Holiday Money Secured

I casually looked at the portfolio prices on my mobile as I went for coffee after lunch, and was shocked to see HMI:Harvest Minerals up by over 30% on the day. It was only 2 days ago that I wrote in my annual review "I do have to recognise that this was purchased with no basis of financial analysis and is pure speculation. It's the sort of thing I should restrict to my trading account if I'm going to do it again in the future."

With that in mind I sold the lot for a £578 (69%) profit.

I transferred £500 to my ISA and the £898 will go back to my current account and should plug the big hole for my trip to Peru. I do regret not being along for the ride any more, but I'll keep watching this share closely, as it wouldn't surprise me if it spikes and crashes down like it's done before. If it does, then it will be back as a candidate for my trading account, but I'll probably steer clear from my investment accounts.

I jumped at the chance of investing the £500 in my nemesis share AFG:Aquatic Food, as it had dropped 8% since yesterday's 41% rise and it's still ludicrously cheap. I now have that much more confidence the company is for real, and so I'd be mad not to get more. I bought 2,815 shares at 17.44p costing £499.89. This brought my weighted average price down from 23.96p to 21.99p which is a hell of a lot better than my original purchase price of 35p, and brings my total holding up to 9,315 shares. If they were to have the average PE ratio of 15, they would trade at 395p and I would make £34,704 profit. The offer price is now 18p so only 4p away from my purchase price, although with a 28% spread it will take a while for the 13p bid price to catch up. As a result of the huge spread, this is down 42% on sell value still and losing £879, so quite a way to go to fulfill my dream.

After all this activity I decided it was time to check the combined sale value of the whole portfolio, which I've been targeting getting above £50,000. I was quite shocked to see it's at £50,026.08. I think that deserves a massive "Woohoo!". The challenge will now be keeping it above £50,000 which could be easier said than done, as the last few days have been brilliant, so I can't help thinking something horrid is brewing. I suppose I should do a "Oohoow!" if it drops below.

I was worried taking out over £2,000 worth of potential profit would absolutely cripple the paper performance of my standard account and ISA, but amazingly it doesn't seem that bad. The loss is 12.3% of the portfolio cost, but the profits are now up to 16.5%, and some of my worst performing shares seem to be shrugging off the misery, with AFG:Aquatic Food climbing 41% yesterday and LOOK:Lookers up 10.7% today which removed about £150 of my Lookers losses. There's still a long way for these to go before recovery, but it confirms my faith that they are good companies with unreasonably low priced shares.

The year 2 stats will be completely mental for quite a few weeks, as I've cashed in so much profit in week 1 the projected monthly profit is £9,003.60 (273.6%). That would require me to make £2,000 profit every week, which would be lovely but completely impossible. It does mean that if I don't make a single penny more for the rest of the year and none of my portfolio goes bust, I'll still have achieved a return of 5.3%. To have that guarantee banked already is pretty great, especially with interest rates being practically nil.

My eyes are now being irresistibly drawn towards CLLN:Carillion in my SIPP. It's within 89p of being in profit. I only bought this to try and spite the shorters, and there's £1,027 tied up in it. Looking at my annual review and my target to get OPTI:Optibiotix up to 10% of my holding, I could sell Carillion and use £500 to top up Optibiotix, leaving me £500 for when any dividends and tax rebates appear to either buy something else or top up when one of my favourites like TRX:Tissue Regenix or CAML:Central Asia Metals takes a temporary dip. Having said that, Optibiotix is so great I might just invest the whole lot there while it's still so cheap!

Meanwhile KIBO:Kibo Mining announced that their joint venture gold mine will list as a separate company, with Kibo shareholders being allocated some of the shares. It hammered the share price, as I think most shareholders were hoping it would be Kibo making all the profits, and it didn't help them issuing a load of shares to Sanderson to draw down some more of their loan. Unfortunately the news didn't state when the cutoff date for getting the free shares would be. If it's in the future I'd be tempted to buy some more. Having said that, after today's drop I'd be tempted to buy some more anyway - if only I hadn't already spent the £500. I suppose it's an option if I sell Carillion...