34 in profit.

The dividend ex-date should be around mid-August for the interim dividend which should get me about £25. The main dividend ex-date isn't until April when it should be more like £65. I'll keep my monthly savings topping this one up until the Brexit bargain price has been factored out.

That sorted out my pension - it didn't sort out my holiday money. I really needed to get some cash back into my current account ready for September when I pay the balance of my trip to Peru (in dollars - eeek!!). With that in mind I put my AVM:Avocet Mining shares on a limit sell order for 108p this morning. I should never have bought them, especially on a big upwards spike. They have too much debt and too short a working life on the mine, so it was a bloody stupid buy.

I've never successfully sold using a limit order before. The share price always drops and I end up cancelling it. Happy to say it went up today - in fact it went past 108p to 110p. Never mind. I sold them for 108.3125p making a profit of £34 (3.5%). Given these were losing £350 at one point, I'm mighty relieved to have got out with anything at all. This liberates £1,063 to return to my current account.

However - that would be too easy...

I've had a cunning plan.

I was miffed at my attempts to make a quick buck with AVM:Avocet Mining and EMH:European Metals. This isn't investing, it's trading. I didn't get into this business to gamble it all way on attempts at short term gain. I need to focus on investing - go back to the basics of value investing I learned from Graham and Buffett. However, I need to acknowledge there's an itch that needs scratching, and there will always be a temptation to try my luck. How can I satisfy that need without compromising my investment strategy?

I can set up a separate trading account!

So I did...

It's seeded with £500. The rules are that I will never, ever add any more money into the account. I will never spend more than £500 on any share. I will hold for small profits and then sell, keeping the profit and spending no more than £500 on something else. I'll only be able to buy a second share when my profits have got to another £500. Playing around with this account should stop me being tempted to dick around with my investment account which is for considered, long term saving.

I'm quite looking forward to the idea of seeing how much I can make £500 worth in one year, and reporting progress on here. If it goes tits up, I can't lose more than £500. If it goes well, I may have to consider shifting it into an ISA - but there's no point when I'm only likely to be making tens of pounds profit.

Now then - what should I buy with my £500? At the moment nothing as Hargreaves Lansdowne haven't sent the confirmation email yet. I'm tempted by an existing share SLP:Sylvania Platinum, as the platinum price has rocketed today and they're about to announce a trading update. It could be a perfect storm. The share price hasn't dipped to a low, but it's not spiked to a high either. Analysts are suggesting a fair price of 20p compared to the current 9p, so there could be an opportunity to double the £500. I would keep my existing shares long term, and ditch the new ones for the profit.

Of course, I may get something else instead...

Sell Some Gold and Week 50 Review

There were some big changes in the portfolio the other day when I got nervous about the price of gold retreating and wiping out the profits from my gold mines. HGM:Highland Gold has been a brilliant share, but I decided to sell up and bank the 144% profit of £1,578.70.

I immediately re-invested much of the sale proceeds, buying a company I've become very interested in called RED:RedT. They make batteries, but not tiny batteries like my recent purchase IKA:Ilika, but massive container-truck size vanadium redox flow batteries. These are designed for use by wind farms and solar farms to store excess energy and then feed it into the grid when the wind eases or the sun goes in. It's exactly the sort of thing that's needed to make renewable energy work.

They are still loss-making, but have started to pilot their batteries in South Africa and Scotland. I bought 12,000 shares at 8.4p costing £1,016.95. They went up in value 7.6% today, but as the spread is 8% they are still making a slight loss.

I also added another 347 shares to one of my favourites, CAML:Central Asian Metals. This is such a great company, producing copper that was profitable even during the price slump, which has returned more in dividends to shareholders than it got for its original listing, and returning over 7% dividend. They have no debt, and a huge pile of cash waiting to invest in a suitable project, should another low-cost production option become available. If I had to choose one company out of my portfolio, this is the one I'd say is best run and gives me greatest confidence in long term value.

The 347 shares were bought at 170.188p costing £599.50, taking my total holding to 2,134 shares costing an average of 158.94p per share totaling £3,430.67 and currently making £147 profit, as well as a recent £142 dividend.

This leaves me £1,100 cash in the SIPP to invest in something else, but I can't decide what. I may wait a while and see what happens to gold. If the price drops, then I may buy HGM:Highland Gold again. I've also had my eye on SRX:Sierra Rutile, which has shot from 22p to 34p recently and appears to have great potential - I just wish I'd had the funds to buy when I first looked at it, as there may be a dip in price now - I've bought at the top of a spike before and didn't like it. Alternatively I may get more GVC:GVC Holding, which is destined to join the FTSE 250 before long, and I believe has a lot further to climb when the tracker funds have to pick it up. Or should I pile more into OPTI:Optibiotix, with the possibility of getting shares in 4 companies if they split and while the price has slumped, but risking having 14% of my savings in one share that's never made a profit. So many options...

I've also been buying in my normal share account. It was meant to be a quick win, take the profit, and return it to my current account. I should have learned not to try that. It's not proper investing and I'm stupid to have tried it. I bought 2,135 shares in EMH:European Metals at 23p costing £500. I was convinced these were about to fly, and they were good to me in the past, making £168 (28.1%) profit in a few weeks when I bought at 9.75p and sold at 13.02. I clearly should have kept hold of them, as I would have made £557 profit at today's price. Unfortunately, with a 6% spread and a drop in price, my "investment" is losing £90 after 3 days.

The biggest loser of the week was in fact my foolish EMH:European Metals purchase, losing 18% in a few days. The other double digit loser this week was TLOU:Tlou Energy, dropping 14% as people took profits following last week's big rise.

Not all doom and gloom though, with some nice big rises. HMI:Harvest Minerals went up 10% and has almost recovered the early losses, PAF:Pan African Resources climbed 11% and is now £468 in profit, and my nemesis share AFG:Aquatic Food almost made it to Share of the Week for a second week on the run, rising another 17% and reducing the loss to £680. Will this one finally come good? If general investors have now decided the company is for real, it could take off spectacularly and I'd need to find a new nemesis.

Share of the Week goes to IOG:Independent Oil & Gas, my new North Sea Oil company which has climbed by 32% this week and is £160 in profit on a £545 investment. Drill results are imminent, so things could get exciting soon.

I'm also due a new "Woohoo!" as the total cost of the portfolio has gone over another £1,000 to £52,372.61, and that's not including the £1,100 waiting to be invested. However, although great to see the amount invested going up at a steady rate, I figure it's not the best measure for generating a "Woohoo!". Instead, I'm going to focus on the total portfolio value. That's sitting at £47,910.03, so my new target is to get it above £50,000. It also means I only need £100 to generate a new "Woohoo!"

Here's the portfolio performance

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£39,093.43		+£500.00
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£34,344.14	(-12.1%)	+£237.59
Potential profits	£2,428.02		+£225.62
Dividends	£667.93		+£0
Profit from sales	£3,794.59		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£381.85		-£7.79
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	11.7%

Portfolio cost up £500 from my naughty attempt to make some quick cash, sell value up a few hundred quid so slowly going in the right direction, potential profits also up a few hundred quid but the paper loss is still slightly bigger than the profit, with just 2 weeks before I do my first annual report.

The graph shows the value line is steeper than the cost line, but the gap is still alarmingly wide.


The SIPP looks like this at Week 34

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£13,279.18		+£537.50
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£13,565.89	(+2.2%)	-£1,707.58
Potential profits	£923.60		-£1,744.29
Dividends	£262.15		+£0
Profit from sales	£2,345.25		+£1,578.70
Average monthly cash profit	£329.04		+£197.33
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	29.7%

This is very hard to decipher! I sold HGM:Highland Gold but only re-invested just over half the proceeds, with £1,100 cash still sitting in the account. The cost of the portfolio went up by just £500 as a result. The profit from the sale was £1,578, so the decrease in both value and potential profit of around £1,700 means the rest of the portfolio dropped by about £200 this week. However, the performance from sales and dividends has rocketed, up by £197 to a projected monthly profit of £329 which would be 29.7%. There are still 18 weeks before the first year is up, so I doubt I can maintain this performance, but if I sell nothing else and get no more dividends, I'm still guaranteed an average of £215 a month, which is 19.4% of the current portfolio value. That will do nicely!

The downside of the sale is my big gap between cost and value has been decimated - but at least we're still in the black.

So, I have £1,100 to play with. I'll have some fun over the weekend researching options. I'm tempted to hold the cash for a while, and I'm also tempted to top up an existing favourite, but something new and shiny might pop up if I search hard enough...

Week 49 Review

A very mixed week, with some big risers but also some big fallers. Things have also been complicated with some sales and purchases.

The percentage gains and losses have been screwed up a bit this week, as I have changed the way I calculate them so they reflect the true sell value including commission. Before they were based on the current share sell price divided by the share price paid. Now they are the total sale value including commission divided by the total cost including stamp duty and commission. It means a few of the decreases will be slightly exaggerated, and some of the increases would have been higher under the old system. It should sort itself out next week.

Biggest loser this week was PAF:Pan African Resources which dropped by 21% as the price of gold slipped a bit. It's still making £345 profit, and I'm still keeping for the massive dividend. Next biggest loser was CWR:Ceres Power Holdings losing around 13%. Hopefully this is just a blip, and I think has been exaggerated by the new percentage system. It's making £757 profit in the SIPP but £89 loss in the ISA.

KIBO:Kibo Mining dropped 12% but is doing really well making £293 profit, and I'm convinced is due to take off big time in the next few weeks. SLP:Sylvania Platinum dropped 12% which is very frustrating as I've added more recently and am down £117 so far. Final double digit loser was AVM:Avocet Mining, down 10% and most frustrating as this is the one I need to sell before September to pay for my holiday.

Now for the good news. DOTD:DotDigital climbed 9% which probably would have registered 10% under the old way of calculating the rise. I wanted to mention them as they posted a terrific trading statement and I hope will wipe out my £141 loss next week.

NTBR:Northern Bear also climbed 10% after great results but is still down £34. I'm confident this will also get back to a sensible price soon. CAML:Central Asia Metals continued it's dramatic recovery, rising 11%  and going £306 in profit. IKA:Ilika posted a trading statement showing a loss, but sentiment seems to be swinging in its favour and analysts are talking it up, so it ended up rising 13% this week but is still losing £47. TRX:Tissue Regenix also soared, this time by 14% after positive news about its products. That's now making £164 profit.

Share of the week was nearly my nemesis share AFG:Aquatic Food, which rose 20%. On one day it rose a massive 69% but this eased back a bit, and the increase was reduced when I bought more shares and added more cost and commission. I'd been wanting to buy more of these for a few months, but was concerned at lack of trades and interest, but the last few weeks have seen a marked upturn in buys and sells, and the dividend ex-date is approaching. The big question is whether I dare buy any more. It's a shit or bust share. Either losing absolutely everything with a de-list or making loads as a P/E ratio of 0.87 is just plain silly.

The actual Share of the week prize goes to HGM:Highland Gold which was already over 100% up from when I bought it, but this week climbed another 38% to a staggering £1,504 profit on a £1,078 investment. Completely spiffing!

The main portfolio now looks like this

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£38,593.43		+£236.91
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£33,606.55	(-12.9%)	+£336.93
Potential profits	£2,202.40		-£389.29
Dividends	£667.93		+£97.48
Profit from sales	£3,794.59		+£209.51
Average monthly cash profit	£389.64		+£19.60
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	12.1%

Cost went up after I sold RCI:Rapidcloud International and TON:Titon Holdings and re-invested the profits. This hammered the potential profits, which also went down by another £100. However, some of the losses were reduced meaning the sell value was up by £336.

Quite a few dividends this week, with WLG:Wireless Group paying £24.48, TW.:Taylor Wimpey paying £55.20 and SSY:Scisys paying £17.80, altogether adding £97.48 to the dividends so far. The profits from sales went up by £209.51 too, so projected average monthly profit went up by £19.60 to a healthy 12.1% of the portfolio value. Tragically the portfolio is down by 12.9% on the cost price, so I have just 3 weeks to shake off some of the Brexit losses to get to break even by the end of Year 1.

The graph is moving in the right direction. I just need the green line to stay on a steeper trajectory than the red line for the next 3 weeks at least.

The SIPP looks like this at week 33

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£12,741.68		+£159.37
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£14,735.97	(+15.7%)	+£1,135.69
Potential profits	£2,667.89		+£734.06
Dividends	£262.15		+£3.60
Profit from sales	£766.55		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£131.71		-£3.63
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	12.4%

The portfolio cost went up following my regular monthly investment. This has now switched from JLG:John Laing Group to LGEN:Legal & General. The sell value has gone completely bonkers, rising £1,135 in just a week. Staggering! This was mostly down to HGM:Highland Gold climbing 38% and CAML:Central Asia Metals rising 11%. That accounts for most of the rise in profits. There have also been narrowing of losses across the rest of the portfolio.

One tiny dividend from JLG:John Laing Group of £3.60 wasn't enough to stop a fall in the average monthly profits, as they dropped by £3.63. It's still over 12% and the portfolio is up by 15.7% on cost price, so doing very well indeed.

Just look at that graph fly! Lets hope this can keep up the momentum.

Not sure what next week holds. News is expected from KIBO:Kibo Mining about the gold mine joint venture, there is hope SLP:Sylvania Platinum will give a positive trading statement soon, JLP:Jubilee Platinum may have sorted out a deal to process the platinum tailings and generate some cash, IOG:Independent Oil & Gas should start drilling, and who knows what other excitement and surprises await. It's all so exhilarating!

Some Consolidation and a new "Woohoo!"

I sold two of my long-standing shares this morning in an effort to consolidate some of my existing shares that appear on the verge of something interesting.

First I sold RCI:Rapidcloud International. This is a Malaysian cloud computing company, and at one point was one of my biggest losing shares. Within a week it went into profit, but since then has dropped back. I think it has lots of potential, and will keep it on my watch list for a future re-entry. However, I wanted to cash in the £118.50 (11.4%) profit and liberate £1,113.

The second share to go was TON:Titon Holdings. I had already sold half my shares for £178 (19.6%) profit, but a recent luke-warm trading statement has seen them drop off, and they are struggling to get going again. I sold this batch for a much lower £91 (8.3%) profit to liberate £1,266.

So, with a great big pot of cash I could go shopping!

I wanted to consolidate three of my existing shares and buy one new one.

The first consolidation was TLOU:Tlou Energy. I've not had them long and they have gone bonkers. They are a Botswanan gas company with an incredibly experienced board of directors and backing from the Botswanan government. Recent news that they have been given the go ahead to build a power station five times the size of the one originally planned, as well as supplying power to a local mine suggests this has a long way to go from the current 7p. I bought 7,000 shares at 7.245p costing £516.10. This brings my total holding to 19,767 shares costing an average of 5.21p at a total of £1,048.50. These are currently making a £273 (26%) profit.

The second consolidation was my nemesis share. Recent movement in AFG:Aquatic Food and the approaching dividend ex-date made me want to try and buy low to reduce my losses - or should I say speed up getting into profit. It worked for GLEN:Glencore so I'm hoping it will work here too. I bought 3,500 shares at 14.499p costing £516.42. This more than doubled my holding to 6,500 shares at a weighted average of 23.96p as opposed to the 35p from my original purchase. The total cost of these shares is £1,578.37 but tragically they are down by 60% and losing £940. At a P/E ratio of 0.9, based on current profits I believe a fair price would be 395p a share. This is unlikely, but it would make me £24,000 profit! It's a risk I'm willing to take.

My final consolidation is AMYT:Amryt Pharma. I'm completely non-plussed as to why this has dropped from the reverse takeover price of 24p to the current price of 15p. It's managed by pharma royalty. Harry Stratford built SHP:Shire Pharma based on exactly the same model he's employing here, and has brought in staff from Shire to help. They have a product in market already and are about to start clinical trials for using the same product to treat a rare disease. Other products are in the pipeline, and the revenues from these will allow the development of more products and the acquisition of more companies. I bought another 5,579 shares at 14.7p coating £829.06. This brings my total holding to 20,863 at an average price of 18.34p costing £3,870.88. It's about 8% of my entire portfolio. If it goes up to just £1 a share it will give me £16,980 profit. If it goes to the same price as Shire, it will yield over £1,000,000 profit - Mwoohahahahaha!! Of course that's not going to happen, but anywhere in between would be nice.

My final purchase was a new share. I was researching companies beginning with the letter i when I found IOG:Independent Oil & Gas. Their fundamentals were very strong, especially considering the current sentiment against oil and gas. They are a North Sea oil company and are about to drill a well, but there have been delays and the price has been dropping as a result. Their share price is almost the same as their net asset value per share, they have a ROCE of 38%, low market to book value, P/E value of 2.06, tiny amount of debt and I believe a potential 450% share price rise. It's high risk , as drilling could go horribly wrong, but I bought 3,500 shares at 15.325p costing £545.33. I'll now watch these closely and consider doubling my holding if things look good.

Meanwhile things have levelled off a bit for the portfolio. GVC:GVC Holdings is soaring majestically towards premium listing on 1st August and soon after FTSE250 status. Shares went up 4% today and are up by 53% from when I bought them. CAML:Central Asial Metals is also on a roll, gong from an undeserved £250 loss a few weeks ago to £302 profit today. HGM:Highland Gold just won't stop. It's now up 133% from when I bought it and making £1,434 profit. That's contributing towards my whole pension portfolio being up £2,244 (16%) on top of the £1,025 (12.8%) from dividends and sales.

I wish I could say the same for the main portfolio, which is still recovering from the Brexit disaster. That's down by £4,857 (12.6%) on paper, although up on dividends and sales by £4,155 (12.1%). It won't take very much more post-Brexit recovery to plug that £700 deficit and get back into overall profit for the first year.

I nearly forgot - adding up the total amount invested now comes to £51,334 so I've passed another £1,000 and can do another "Woohoo!". The great news is that when I sell the shares to pay for my holiday, if I extract £1,000 from the share account I'll still be over my dream target of £50,000. That would be a great way to end my first year.

What a Day!

Today has been incredible. There's not been one day like it since I started this lark almost a year ago. After the misery and depression of Brexit comes hope as £1,300 of losses were wiped out in a day

Fifteen of my shares rose by over 5%

Five of my shares rose by over 10%

HGM:Highland Gold Mining rose 25.9% and increased the SIPP profit by £500 on that share alone. It's now up 145% from when I bought it, and that doesn't include the £50 dividend.

However, biggest shock of the day was my nemesis share AFG:Aquatic Food. After months of watching the share price dwindle towards nothing, it leaped 63.6% today. Slight problem is that it's still down 67% from when I bought it, but my concerns that it was being devalued  with an ultimate aim of de-listing have been temporarily laid to rest. There might finally be enough interest in this share to take it to a sensible price, as a P/E ratio of 0.9 is just silly.

I mustn't get too excited, as all this lot could reverse tomorrow, especially with the market in the crazy state it's been lately. However, I'm going to celebrate tonight while I have a chance!

Week 48 Review

I thought this had been a good week, but looking at the data it's just been a good end of week. The start was a bit rubbish so I think it ended up a bit flat. Let's look at the stats...

A few double-digit fallers this week. ALM:Allied Minds dropped 10%, but this share is so volatile it could easily be back up next week. IKA:Ilika dropped 16% after announcing results. They made a loss. Go figure! They will continue making a loss until they sell something, which will hopefully be soon.

Biggest loser this week was RCI:Rapidcloud which dropped 17%. I can't work out what drives this share. It's up and down on no news whatsoever. I still think it's due a fairly hefty re-rating at some point.

Meanwhile the house builders continued to be hammered. Although there was a rally at the end of the week, they still dropped around 6%.

In contrast to the the deepening losses, there were some amazing risers this week. JLP:Jubilee Platinum rose 10% but is still making a loss.My "stupid, stupid, stupid" share AVM:Avocet Mining climbed 23% and is now £97 in profit. Just imagine the profit it would be making if I'd not bought at the top of the spike. I was so relieved that the £350 loss had reversed that I almost sold immediately, but I think gold has further to rise yet, so will give it a bit longer. These shares will have to be returned to my current account when I sell, as I really need to put my holiday money somewhere liquid.

Next big riser was KIBO:Kibo Mining, climbing 24% and going £352 in profit. It's relentless good news coming out of this one, so things could get quite exciting, especially as we're expecting news on their gold mine next week.

PAF:Pan African Resources is benefiting from the continued rise in gold price, and climbed 32% this week to £538 profit. There's a socking great dividend due in October so I'm keeping these for the long term.

All these great risers, but they got nowhere near Share of the Week. This week it's TLOU:Tlou Energy with a staggering 61% rise on news that they have the go-ahead to build a power station 5 times as big as the one they initially planned. This has gone from loss to £221 profit on a £532 investment made just a few weeks ago.

Special mention should also be made of HGM:Highland Gold, which although it under-performed the other gold mines with a puny 3% rise this week, when you factor in the £50 dividend, it's now gone up by over 100% since I bought it, with £1,099 profit in my pension. This is another massive dividend payer, so a keeper.

Let's have a look at the summary for the main portfolio

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£38,356.03		+£230.49
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£33,032.71	(-13.9%)	+£87.47
Potential profits	£2,591.69		+£535.89
Dividends	£570.45		+£27.25
Profit from sales	£3,585.08		+£230.35
Average monthly cash profit	£370.04		+£15.53
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	11.6%

The portfolio cost went up as a result of selling WLG:Wireless Group and re-investing in SLP:Sylvania Platinum. A little disappointing these have stood still since buying, despite the rising price of platinum. This sale also explains the  rise in profit from sales of £230.

Potential profits went up a pleasing £535, but the deepening post-Brexit losses pretty much cancelled out the rises, resulting in an overall increase of just £87.

Two dividends came through this week. £13.75 from TND:Tandem Group and £13.50 from MSLH:Marshalls. Both of these are shares in deep loss at the moment so it helped ease the pain a little.

Overall forecast monthly profit went up £15.53, and with just 4 weeks to go before this becomes actual annual profit, it will easily have cleared my 10% target. Unfortunately the portfolio is down by 13.9% so there's a decent rally needed in the next 4 weeks to be able to say I've broken even.

The graph portrays a worrying picture, with the gap widening between cost and value. I need another period similar to weeks 24 to 30, with a superb rally that nearly had the lines meeting. It will certainly be clear where on the graph Brexit happened in years to come.

Here's the SIPP performance after Week 32

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£12,582.31		+£142.22
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£13,440.91	(+6.8%)	-£19.08
Potential profits	£1,933.83		+£1.93
Dividends	£258.55		+£0
Profit from sales	£766.55		+£60.43
Average monthly cash profit	£135.34		+£3.39
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	12.9%

Profits went up £60 as a result of selling AA:Alcoa. This was re-invested along with some dividend cash resulting in the portfolio cost going up by £142 as I bought more OPTI:Optibiotix.

Potential profits stayed stagnant, although you could say they increased by £60, as the Alcoa profit was removed when they were sold. With other shares increasing losses, the overall value dropped by £19 once you remove the extra £142 added to the cost.

Projected monthly performance went up slightly and is still healthy at 12.9%, especially given the portfolio itself is up by 6.8%.

So much nicer to look at than the main portfolio graph. Barely a blip for Brexit thanks to a decent percentage of the portfolio being gold, and very little FTSE250 exposure.

The New Share

The new share has been added to my SIPP this morning. Technically it's not a new share, but increasing my holding of an existing share. The others are in my ISA, so it's a new share for my SIPP.

The share is OPTI:Optibiotix. I bought 1,158 at 80.35p costing £939.40 and taking my total holding to 5898 costing £5,057.25. I had better be right about this share, as it's now 10% of my holding.

Yesterday it issued an RNS that it is splitting into four entities, with the potential to spin any of them off as a PLC. If this happens then existing shareholders will be allocated shares in the new PLC.

With a host of patents and IP rights, a pilot product "Go Figure" on sale on Amazon, a deal with Slimfast about to bear fruit, and a queue of potential news for all four elements of the business, I'm absolutely convinced this could be something very special.

Having said that, I was convinced a year ago that AFPO:African Potash would be something special with it's COMESA agreement and plan to trade fertiliser to make revenues to mine potash in DRC, eventually becoming it's own supplier. That went somewhat wrong when the buyers pulled out of the first trade leaving AFPO with thousands of tons of fertilser stuck in a Zambian port. Shares have dropped 68% and I'm down by £600. There's still hope for this one, but a slim hope.

Nevertheless, I believe in Optibiotix and will now keep everything crossed that it lives up to my expectations.

In another SIPP move I switched my monthly investment from JLG:John Laing Group to LGEN:Legal & General. They have been on my radar for a while due to their high dividend yield, but Brexit has hammered them so now seems like a good time to start buying them for the long term.

Some Profits to Ease the Gloom

This morning I decided to sell my WLG:Wireless Group shares. They rocketed on the announcement of the News Corp takeover, and the thought of selling for 309p now rather than wait two months for 315p drove me to action.

So, while sipping coffee at Greggs as I waited for my exhaust to be fixed, I used my mobile phone to flog them for £230 (63.6%) profit. Shame I didn't buy more of them in the first place, but it's one of my first shares and it's done pretty well.

I immediately re-invested the lot in SLP:Sylvania Platinum. My ISA holding was at £65 profit at the time, and with results out soon and possibly a maiden dividend and platinum price through the roof, this share seems chronically under-valued. I bought 6,137 at 8.69p costing £542.26, so my total investment is now 16,202 shares costing £1,268.34. Frustratingly the price dropped during the day so the combined holding is now at a £77 loss, but if it goes back to where it was this morning it will be in profit, and I firmly believe it will go significantly higher.

It was mostly a miserable day today, with the house builders getting hammered again. It wasn't all doom and gloom though, as KIBO:Kibo Mining is slowly sneaking upwards and is now £234 in profit before even getting started on the mass of news about to break. It's two weeks away from announcing details of a joint gold mining venture, and a whole raft of reports are due on the coal to power project, along with financing.

The most spectacular rise today was TLOU:Tlou Energy, which climbed 27.3% and is making £94 profit already. That's with a 5.25p share price, but brokers are forecasting a 24p share price, which would give me a £2,500 profit on my £500 investment. That would be nice! Today they announced backing for a power station five times bigger than the one initially proposed. Bring it on!

This evening I looked closely at my SIPP. I purchased my only American stock as my initial SIPP investment. This was AA:Alcoa, bought with the mistaken belief that the future was aluminium-air batteries. As I've done more research into batteries, and invested in other battery and power pack companies, I've now decided aluminium-air isn't the future. I was excited about the prospect of Alcoa splitting into two companies, but also irritated I had to log onto my account to see what the price actually was, as it's traded in dollars. I decided it was time to sell, and cashed in a £60 (7%) profit. This liberated £857, and added to the tax rebate lurking uselessly in my SIPP gives me £940 to go shopping tomorrow morning.

I already know what I'm going to buy - a share that I think is on the verge of spectacular greatness. Details of that after the deal is done in the morning...

Week 47 Review - Some Respite from the Gloom

Last week was a sea of double-digit losers. This week we had respite from the gloom, with no double-digit losers to report. Quite a few almost made it after Monday's rout of house builders and allied companies, but enough of the misery, lets celebrate the good news.

Lots of double-digit risers this week. CWR:Ceres Power Holdings continues its slow journey upwards, with a 13% rise making up for a dip over the last few weeks. The SIPP holding now stands at £832 profit, but the ISA holding purchased at a previous spike is on £54 loss.

HGM:Highland Gold continues its spectacular rise, climbing another 19% this week to go 98% up overall and giving a £1,024 profit. SLP:Sylvania Platinum is finally starting to show some momentum as the price of platinum ticks up. It's still surprisingly little momentum, but a rise of 24% this week has taken it into profit of £67.

I thought WLG:Wireless Group would be share of the week for the second week running after the takeover announcement from News Corp sent the shares soaring by 38% to a £227 profit, but it's been knocked off the top spot by RCI:Rapidcloud which rose a remarkable 44% from loss to £285 profit. Interesting that the quoted increase for WLG:Wireless Group was actually 69%, but as my figures include losses from spread and commission, and with my holding being so small, the real increase was much less.

Monday was a very dark day, but the rest of the week really picked up, so I'm quite excited about viewing this week's stats

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£38,126.03		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£32,714.75	(-14.2%)	+£1,078.35
Potential profits	£2,056.30		+£855.39
Dividends	£543.20		+£0
Profit from sales	£3,354.73		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£354.51		-£7.71
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	11.2%

So despite losing £1,700 on Monday, the rally of rallies occurred and I ended up recovering over £1,000 of last week's losses. What a relief! What's even more satisfying is the majority of the increase is in profit rather than reduced loss - in fact for many shares the losses deepened, but the good ones really shone this week.

No dividends or sales this week, so the average monthly cash profit drops to £354.51, but barring a company going bust, it should keep well over 10% for the first year. This is under the 14.2% paper loss, so I hope this will reverse by the end of the first 12 months so I can say I'm up.

The SIPP looks like this after week 31

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£12,440.09		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£13,317.77	(+7.1%)	+£402.29
Potential profits	£1,931.90		+£405.73
Dividends	£258.55		+£0
Profit from sales	£706.12		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£131.95		-£4.40
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	12.7%

Great recoveries in some stocks, taking overall paper profit back over £1,000 to pre-Brexit level despite some of the losses deepening. In fact, the potential profits went up more than the overall portfolio, emphasising the big difference between the shares being hit hard like CLLN:Carillion and ARL:Atlantis Resources, compared to those doing great like CWR:Ceres Power Holdings and HGM:Highland Gold

As with the main portfolio, there's no dividends or sales so average monthly performance drops another £4 but is still well over 10%.

I'm now going to go through all my weekly updates and create a graph of the portfolio performance to incorporate into the blog somehow - much excitement!