Significant Consolidation

I did some re-jigging today, selling some shares that were either going nowhere or where I'd just lost patience, or where I thought it unlikely that there was scope for growth in the short or medium term.

The first to go was UCG:United Carpets. I've had these right through, and their fundamentals are strong, but they are a very frustrating share to own. They were briefly in profit, but have spent most of their time at a small loss. When I bought them I figured they were ripe for takeover, as they have such a tiny market cap and a strong business. Given the share price has been mostly stagnant for a year, I may very well come back to them in the future, but in the meantime I want to free up the capital. I sold my 10,000 shares for 11.15p after paying 11.5228p, so with commission thrown in I lost £79.63, but liberated £1,097.10.

Next to go was RDW:Redrow. Some relief at lessening my exposure to house builders, and these had ventured close to profit. I sold my 225 shares for 401.36p after paying 436.1 so lost £103.98 but liberated £894.11

Next to go was SXX:Sirius Minerals. This one made a nice profit, in fact an excellent 96.5% profit of £187.85. That's always been the problem with this share. I bought it early on and only got a tiny amount. I figured after the recent meteoric rise, reality would sink in and there's six years till profit generation. There will be points when this re-rates, and will no doubt end up gigantic, but I think there will be time to get back in with a more substantial investment. This had to be sold to offset the losses from the other sales.

I do have one more share I wanted to sell from my standard share account, but it's illiquid and I couldn't get a price, and then it dropped so I gave up. I do need to sell it over the next couple of weeks, as I took advantage of payday to max out my ISA for this financial year so I'm effectively consolidating into my ISA rather than share account.

I bought shares I already own in companies I think are about to do something very interesting.

Firstly I bought 23,000 shares in KIBO:Kibo Mining at 8.825p costing £2,059 with commission and £20.30 stamp duty. That takes my total holding to 61,412. Unfortunately they dropped 2.9% today, so are only £903.41 in profit. Still pretty good, and I won't lie, my main reason for buying these is for the free gold mine shares that should be dished out very soon. I also have a lot of faith in the company and am excited about their prospects in both the gold venture and the coal to power project.

Next I doubled my holding in RED:RedT Energy. The possibilities for their batteries are astounding, and with a fully functioning demo site on Gigha, I don't think it will take much for orders to come flooding in from around the globe. I bought another 10,000 shares at 10.5475p costing £1,063.70 taking my total holding to 22,000 making potential profit of £205.

I did make one more purchase, but in my standard share account as there was no cash left in my ISA. This was increasing my holding in JLP:Jubilee Platinum, which had dropped back down to 3.345p. With platinum production imminent, good revenues from chromite production, a new platinum operation coming on-line at the end of the year, and the prospect of a massive mining licence imminent, these are poised to finally break out after a year of frustration. I bought 20,000 costing £677.95 taking my total holding to 87,781 and currently making potential profit of just £9.53.

I wanted to sell another share in my ISA so I could top up on OPTI:Optibiotix one last time, but the price dropped too much at the start of the day, and Optibiotix went up 5%. They are still cheap enough to lower my weighted average so I'd be willing to pay 75p, but only if I can get the price I want for the shares I was going to sell - shares which I'm just as happy to keep long term, albeit they are quite high risk.

Aside from the excitement in the morning, today was a bit of a rubbish day, with the combined portfolios losing around £300. Just a few days ago I was excited about only having to make £200 to get the combined portfolios into paper profit. Today that figure stands at £756, so I might have a while to wait...