Massive loss on Aquatic Food

Over the weekend I took a long hard look at AFG:Aquatic Food. I read and re-read their recent trading update and I tried to be dispassionate. Up till now I've been reluctant to lose £1,100 but after my deliberations, I decided I was in fact rescuing £900.

These were my main reasons from the Q4 trading statement for coming to the conclusion that the risk of AFG:Aquatic Food being a fraud are too high to leave my money invested there

• The update was very downbeat despite the profits being quite good
• There was a remark about having difficulty getting cash out of China to pay the dividend
• There was a statement about holding onto the huge pile of cash as it was prudent in times of uncertainty, but with no threads of hope to shareholders of restoring the value of the dividend or investing in anything

Looking back, there are other signals I should have paid more attention to

• The director responsible for the IPO has launched other Chinese companies that subsequently de-listed and has now departed the company
• The market cap is a third of the cash pile they have, but still investors are leaving them
• Despite China supposedly taking a stricter stance on companies listing on AIM, de-valuing the shares and then de-listing, it's still happening, with companies like Taihua, Jiasen and MoneySwap all de-listing under dodgy circumstances recently.

So with great pain, I sold my 9,315 shares for 10.03p after paying 21.99p. That was a 55.4% loss of £1,167.86. The good news is that I liberated £910.39 which would almost certainly have been lost if I had not sold. I feel even worse for remaining holders, as my sale was the only one registered today, but it caused the bid price to drop another penny to 9p.

I really, really hope they turn out to be a real company for the sake of those brave enough to tough it out. I cracked, but have learned a very valuable lesson that if something looks too good to be true, there's probably a reason.

The sale hammered my average monthly performance, dropping from £393 a month to £337 and taking the average percentage profit below my 10% target to 9.7%. I'm hoping the profits from bedding shares into my ISA will take me back over my target, if Hargreaves Lansdown ever pull their finger out and process the orders.

I used the liberated cash to get back into SXX:Sirius Minerals as they move from AIM to the main market on Friday. I wanted to get back in earlier but had no cash, and paid the price as shares have risen from about 17p to 25p over the last 4 weeks, following news of the move to the main market. I'm buying for the long term when they join the FTSE 250. I bought 3,949 shares at 25.1875p costing £1,006.60.

The removal of a heavy loss share did help my paper profits, which immediately leapt by the £1,167 I lost from the sale. Unfortunately my portfolio lost £40 today despite lots of blue on most of the shares. Big drops for OPTI:Optibiotix (WHY?!?!?!?!) and KIBO:Kibo Mining wiped out all the little gains.

Tomorrow could be very interesting, with OPTI:Optibiotix giving final results and revealing how well the Go Figure sales are performing. REDS:RedstoneConnect are also posting final results. Any profit could see me able to sell the shares in my trading account and pay that bloody Visa bill...