Week 73 Review

A relatively quiet week to end the year, and happy to say the first week in months with no double digit losses. Despite only a few days trading, there have been some double digit risers. KIBO:Kibo Mining reversed last week's 10% drop with a 10% rise. At 6.6% of my portfolio, these are tottering between profit and loss, currently up by £135. Hopefully 2017 will see significant progress upwards.

Share of the Week is BMN:Bushveld Minerals, which climbed 18% from a 10% loss to 8% profit. The extra purchase using last week's tax rebate was well timed, assuming these continue to climb. Their potential is massive, but only if vanadium redox flow batteries take off. It's a high risk, so I won't be buying any more.

The ISA and share portfolios look like this

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£41,931.83		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£36,189.47	(-13.7%)	+£545.65
Potential profits	£1,793.16		+£242.37
Yr 2 Dividends	£264.04		+£0
Yr 2 Profit from sales	£2,845.33		+£0
Yr 2 Average monthly cash profit	£638.52		-£31.93
Yr 2 Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	18.3%
Total Dividends	£931.97		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£6,685.59		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£447.71		-£6.22
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	12.8%

A nice end to the year, with a rise of £545 split evenly between increased profit and reduced loss. Average monthly profits end the year well above the target 10% so no pressure to sell anything. Paper loss still 13.7% so a long way to go before breaking even. Another reason not to sell anything, as it just increases the paper losses.

Come on 2017 - let's see the green line heading upwards. Week 59 came so close to being in profit, but since then it's been devastating. The FTSE 100 is at an all time high, but a series of circumstances has clobbered my shares. Hopefully what goes down must go up!

The SIPP looks like this after week 57

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£15,846.07		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£17,935.05	(+13.2%)	+£53.65
Potential profits	£2,694.61		-£63.31
Yr 2 Dividends	£0		+£0
Yr 2 Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Yr 2 Average monthly cash profit	£0		+£0
Yr 2 Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	0%
Total Dividends	£413.19		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£2,349.86		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£205.69		-£3.67
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	15.6%

A teensy rise this week, mainly thanks to BMN:Bushveld Minerals moving from loss to profit. However, potential profits dipped thanks to a big drop in CWR:Ceres Power and smaller drops elsewhere. Paper profits above 13% and actual profits over 15% so all looking good.

The green line sneaks higher ever so slowly.

The trading account looks like this after week 23

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£499.95		+£0
Cash	£0.05		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£417.81	(-16.4%)	+£13.43
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%

Two positive weeks on the run - just need the price of platinum to keep rising to get SLP:Sylvania Platinum past the magic 9.5p so I can sell these and start using this account as it was meant to be.

Trend line is still pointing the wrong way. Fingers crossed for 2017.

That's it for 2016. Generally a shitty year. China slowdown, Brexit and Trump all conspired to cripple the stock market, but it seems to have come through a lot better than my portfolio. The speculative shares are still waiting to take off, and the safe FTSE shares in domestic companies are all still 30% down since Brexit. They are however paying good dividends, so as long as I don't panic about the paper loss, then the portfolio should turn around.

Week 72 Review

Distinctly lacking in Christmas cheer this week. No double digit risers at all and lots of fallers. Worst performer was BLUR:Blur Group, dropping 14% after a recent run of gains. Another double digit faller was KIBO:Kibo Mining, dropping 10% following announcement of a new financing deal which will dilute the shares some more.

Here's the miserable ISA and share accounts performance

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£41,931.83		+£192.43
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£35,643.82	(-15%)	-£1,036.14
Potential profits	£1,550.79		-£537.88
Yr 2 Dividends	£264.04		+£52.25
Yr 2 Profit from sales	£2,845.33		+£102.47
Yr 2 Average monthly cash profit	£670.45		+£0
Yr 2 Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	19.2%
Total Dividends	£931.97		+£52.25
Total Profit from sales	£6,685.59		+£102.47
Average monthly cash profit	£453.93		+£3.05
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	13.0%

There was a bit of activity yesterday morning, when I sold my holding in IOG:Independent Oil & Gas. I never really forgave them after the misleading comments on the oil samples from Skipper, so have been waiting for the share price to return a reasonable profit before getting rid. I sold them for a £102 (18.3%) profit and re-invested in CWR:Ceres Power, buying another 9,550 shares at 7.6p costing £737.75. That takes my ISA holding to 21,099 and my SIPP holding is 24,927 so thsi now makes up 5.5% of my portfolio. I have high hopes that this one will blossom in 2017.

Disasterous drop of £1,036 in just four days trading. Very frustrating after last week when things were looking up. Potential profits would have dropped by £102 after the sale of IOG:Independent Oil & Gas, but the drop of £537 accounts for half the week's losses.

A nice £52 dividend gave some Christmas cheer from PAF:Pan African Resources, making up a little bit for the drop into loss recently.

The sale means average monthly profit sneaked up a little this week, and ensures the 10% target stays safe for a few more months.

The brief spell of optimism last week is battered as the gap gets even wider!

The SIPP looks like this after week 56

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£15,846.07		+£129.99
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£17,881.40	(+12.8%)	+£127.32
Potential profits	£2,757.92		+£160.01
Yr 2 Dividends	£0		+£0
Yr 2 Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Yr 2 Average monthly cash profit	£0		+£0
Yr 2 Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	0%
Total Dividends	£413.19		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£2,349.86		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£209.36		-£3.81
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	15.9%

A sneaky increase in cost this week courtesy of £130 from the tax man. Despite the high commission cost, I bought another 7,047 shares in BMN:Bushveld Minerals for 1.675p a share taking my total holding to 43,415 shares at an average of 1.66p costing £754.98. I think these show great promise if the vanadium redox flow batteries take off, which I firmly believe they will.

As usual, when the main portfolio goes down, the SIPP goes up. A modest £127 but better than nothing. Most of it is thanks to ALM:Allied Minds which rose nicely this week and is now at potential profit of £254.

A relief to se the recent down trend reversed.

The trading account looks like this after week 22.

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£499.95		+£0
Cash	£0.05		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£404.38	(-19.1%)	+£26.86
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%

A slight tick up - but will it ever get into profit?

Bah humbug!

So, we end the year in a bit of a sorry state as far as paper profits are concerned. I'm still optimistic though. Several of my key shares have raised finance in December causing a hefty decline in share price, but these were all positive moves for the future. My worst performing share OPTI:Optibiotix still holds the greatest promise, particularly when bits of the company are spun off into new companies. JLP:Jubilee Platinum are on the cusp of starting production at their huge Hernic site, and surely the mining licence for Tjate has got to come at some point. KIBO:Kibo Mining are on the verge of further progress, as well as preparing to give shareholders free shares in Katoro Mining.

RED:RedT Energy are funded for many years and about to start selling their batteries, CWR:Ceres Power are about to start selling their power cells and have multiple partnerships about to bear fruit. GVC:GVC Holdings are being hammered by the shorters, but will start paying handsome dividends from February. ARL:Atlantis Resources have plummeted since installing their first turbines, but surely as revenue is generated around the world, these will recover. Both gold mines have taken a hit recently, with CMCL:Caledonia Mining dropping 42% and PAF:Pan African Resources going to loss and down 7%. Both pay good dividends and both will recover when the price of gold heads up again.

There are some serial under performers that I can't get rid of and show no sign of recovery. LOOK:Lookers are worst. They make up 3.5% of my portfolio and are down 37% losing £758, and yet are performing really well as a business. MSLH:Marshalls are still down 24%, BDEV:Barratt Development are down 32%, TW.:Taylor Wimpy are down 25%, VEC:Vectura are down 18%, TND:Tandem Group are down 53%, AFG:Aquatic Food are down 42% and worst of all AFPO:African Potash are down 100% and have suspended trading on AIM, probably losing me £700 when they de-list.

All the above are contributing to the current paper loss, but there are some stellar performers that are in profit and going strong. CAML:Central Asia Metals is by far my best share and best company. Up by 41% these are making paper profit of £1,390 and they make up 6% of my holding. LGEN:Legal & General are up by 23% and making potential profit of £355, with the prospect of big dividends to come. TRX:Tissue Regenix are making good progress selling their pproducts and are up in both my ISA and SIPP, and TLOU:Tlou Energy are making good profit despite recent declines.

IQE:IQE are possibly the most exciting recent purchase. Up by 24% (£471) and they have only just started generating decent revenue. NANO:Nanoco are potentially on the cusp of having their quantum dot technology as the standard for modern televisions and monitors. If this happens then there is no limit for where this could go, and with LGEN:Legal & General buying 3% of the shares, there is strong institutional support, we just need to wait for the shorters to be driven out.

AMYT:Amryt Pharma have been languishing since I got them, but recent good news has seen them go into profit. Every 1p rise is worth £272 and these could easily go up 80p over the next few years unless bought out. ALM:Allied Minds have been one of my most volatile shares, but at last have rallied and are up 15% making £254 paper profit.

So there is room for optimism for most of the shares, and with the profits from sales and dividends averaging £662 a month across the portfolios, things are so much better than the £25-50 a month I was making before this venture started. I look forward to 2017 with excitement and anticipation.

Week 71 Review

At last a half decent week. It seems like a long time since I've been able to say that.

There were some bad performers though, the worst of which was ARL:Atlantis Resources which dropped 19% and is now making a 28% loss. In just a week this has plummeted, which is a surprise as news was looking good and turbines are being deployed. It appears grant money is drying up, so this share really needs to start making revenue or it could decline further.

PAF:Pan African Resources has now gone from big profit to loss, dropping 15% this week. There is a massive dividend coming in a few weeks though - I'm tempted to top up while they're cheap, but too late for any new shares to qualify for the dividend this year.

IQE:IQE continues to perform really well, with another 10% rise this week. BLUR:Blur Group are double digit risers yet again, up 13% which means they are only down by 45% overall - still a way to go before breaking even.

TLOU:Tlou Energy recovered from a few bad weeks with a 15% rise, and at last WRL:Wentworth Resources is turning around, with a 15% rise. Still a way to go, but there's a possibility their customers may actually be paying for their gas now.

Share of the week is another energy company, IOG:Independent Oil & Gas. They are still reeling from the poor sample analysis results from the Skipper oil field, but good news on their gas reserves has seen a turnaround this week, with a 28% rise taking them back into profit.

Here's the performance of the ISA and share accounts

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£41,739.40		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£36,487.53	(-12.6%)	+£736.94
Potential profits	£2,088.67		+£595.33
Yr 2 Dividends	£211.79		+£0
Yr 2 Profit from sales	£2,742.86		+£0
Yr 2 Average monthly cash profit	£670.45		-£37.24
Yr 2 Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	19.3%
Total Dividends	£879.72		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£6,583.12		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£450.88		-£6.44
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	13.0%

Nice to claw back £736, most of which is increasing profits thanks to the big risers mentioned above, and a smaller rise in AMYT:Amryt Pharma which is worth lots. Nothing happening on the dividend or sales front.

That's more like it - but I need to sustain that sort of recovery for quite a while to plug the gap.

Thw SIPP looks like this after week 55.

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£15,716.08		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£17,624.09	(+12.1%)	-£166.27
Potential profits	£2,597.91		-£43.52
Yr 2 Dividends	£0		+£0
Yr 2 Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Yr 2 Average monthly cash profit	£0		+£0
Yr 2 Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	0%
Total Dividends	£413.19		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£2,349.86		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£213.17		-£3.95
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	16.3%

Interesting that the SIPP normally goes up while the other accounts go down. Looks like the reverse is also true. The drop was mainly down to ARL:Atlantis Resources, and CWR:Ceres Power has also continued its recent decline. No sales or dividends here either.

I have transferred some dividends from my share account to my SIPP so there's enough cash available for the RED:RedT Energy open offer, which I've applied for at 8p. It's only for 923 shares, but I can't resist a bargain. I don't think there's any chance the share price will drop down below that, as there's too much interest in this share even after the recent placing. The current offer price is 8.75p. Getting my open offer entitlement in the ISA could be more complicated, as I've topped it up to the max already and there are no dividends due. It means I'd have to sell something, but not sure it's worth it for £65 worth of shares.

A slightly worrying change in direction of the green line. Hope that doesn't continue.

Here's the dreaded trading account after week 21

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£499.95		+£0
Cash	£0.05		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£377.52	(-24.5%)	-£13.43
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%

It gets worse! I'm tempted to just give up, but that would be admitting defeat - I'm just putting the project on hold a little...

The decline in precious metals prices is hitting both my gold mines and SLP:Sylvania Platinum. Still no prospect of getting rid of these without a loss.

One more week before Christmas, so hoping for some good news and a Santa rally, which never materialised last year. It would be nice to go into the year with the overall paper deficit just a bit more healthy, as currently it's worse than it was this time last year.

Week 70 Review

The biggest disaster this week was a heavily discounted placing by RED:RedT Energy causing a 45% drop in share price and obliterating all my potential profits. That absolutely hammered the paper performance in what would have been an OK week otherwise. The only other double digit loser was KIBO:Kibo Mining which dropped 10% and is sadly not sticking around the 7p mark like I'd hoped, but drifting back towards it's historic 5p level.Some news of when shareholders will qualify for the free Katoro Mining shares would be nice.

My latest acquisition NANO:Nanoco Group had a good start, climbing 10% in the few days since I bought them. Time will tell whether I had a rare attack of good timing on this one.

BLUR:Blur Group is in the list of double digit risers again this week, with a new investor building an ever increasing stake. What did look like a basket case a few months ago may now revive, although with my initial investment only being £109 it will never make me very much.

TRX:Tissue Regenix also rose 11% this week, and with the prospect of many big orders coming in, this one has great promise.

Share of the Week is one of my favourites, AMYT:Amryt Pharma. It climbed 17% after news that the company will sell a drug developed by an American company under licence in Europe. As every penny this goes up is worth £272, this increase went some way to make up for the RedT horror.

Here's the performance of the ISA and Share accounts

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£41,739.40		+£404.52
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£35,750.59	(-14.3%)	-£212.34
Potential profits	£1,493.34		-£263.11
Yr 2 Dividends	£211.79		+£0
Yr 2 Profit from sales	£2,742.86		+£404.12
Yr 2 Average monthly cash profit	£707.69		+£61.38
Yr 2 Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	20.3%
Total Dividends	£879.72		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£6,583.12		+£404.12
Average monthly cash profit	£457.32		+£18.75
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	13.1%

The portfolio cost went up as a result of selling CRL:Creightons and re-investing the profits in NANO:Nanoco. With that in mind, the fact potential profits only fell £263 means it would have been a positive week without the sale. The £404 profit did the world of good for my performance, lifting overall performance by £18.75 a month and giving me a bit of a buffer for when AFPO:African Potash de-lists.

Still looking pretty dreadful. The key reason has been the dramatic drops in OPTI:Optibiotix, RED:RedT Energy, CWR:Ceres Power, CMCL:Caledonia Mining and TLOU:Tlou Energy. These have all been somewhat unexpected, but I believe they are also short term. If these can turn around, then the deficit could narrow quite quickly.


The SIPP looks like this after week 54

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£15,716.08		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£17,790.36	(+13.2%)	-£21.06
Potential profits	£2,641.43		-£331.40
Yr 2 Dividends	£0		+£0
Yr 2 Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Yr 2 Average monthly cash profit	£0		+£0
Yr 2 Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	0%
Total Dividends	£413.19		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£2,349.86		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£217.12		-£4.10
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	16.6%

Potential profits hammered by the RED:RedT placing and the decline of CWR:Ceres Power, although ALM:Allied Minds is just about profitable again which reduced the losses, and CAML:Central Asia Metals had another good week and is responsible for over half the total paper profit.

I've added stats for year 2, but with no dividends or sales it will take a while before there's anything to report.

The Trading account looks the same as usual

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£499.95		+£0
Cash	£0.05		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£390.95	(-21.8%)	+£0
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%

Yuck!

That's it for another week. The combined portfolios are £4,000 in the red on paper, which is pretty bad, especially given that the SIPP is over £2,000 in profit - confirming my other accounts are at their worst ever paper losses. However, there is much hope for a turnaround, and with the actual profits from sales and dividends at a combined level of over £670 a month, I'm still very happy with how things are going. All it takes is one bit of good news from OPTI:Optibiotix and continued interest in AMYT:Amryt Pharma, and the graphs will start to look much, much better.

Speculative Sacrifice

I made a huge sacrifice this morning and sold one of my best shares in order to pursue a share I've been watching for several months.

CRL:Creightons was a very small investment of £411.44. It's a very small company - in fact microscopic. It has however performed amazingly well, and I sold my 5,000 shares today for £815.55 which is a profit of 95.7%.

I sold because they are so microscopic, and although my aim is to try and hang onto shares for longer, and although the P/E ratio is still less than 8, giving this share the potential to double again, I decided for the amount I'd invested, the profits were great, and there's another share I'm desperate to own right now. Timing is of the essence for my target acquisition, so I decided a sacrifice was required.

There's also a part of me preparing for AFPO:African Potash de-listing. The shares suspend tomorrow, and if I lose my £700 investment I need a buffer to protect my performance stats. This gives me a £400 buffer.

The share I've been watching is NANO:Nanoco Group. They are loss making, but have been developing the ability to supply and licence quantum dot technology for using as TV, monitor and mobile screens. Initially this will be at the high end of the market for ultra HD, but is expected to filter down through the price ranges to become standard over time.

Merck and Dow are already licensed to manufacture the product and are building capacity to potentially supply all major TV manufacturers, as are Nanoco themselves from their own production facility.

I've been scratching my head for months as the share price continued to plummet despite the immense potential of this market, and the effort that has been put in place to commercialise the product. Why had the price dropped to an all-time low just as revenue could start coming in?

I received an RNS alert yesterday as a holder of LGEN:Legal & General shares to say that they had purchased >3% of Nanoco shares. That was my green light. Price at an all time low for no reason I could explain, then a major institutional investor going straight in with a huge purchase. If I was going to buy into this potential, then it had to be this morning.

I purchased 2,164 shares at 36.9688p with £4 stamp duty and my commission charges which have gone back up to £11.95, costing £815.95. Slightly frustrated to notice afterwards that there are £45 of dividend payments in my cash account that haven't been transferred and which could have upped my investment had I noticed them beforehand!

Very happy to say that the share price increased by 4.8% today, so with a bid price of 38.5p I've cleared spread and commission already. Now let's just hope the price stays on the upward trend for a while...

Week 69 Review

I've skipped weeks 67 and 68 as I don't have the snapshots from while I was on holiday. If I get hold of the data I'll fill in the gaps on the graphs, but will do a bumper review today.

It's been a month since I last checked for big risers and fallers, so not surprisingly there are lots. Worst performer of the month was TLOU:Tlou Energy, dropping 29% but still in profit. I think the drop is profit taking from short term traders so no real concern.

Of more concern is the 26% drop in CMCL:Caledonia Mining. I bought back into this because gold was on the way up and they had been doing really well. Practically the day I bought them they started to decline. They do pay a quarterly dividend though, so I'll stick with them long term.

ARL:Atlantis Resources did the opposite of what I expected following the commencement of power generation, and dropped 25% so they are now making a loss. As with Tlou, I'm hoping this is just traders profit taking.

CWR:Ceres Power Holdings have declined 22% but I think this is just lack of news. They are likely to drift until they start making a profit.

WRL:Wentworth Resources was one of my first share purchases and was a big mistake. They were about to start delivering gas so I thought it was a perfect time to buy. Looks like the customer is reluctant to pay for the gas! They dropped another 17% this month and are down 40% from when I bought them.

PAF:Pan African Resources dropped 15% which is disappointing, but not long till the huge dividend.

IKA:Ilika fell 14% and I think will continue to drift until they make some money

SLP:Sylvania Platinum is still a disaster in my trading account and fell 11% over the month

Fortunately it wasn't all doom and gloom - there were some double-digit risers too.

IQE:IQE is on a roll and climbed 11%, increasing my excitement in this company.

AFG:Aquatic Food is having another one of it's blips upward as people try to decide if it's a legitimate company or not, climbing 14% this month but still 41% down on my purchase price.

LGEN:Legal & General is doing great things in my pension and climbed a huge 17% over the month, which is amazing for an established FTSE company

CAML:Central Asia Metals is also doing incredibly well, climbing 19% on the rising copper price. This is also my new Star Share making £1,209.50 potential profit which is hammering all the opposition after the declines in CWR:Ceres Power, TLOU:Tlou Energy and KIBO:Kibo Mining.

I never thought I'd see BLUR:Blur Group nearly getting Share of the Week with a 28% climb following a new investor buying up about 13% of the shares. Maybe there's hope for this one yet?

Share of the Week - or I guess in this case Share of the Month goes to CRL:Creightons, which quietly climbed 37% and is now up by 98% overall. If only I'd bought more!!

Here's the combined ISA and shares account performance

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£41,334.88		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£35,558.41	(-14%)	-£471.76
Potential profits	£1,756.45		-£259.10
Yr 2 Dividends	£211.79		+£52.49
Yr 2 Profit from sales	£2,338.74		+£0
Yr 2 Average monthly cash profit	£646.31		-£123.41
Yr 2 Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	18.8%
Total Dividends	£879.72		+£52.49
Total Profit from sales	£6,179.00		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£438.57		-£16.74
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	12.7%

 Not a great performance over the 3 weeks, but could have been worse. Without the inexplicable drop in OPTI:Optibiotix it would have been a lot better, and TLOU:Tlou Energy's big drop hammered the potential profits.

Dividends were healthy, with £24.70 from BDEV:Barratt Developments, £14.84 from LOOK:Lookers, £5.80 from MSLH:Marshalls and £7.15 from TND:Tandem Group. Slightly ironic that these are all some of my worst performing shares, but the dividend flow is constant. This helped limit the reduction in average cash profit which is still well above the 10% target.

Oh the misery - that's just plain dreadful. It has revealed that I'm no longer actively investing new capital or buying and selling anything - partly due to the holiday, but partly as an intentional move to hold my shares for longer. A the moment it doesn't seem to be a very successful tactic, but we shall see what transpires over the next few months

The SIPP looks like this after week 53 - which means I've had it for a year!

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£15,713.08		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£17,811.42	(+13.3%)	-£381.69
Potential profits	£2,972.83		-£391.42
Dividends	£413.19		+£0
Profit from sales	£2,349.86		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£221.22		-£13.85
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Avg annual % of current portfolio cost	16.9%

The big drop in profits was down to ARL:Atlantis Resources and CWR:Ceres Power, with the increase in CAML:Central Asia Metals not enough to off-set it. I'll add new columns for Year 2 performance next week - as nothing really happened in week 1 of year 2 in terms of dividends and sales.

A nicer graph than the one above - as long as that little dip changes direction soon. I've suspended my monthly investment, as following my holiday I need a concerted effort to get my Visa bill under control before the 0% interest runs out in April.

The trading account looks like this after week 19

			Weekly Change
Portfolio cost	£499.95		+£0
Cash	£0.05		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£390.95	(-21.8%)	+£0
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%

I think this is what you might call a failed experiment! Maybe I should just think of it as temporarily on hold...

Hmm - If I'd waited just a week to buy these shares, at least I'd be breaking even and I might have sold them and moved on. The whole point of the experiment is to identify volatile shares and jump on the small price changes - not buy on a spike and sit on them for 6 months!!

So it looks like things didn't go completely downhill while I was on holiday. Next week is critical for AFPO:African Potash after the resignation of the Nomad. They go on 7th December so presumably the shares will suspend unless a replacement is found. I had such high hopes for these in the early days - it was such a good story, and all the right things seemed to have been done. Unfortunately it appears to have been all hot air and failure to secure meaningful contracts. The shares are down 99% from when I bought them. That's £707.98 cost down to a value of £7.55. It's not worth selling them to recoup that amount, so all I can do is hold on and hope. If they go bust it's going to whack my performance stats really badly, and a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money...