Week 133 Review - Now invested in Versarien

A good week, with the difference between portfolio value and cost improving by £1,159 despite cashing in £638 profit selling the last of my 92p IQE:IQE holding. Portfolio value increased by £1,515 to £70,406 and back over the £70K mark.

Worst performer was LION:Lionsgold in my trading account which dropped 12% just as I thought it had turned a corner.

CAML:Central Asia Metals was Share of the Week last week, but profit taking set in and it dropped 8% this week and has become very volatile lately.

SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics issued results. No surprises but it was enough to drop the price by 7% and these are now losing 51% from my purchase price. The excitement and optimism from IPO day seem a long, long way away now.

WRES:W Resources has been on a bit of a run but I think people are now realising the true cost of the loan to start production and I can see it sliding back to where it has been for the last two years. This week's drop was 5%.

MTFB:Motif Bio increased by 5% which is great after my recent doubling of shares. This is now 10% up and making £236 paper profit.

TLOU:Tlou Energy also climbed 5% after the dreadful fall last week, but that was only enough to improve my losses to 18%. I'm satisfied this will turn around quite quickly and is likely to lift off when the re-tender excercise is complete. It now appears the issue was down to inexperience within the Botswana government that when companies are tendering that don't yet produce gas, it's impossible to meet the requirements of the tender because they would only apply if already producing. If the government don't relax the requirements, nobody will apply as nobody is producing gas in Botswana yet. I may double up here while the price is this low.

Share of the Week is IQE:IQE which climbed 12% in my SIPP to go back into profit, and up 30% of my weighted average price in the ISA to go 127% up. Selling my 4,200 92p shares has yielded £866 profit in a couple of weeks, which is even more when you consider AMYT:Amryt Pharma has dropped 1.7p since I sold them to buy these shares, which would have been paper loss of £340, so my two fingers up to the shorters has made me over £1,000 better off. Huzzah!

I still have 8,809 IQE:IQE shares making paper profit of £5,282 and this comprises 16.8% of my portfolio value, so I do have capacity to top-slice a few more to get me down to 10% before the results are announced in March. That day will almost certainly see a massive spike, but in which direction? Whatever happens, IQE:IQE has already been very good to me, with £7,217 profits banked and almost as much still available should I choose to bank it.

The recovery continues!

The ISA and share portfolios look like this

			Weekly Change
Cash	£10.31		+£0.30
Portfolio cost	£47,136.54		+£638.37
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£43.250.25	(-8.2%)	+£937.36
Potential profits	£5,534.79		+£803.91
Yr 3 Dividends	£44.15		+£0
Yr 3 Profit from sales	£3,269.76		+£638.34
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£491.82	(12.5%)	+£81.23
Total Dividends	£1,223.20		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£9,982.26		+£638.34
Average monthly cash profit	£360.93	(9.2%)	+£18.23
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

I sold another 1,000 IQE:IQE shares at 124.85p making £638.34 (104.6%) profit against my weighted average price. This was re-invested in VRS:Versarien which I have been watching for ages. It has done exactly the same as OPTI:Optibiotix and soared on enthusiastic optimism for what appears to be a company with massive potential. Two years ago I would have leapt in and bought some some as soon as I found out about them - in fact I very nearly did on a huge spike of over £1. Instead I watched it every day and read the bulletin board every day as it drifted lower. It reminded me so much of the OPTI:Optibiotix bulletin board. Lots of head scratching as to why the market couldn't see the value of the company.

I set my target price at 70p, and this appeared on Friday. I sold the IQE:IQE shares and used the proceeds to buy 1,742 VRS:Versarien shares at 70.3p costing £1,236.58. I was slightly miffed that IQE:IQE rose to 134.2p by the end of the day when I had sold at 124.85p, but my mood was improved when VRS:Versarien climbed to an offer price of 74p by the end of the day. Happily my new holding was £23 (2%) up by the end of the day when the bid price reached 73p.

Potential profits were still up by £803 despite banking £638, mostly thanks to IQE:IQE but a 1p rise in OPTI:Optibiotix also helped. Average performance has done really well after the recent sales, climbing by another £18 per month and hitting a respectable 9.2%.

The gap has narrowed, but it's still quite a wide gap. Last time I had a rise like this it was followed by a fall twice as big. I really hope that doesn't happen again!

The SIPP looks like this after week 117

			Weekly Change
Cash	£273.09		+£0
Portfolio cost	£26,290.07		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£26,648.31	(1.4%)	+£262.57
Potential profits	£3,596.11		-£272.78
Yr 3 Dividends	£0		+£0
Yr 3 Profit from sales	£538.65		+£0
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£168.94	(7.7%)	-£14.08
Total Dividends	£916.10		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£9,463.84		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£377.79	(17.2%)	-£3.26
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Overall value increased by just £262 and potential profit dropped by £272. The drop was caused by CAML:Central Asia Metals falling so far. IQE:IQE caused the increase in value with a little help from LGEN:Legal & General and OPTI:Optibiotix. Performance is slipping for year 3, but still way ahead of 10% target for the long-term average.

Moving further into the black.

I guess we need to look at the trading account after week 83

			Weekly Change
Cash	£0.03		+£0
Portfolio cost	£345.65		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£224.56	(-35%)	-£40.65
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 2 Dividends	£0		+£0
Year 2 Profit	-£218.50		+£0
Yr 2 Average monthly cash profit	-£30.54	(-106%)	+£1.02
Dividends	£1.15		+£0
Profit from sales	-£241.35		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£12.54	(-43.5%)	+£0.15
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Another drop for LION:Lionsgold. I watched some YouTube videos this morning - about trading. They were pretty good, and I now realise that even if LION:Lionsgold is a good trading share, what I should have done is sold out as soon as it dropped. I still would have had most of the £345 and I could have then waited for it to drop further, find a bottom, and then start to recover - which is exactly what it did from around 2.5p. I doubt I would have successfully sold at the 4.5p spike as it was so short, but I could easily have bought after the climb from 3.2p and sold at 4p for some profit. My 4.5p entry point is just too high for the current trading range of the stock. However, now I'm making 35% loss I'm stuck here like I was with REDS:RedstoneConnect. I could have made four or five 5% losses and still been better off than I am now, and the odds are that one of those purchases would have resulted in profit.

I think I'm learning - but I now need LION:Lionsgold to do me a bit of a favour so I can try putting it into practice.

Nearly the worst ever position so far

I've got a day off on Friday - I wonder whether I'll end up doing anything with my portfolio?

If IQE:IQE continues the recovery then I will top-slice a few more profits to get my holding down to 10% of the portfolio value, just in case the results cause a dip. I may keep some of my profits in cash so I can pounce should that happen, as there is no doubt in my mind that IQE:IQE has an impressive future when 5G and autonomous vehicles ramp up the demand for their products.

The only share I won't sell down to 10% is OPTI:Optibiotix, as despite the risk of having over 50% of my portfolio invested there, the potential is so vast and overwhelming that I'm willing to take that risk. In fact, given it would only take 997 shares to reach 60,000 I may just be tempted so I end on a nice round number. That will definitely be my last purchase - possibly...

Week 132 Review - Banked loads of IQE profit

A much, much better week than last week and a load of profit taking, but still the combined portfolios ended up with a difference between cost and value £1,683 better than last week. I'm still in the red by £4,808 but the portfolio value increased by £3,326 to £68,608.

Biggest faller was a gamble that didn't pay off. I thought the 40% drop for TLOU:Tlou Energy was way over-done so bought 10,159 shares for 10.5p. It was all looking good as the price climbed through the day and the bid price reached the 10.5p I had paid. I was anticipating a move upwards following the meeting with the Botswana government on Thursday, but the RNS on Friday was not well received and the bid price fell to 8.3p. I ended up with a 23% loss in a few days. I still think when the results of the seismic survey are announced in the next few weeks the price will recover. Tony Gilby has a track record of developing a company's gas reserves and then selling on . The power plant development would be great, but is a bonus as there are still plenty of markets for the gas, and once the reserves are confirmed the company could easily be sold on.

MTFB:Motif Bio fell 9% but that was partly due to my purchase of 3,827 shares on Monday at 34.4p. Although the offer price is now 36p, the 5% spread means bid price is 34.1p which is less than I paid. Add to that the increase in my weighted average from 28.96p to 31.84p and that explains the drop in performance. I'm really happy that I've doubled my investment while the price is this low, and I'm hoping to see 45p again soon.

I had some stellar performances this week, with most shares rising and helping cancel out 75% of last week's losses. OPTI:Optibiotix only climbed 1p, but that meant a £569 rise for the portfolio. Not only that, I had an irresistible urge on Friday to get a few more after reading details of the meetings just held in America by the OPTI:Optibiotix team. They couldn't say very much, but the sentiment was extremely positive. Corporations don't send Senior Vice Presidents into meetings without some serious interest. I couldn't sit by and watch other people buying in at below 60p when my weighted average was 67p.

I decided to bank some more of my IQE:IQE 92p purchase profit so sold another 1,000 shares at 115.7p making £546.84 (89.6%) profit on my weighted average cost price of 58.9p, or around 25% profit on my 92p purchase price 2 weeks ago. Dirty tricks by shorters are bearable when I can make a load of money out of them!

I've now sold 75% of the shares I bought at 92p. I'll try my best to hold the rest a little longer, but would really like to buy back some of my AMYT:Amryt Pharma shares which have dropped to an offer price of 19.25p when I sold to buy IQE:IQE at 19.5p. Given I can already get them back cheaper than the recent sale price, I'd like to set a limit order for maybe 18.5p to see if I can get back in. The problem with AMYT:Amryt Pharma is typical of AIM shares - the price is news led and will rocket when the next RNS is issued. I'm seeing this with more and more AIM shares now. Price rockets on news then drifts for months, then rockets on next news. Hold and wait is still a great technique, but the secret is buying at the right time, and I haven't been very good at that. I buy after the news instead of watching and waiting for a good entry point. I'm doing that now with VRS:Versarian, which I think is going to be huge but is in the phase of sinking till next news. I suspect TRX:Tissue Regenix and RED:RedT Energy are both in the same boat, but I have enough doubts on their ability to be profitable to stop me topping up.

Anyway - the IQE:IQE sale liberated £1,145 so I was able to buy another 1,962 OPTI:Optibiotix shares at 57.75p costing £1,145.01. This takes my holding to 59,003 shares costing £39,058.50 at a weighted average of 66p. My holding is losing £5,719 at the moment, which is dreadful. However a 1p rise is now worth £590 so first I need a 10p rise to get into profit and then it's bonanza time all the way to £5 a share! Hah! I should dream - that would be worth £250,000 profit! Not impossible though...

WRES:W Resources soared by 19% this week, but I sold my SIPP holding at 0.6615p before it dipped back to 0.61p, making £41.76 (26.5%) profit on a tiny investment of £202. I've been dying to get rid of these for ages. The rise was due to announcement of debt financing. However at 12.5% interest and including warrants for 5% of the company's shares causing dilution of another 257,000,000 shares, I want out. Unfortunately my ISA shares were bought on a spike at 0.698p so they are still 18% down. I'm stuck with them unless they can get up to 0.8p when I can get out with a small profit. I suspect that will be a long way off. I left the £244 proceeds from the SIPP sale as cash as it's too small to do anything with. When (if) I can sell the ISA holding I'll move the proceeds into the SIPP as there will be enough to invest in something with the two combined.

IQE:IQE had a great week, rising 13% in my SIPP which is still 12% in the red, but climbing 29% on my weighted average cost price in the ISA. With the three sales I've cashed in £1,600 profit and still have another 1,000 sacrificial shares waiting to sell. That brings me back to my core holding, and I then have to decide how much they will rise in anticipation of strong results and whether to sell some more to get my holding down to 10% of the portfolio value. It's currently 16.7% of the portfolio value so there's plenty of room to take some more profits.

Share of the Week is CAML:Central Asia Metals, which predictably bounced back after a torrid few weeks and climbed 21% of my purchase price this week. I'm now 84% up and making paper profits of £3,438, and a recent video with the CEO pretty much confirmed they will be able to hold the dividend rate which is currently worth almost £400 a year. The value has snuck up to 11% of the portfolio value, and if it gets to 11.5% then I need to slice off another £1,000 but I'll be keeping a close eye on ex dividend date as I want to maximise that.

Stage 1 of the recovery...

The ISA and share accounts look like this

			Weekly Change
Cash	£10.01		-£7.12
Portfolio cost	£46,498.17		+£1,607.72
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£41.674.52	(-10.4%)	+£212.87
Potential profits	£4,730.88		-£4.55
Yr 3 Dividends	£44.15		+£0
Yr 3 Profit from sales	£2,631.42		+£1,600.94
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£410.59	(10.6%)	+£241.73
Total Dividends	£1,223.20		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£9,343.92		+£1,600.94
Average monthly cash profit	£342.70	(8.8%)	+£50.34
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

I banked £1,600 profit from IQE:IQE and ploughed it all back in, so the portfolio cost rose by £1,607 as there was £7 cash I was able to include. The sell value only increased by £212 because I take off amount re-invested. In reality the sell value went up over £1,800 but that's because the cost went up too. It's amazing that potential profits only dropped by £4 given the amount I cashed in. That was all thanks to the 29% increase in IQE:IQE which saw the profit rise by the same amount I took out. Splendid! The sales also gave a massive boost to my performance stats, taking the average over 132 weeks up by £50 a month to £342 (8.8%).

The graph illustrates that the portfolio value went up about the same as the cost so the gap hasn't really narrowed, but the sale didn't cause it to widen.

The SIPP looks like this after week 116

			Weekly Change
Cash	£273.09		+£244.28
Portfolio cost	£26,290.07		-£202.52
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£26,385.74	(0.4%)	+£1,271.93
Potential profits	£3,868.89		+£921.34
Yr 3 Dividends	£0		+£0
Yr 3 Profit from sales	£538.65		+£41.76
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£183.02	(8.4%)	-£0.19
Total Dividends	£916.10		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£9,463.84		+£41.76
Average monthly cash profit	£381.05	(17.4%)	-£1.74
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Cash went up by the £244 liberated after getting rid of WRES:W Resources and the tiny profit was enough to limit this week's performance drop to practically nothing. Paper profits absolutely soared thanks to IQE:IQE and CAML:Central Asia Metals, but everything except TRX:Tissue Regenix was up this week.

We're back in the black! Only just though, with a £95 buffer plus the £273 cash.

The trading account looks like this after week 82

			Weekly Change
Cash	£0.03		+£0
Portfolio cost	£345.65		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£265.21	(-23.3%)	-£3.70
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 2 Dividends	£0		+£0
Year 2 Profit	-£218.50		+£0
Yr 2 Average monthly cash profit	-£31.56	(-109.6%)	+£1.09
Dividends	£1.15		+£0
Profit from sales	-£241.35		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£12.69	(-44.1%)	+£0.16
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Pretty flat, but my optimism in LION:Lionsgold is increasing. They may actually be onto something, as they have tie-ins with both Railsbank and Mastercard who seem to be doing the business!

Can't believe how crap I am at this! Glad it's just a play account...

OPTI:Optibiotix were in America all week. I'm really excited about what might have been going on there. I've been fantasizing this morning - pondering who might have the biggest interest in developing a calorie-free sweetener? Maybe someone who's chair and CEO of a company that owns a massive share of one of the biggest fizzy pop manufacturers in the world? Someone who's the most famous investor in the world and has the power to keep a share price depressed while they build a big stake? That would be the RNS to end all RNS's! I find it easier to hold out for the real news if I have the odd fantasy to cling to...

Banked more IQE profit for Tlou Energy fire sale

The 4,200 IQE:IQE shares I bought at 92p last week were really a snub to the shorters. I feel that they are in a holding account in case some opportunity pops up and I feel the need to act quickly. Although I would like to make as much on them as possible, every penny seems like a bonus, especially when it would still have been invested in AMYT:Amryt Pharma which has trickled downwards ever since I sold and went into loss today.

One such opportunity arose last night when I was checking out my old shares and discovered TLOU:Tlou Energy had dropped by 40% after the Botswana government announced they needed to re-tender for the power plant project.

40%!!

From what I can see, the power plant project isn't really that important anyway. The CEO of IQE:IQE has a track record of developing gas companies, building their confirmed reserves, and then selling them on for a vast profit. If he's thinking along those lines then the power plant is actually a risk and an expense in the shorter term.

I've been invested in TLOU:Tlou Energy twice now, and done really well with them. The first holding sold in 2 batches for £328 (63%) and then £380 (69.1%) profit, and the second holding sold for £828 (59.3%) profit so I'm very fond of this share and was reluctant to sell the last lot for 14.2p.

When I saw I could buy back in for 10.5p I leapt at the chance - and had I been out of the shower 20 minutes earlier I could have got in even cheaper, but a big 100,000 purchase jacked up the price early doors. I bought 10,159 shares for £1,078.65 and the offer price rose to 11.5p by the end of the day. I ended up almost breaking even as the spread is an annoying 9% so bid price is exactly what I paid at 10.5p and I'm down the £23.90 commission for buying and future commission when I sell, which I account for in my share value.

There's been a meeting with the Botswana government today for the two parties that tendered, and news is likely tomorrow morning explaining why the re-tender is necessary. If it's good news then these could rocket back to 14p. If it's bad news then I may regret my purchase, but I'm confident this will be a short term issue until news of their seismic survey comes through and may increase their confirmed reserves.

In order to fund the purchase I sold another 1,000 of my recently purchased IQE:IQE shares for 109.05p, which is a few pence more than the ones I sold on Monday, so I guess it would have been about 15% on the 92p by the time I remove commission. On my weighted average purchase price I made £477.34 (77.8%) profit, which is nice.

This lifts my average monthly performance from £311 (8.2%) to £327 (8.5%) over the 131 weeks so I'm creeping back towards the target 10%.

A positive day for my other holdings means that despite cashing in £1,054 profit this week, the portfolio is £1,073 higher value vs cost compared to Friday, but still £5,418 under water.

I really need OPTI:Optibiotix to get back above 60p and we'll be well on the way to getting back in profit.

Banked some IQE profit for Motif Bio purchase

I've got a day off work today so have been poring over my portfolio.

One of my most promising recent purchases is MTFB:Motif Bio which completed successful phase III trials of a new antibiotic called Iclaprim last year. The news that really excited me was back in September, when it was announced that Iclaprim had been given orphan drug designation by US FDA for treatment of staphylococcus aureus lung infections in patients with cystic fibrosis.This has the potential to speed up approval of the drug, as well as offering many other incentives, not to mention the possibility of saving the lives of many cystic fibrosis sufferers.

I initially purchased 3,411 shares last August at 28.9638p and they did really well, especially after announcement of the successful phase III trials, peaking at 45p in early October. Since then they have been up and down a few times, sinking to 30p in late November before recovering to around 42p in early January. Since then the price has drifted to the point where I felt the need to buy some more.

This morning I purchased 3,827 at 34.4008p costing £1,328.47 taking my total to 7,238 on a weighted average of 31.84p. They are currently making paper profit of £109 (5%) so still in the black, but in need of some news to get things moving.

In order to make the purchase I needed to sell something, and today seemed the ideal time to bank a small profit from my 92p IQE:IQE purchase last week. I sold 1,244 of the 4,200 shares I bought last week at 107.21p which gave me a 14% profit in a week. Thanks for the opportunity shorters!

For my reporting, I work on weighted averages, so when combined with my other ISA holding, the weighted average cost price is 58.93p resulting in a profit of £576.76 (76.1%). This liberated £1,321.74 towards the MTFB:Motif Bio purchase.

The sale has helped my performance stats, with forecast average monthly profit in year 3 increasing from £168 to £261 (assuming I maintain current form) and actual monthly profits since I started 131 weeks ago increasing from £292 to £311 (8.2%)

I'm still left with 10,000 IQE:IQE shares in my ISA making paper profit of £4,065 (80%) and 1,809 shares in my SIPP making a loss of £466 (20%) so could do with the price recovering to 140p before I consider any further top-slice in the ISA. The company makes up 18.1% of my portfolio value, so I have quite a bit of pruning to get back to my ideal 10%.

I was originally planning to wait until 140p to take any IQE:IQE profit, but the MTFB:Motif Bio price drop was too much of a temptation and my realised profit stats needed a bit of a boost.

Elsewhere there seems to be a mini recovery underway today. Nowhere near enough to correct the carnage from last week, but enough to spark a glimmer of hope.

Week 131 Review - It's all gone to hell in a handcart!

A perfect storm hit my portfolio this week, with placings, warrants exercised and sold and licenses being revoked. Add to that the general market correction and the war with the hedge funds over IQE:IQE and the result was a drop in portfolio value of £4,181.

Disaster!

The portfolio is now £6,492 in the red and worth just £65,282 compared to nearly £80,000 a few months ago.

On paper the worst performer was IQE:IQE, but that's not really true. My SIPP holding only decreased by 3%, whereas my ISA holding didn't really lose anything thanks to my big purchase at 92p on Monday. However, the fact my weighted average cost per share increased from 39p to 59p means the holding is only 68% up on the cost price, whereas it was 163% up on the original cost price last week. Although the performance has actually improved, it appears to be 95% down on last week because of the increased average cost.

Next worst performer was LGEN:Legal & General which was hammered along with the other blue chips and dropped 10%. Not a lot you can do during a correction.

Next worst performer was last week's worst performer CAML:Central Asia Metals which has suffered horribly as one of the non-exec directors has sold his entire holding in a placement. The placement was at quite a discount to the share price, and it dropped 9% as a result.

MTFB:Motif Bio and BLU:Blue Star Capital both dropped 8% and I'll be topping up on MTFB:Motif Bio at this price if IQE:IQE stages any sort of recovery next week and I top-slice a few profits.

The other 8% faller was much more serious. OPTI:Optibiotix makes up 53.3% of my portfolio and each penny change in share price amounts to £569, so dropping 5p from 61p to 56p this week was a complete disaster. The culprit was someone taking up their warrant entitlement at 8p a share for 800,000 shares and then selling the lot today. Thanks a bundle! At least they won't get their hands on any free SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics shares.

RED:RedT Energy continues to slide and lost another 7% based on no news and doubts they can make enough margin on each machine to make a profit.

JLP:Jubilee Metals had a complete disaster when the recent joint venture with BMR:BMR Group hit a brick wall as the Zambian government terminated their mining licence. This was the day after JLP:Jubilee Metals had confirmed their due diligence was complete and the project would go ahead. WTF!! It's a miracle the share price only fell 6% after a balls-up like that, but the fact it has fallen below 3p is most worrying, and it's now 35% down on my purchase price.

Only two shares managed to increase in value this week, and amazingly it's the same two that gained in value last week. WRES:W Resources rose 6% in my SIPP but only 4% in my ISA compared to purchase price, so if I take the average then LION:Lionsgold wins Share of the Week as it climbed 6%. I'm still not convinced either of these will make me any money, but after a week like this one I'll take anything.

It's just awful.

Here's the performance of the ISA and share accounts

			Weekly Change
Cash	£17.13		+£6.44
Portfolio cost	£44,890.45		+£102.82
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£39.853.93	(-11.2%)	-£2,292.06
Potential profits	£4,735.43		-£230.19
Yr 3 Dividends	£44.15		+£0
Yr 3 Profit from sales	£1,030.48		+£102.97
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£168.86	(4.5%)	+£3.69
Total Dividends	£1,223.20		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£7,742.98		+£102.97
Average monthly cash profit	£292.36	(7.8%)	-£1.20
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Cash is up by an odd amount because I forgot to add the £10.20 dividend last week, and there was a £3.75 charge for the ISA and a few pence left over after the Monday trade.

Portfolio cost went up £102 when I re-invested the profits from selling 80% of my AMYT:Amryt Pharma holding to plough into IQE:IQE at what was hopefully a bargain price.

Catastrophic decline in portfolio value was caused mostly by OPTI:Optibiotix but with a helping hand from every other stock except WRES:W Resources which climbed a tiny amount and IQE:IQE which stayed pretty flat but is 8p up on my big buy on Monday.

Potential profits are hardly affected at all. There was a £102 drop on selling AMYT:Amryt Pharma, and the subsequent fall in share price also dented profits, and MTFB:Motif Bio also dropped to reduce profits. Everything else except IQE:IQE is at a loss, which is grim!

My plan is to wait for IQE:IQE to recover to around 140p and then start gradually top-slicing £1,000 at a time until it's down to 10% of the portfolio. I'd like to get some of my AMYT:Amryt Pharma shares back, but also take advantage of the recent dip for MTFB:Motif Bio which I think is more likely to move ahead this year as phase III trials are complete.

The decline since November is worse than Brexit and Trump added together!

Here's the SIPP after week 115

			Weekly Change
Cash	£28.81		-£10.20
Portfolio cost	£26,492.59		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£25,113.81	(-5.2%)	-£1,907.88
Potential profits	£2,947.55		-£582.04
Yr 3 Dividends	£0		+£0
Yr 3 Profit from sales	£496.89		+£0
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£183.21	(8.3%)	-£4.02
Total Dividends	£916.10		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£9,422.08		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£382.79	(17.3%)	-£0.38
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Cash is down because of monthly SIPP charges, sell value has plummeted thanks to nearly everything tanking, and potential profits are down £582 thanks to both CAML:Central Asia Metals and LGEN:Legal & General being hammered. Average monthly performance hasn't been hit as much as usual as I accidentally moved the week on twice a few weeks ago so the impact of the £10.20 charge is lessened now that's fixed.

The portfolio plummets into the red for the first time in years. Very upsetting!

The trading account looks like this after week 81

			Weekly Change
Cash	£0.03		+£0
Portfolio cost	£345.65		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£268.91	(-22.2%)	+£18.48
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 2 Dividends	£0		+£0
Year 2 Profit	-£218.50		+£0
Yr 2 Average monthly cash profit	-£32.65	(-113.3%)	+£1.17
Dividends	£1.15		+£0
Profit from sales	-£241.35		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£12.85	(-44.6%)	+£0.16
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

LION:Lionsgold has another blue week among the carnage. Is this a sign that I can make some money and take this account back into profit? I won't be holding my breath!

Creeping back up, but still a massive embarrassment.

The one ray of sunshine on my doom-ridden portfolio is that the Dow bounced significantly on Friday. It's remarkable how often that happens just after the London markets close. The other rays of sunshine for CAML:Central Asia Metals and OPTI:Optibiotix are that the big declines were related to large sales. One from a director cashing in his entire holding and one due to opportunistic cashing in of warrants, possibly so they can take advantage of the multitude of bargains following last week's correction. I'm confident both these shares will bounce back quite quickly, and the free SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics shares have been pretty much confirmed now, so it won't be long before those are dished out and will immediately wipe out my current losses.

Less sunny is the outlook for JLP:Jubilee Metals. Everything they touch seems to be cursed. There's no doubt they have the engineering skill to make money, but the number of failed deals and poor judgement keeps mounting up. I bought loads on the optimism following the granting of the Tjate mining licence, but this is looking like a completely dead duck now, as nobody has enough cash to mine it, and nobody is prepared to risk it while platinum prices are so low.

The IQE:IQE saga continues. I mentioned on Monday that we'd won a battle but not necessarily the war, and I was right as a new player emerged in the shape of Muddy Waters. This outfit has shorted the stock and produced another dodgy report just as flawed as the Shadowfall report. This hit the share price along with the wider market drop and has given the hedge funds an ideal opportunity to start closing their shorts. The drop in the rest of the market hasn't happened for IQE:IQE thanks to the closing of short positions. However, that's because our drop had already happened over the last few months due to the shorts being opened in the first place!

It's going to be much harder for Shadowfall and Muddy Waters to make a profit as it appears they opened their shorts way later than the hedge funds. Thankfully a host of analysts are coming out with statements confirming their higher valuations of the IQE:IQE share price, and Cardiff University have also come out in defence of the joint ventures following accusations in the latest report that they are being taken advantage of by IQE:IQE.

The fact the hedge funds are now closing their positions is an indication they don't think it will fall below 100p. We may be stuck here for a while and have to suffer further fake news and scaremongering, but hopefully any frightened shareholders have already bailed out and left the hard-line holders behind.

My worry is that everyone is holding out for stellar results in March. Although the revenue will be stellar, my worry is that the impact of the unpaid tax issue which will cost £4.2m and the short term impact of the Trump tax cut, could mean profits are down on last year. Next year they will be meteoric, but there could be a bit of a sting for 2017 and the shorters could play on that if they anticipate it. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't close off now and allow the price to surge again up to the results, then whack in a load of shorts just before the results are announced. With that in mind I do need to gradually reduce my exposure to 10% of my portfolio value over the next few weeks, but not at a price below 140p.

I really hope next week isn't as painful as this one...

Major IQE topup at bargain basement price after crazy weekend

What a weekend!

I was hooked on the Advfn bulletin board for IQE:IQE.

I can't believe I was so close to capitulation on Friday, but thanks to some fantastic posts I gradually saw through the dirty tricks of the shorters, and along with many other investors battened down the hatches for war!

It became clear that there are some pretty knowledgeable accountants invested in IQE:IQE and their explanations of the spurious nature of the "analysis report" published by Shadowfall Research & Capital LLP convinced me of the desperation shorters will go to in order to drive down the share price.

Even so, I was pretty convinced the price would be driven down on Monday to trigger stop losses and test the water for a bigger fall.

I wanted to be ready so decided to sacrifice 80% of my AMYT:Amryt Pharma shares in order to try and get a bargain price.

It worked!

I woke at 7am and immediately checked the RNS feed, and there was the IQE:IQE response.

It was a good response - my confidence was up.

Then another RNS - Oppenheimer Funds had increased their holding from 3% to 5% on Friday.

This was getting better!

Then the icing on the cake - a fantastic note from Barclays saying "Neither news nor merit in ShadowFall report, reiterate Overweight" and a price target of 210p.

That was the green light - at 8am I sold 20,000 shares in AMYT:Amryt Pharma for 19.5p making a tiny profit of £102.97 (2.7%), reduced due to all the commission charges staying with this transaction. I kept hold of 8,313 shares and took away the purchase commission costs, so these are £68 (4%) up.

This liberated almost £4,000 so I checked the IQE:IQE price and it had dropped to around 91p as predicted. I put in my buy order and got a price of just over 91p but when I tried to complete it failed. I tried again and it had gone up to 92p, but failed again.

There was much cursing.

I tried again and it came up with 92p once more, but this time it worked. I managed to bag 4,200 shares costing £3,875.95 and breathed a massive sigh of relief.

Now the big question - would the price capitulate further or would there be enough buying pressure along with closing shorts to see a recovery?

I didn't have long to wait, as before 9am we were in the blue on the day and I was 10% up already.

So all the evil shorting campaign had done is give me a chance to buy a load more shares at a ridiculously cheap price - nice one guys!

Given the carnage in the rest of the market the price did slip into the red on the day, but a rise from offer price of 92p this morning to bid price of 101.9p tonight is pretty bloody amazing.

It has compromised my weighted average price, which went up from 39p to 59p so my paper profits as a percentage of cost price have dropped to 72%, but they are standing at £4,778 and I'm anticipating that will rocket once all this nonsense blows over.

The daily chart shows just how brief the drop to 92p was - I usually miss those opportunities, but this time it came off.

All I can do is hope that we can at least hold this price until the next results are out in March. Many of our customers are giving updates this week, so that could prove helpful in case the shorters pile on more pressure, and maybe some of the institutions that bought for 140p a few months ago will be looking for a bargain?

This episode has shown off the best and worst of the stock market. The nasty tactics some people and funds will stoop to in order to make profit, and the strength in private investors to defy them and rally the troops for a fight back. It's been really exciting, but I fear it's not over yet. We won a battle today, but the war may have further to run...

Week 130 Review - Further into the red

Although the losses of £1,061 this week are just a third of last weeks' losses, this has been a much more depressing week. Only 2 shares increased in value, a few stayed still, and nearly everything else dropped, with some significantly. The portfolio value dropped to £69,365 and below the rather significant £70K level, with a paper loss of £2,310.

Worst performer was CAML:Central Asia Metals which must have been due to profit taking, as metal prices are holding up. The drop of 10% made a significant hole in my SIPP profits.

Then it was just a relentless flood of large drops, with KIBO:Kibo Mining down 8%, IKA:Ilika down 7%, RDT:Rosslyn Data down 7% and RED:RedT Energy also down 7%.

Thank goodness IQE:IQE was only down 1% despite the savage attack of the shorters.

There were only 2 shares that increased in price this week. WRES:W Resources climbed 2% and LION:Lionsgold climbed 3%. Neither deserve Share of the Week so they ain't going to get it.

Share of the Week goes to OPTI:Optibiotix, which despite finishing on the same price it started, dropped low enough for me to buy a load more mid-week and then climbed back to the starting price. This allowed my ISA holding to increase by 1% thanks to the bargain purchase. Super!

Pretty horrible sight.

The ISA and share portfolios look like this

			Weekly Change
Cash	£10.69		-£0.20
Portfolio cost	£44,787.63		-£176.76
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£42.043.17	(-6.4%)	-£747.30
Potential profits	£4,965.62		-£144.90
Yr 3 Dividends	£44.15		+£10.04
Yr 3 Profit from sales	£927.51		-£176.96
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£165.17	(4.4%)	-£28.93
Total Dividends	£1,223.20		+£10.04
Total Profit from sales	£7,640.01		-£176.96
Average monthly cash profit	£293.56	(7.9%)	-£5.61
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Well it's a busy table! Selling CMCL:Caledonia Mining at a loss hit the performance quite badly and resulted in the portfolio cost reducing when I re-invested a smaller amount. Potential profits were only slightly reduced by the cashing in of some AMYT:Amryt Pharma profit and a slight drop for IQE:IQE. The £10 dividend was from CMCL:Caledonia Mining. Portfolio sell value dropped by £747 due to losses across the board.

I really hope this can recover as quickly as it's dropped because my pre-Christmas optimism is feeling a bit deflated.

The SIPP looks like this after week 114

			Weekly Change
Cash	£39.01		+£0
Portfolio cost	£26,492.59		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£27,021.69	(2.0%)	-£501.92
Potential profits	£3,529.59		-£472.51
Yr 3 Dividends	£0		+£0
Yr 3 Profit from sales	£496.89		+£0
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£178.23	(8.5%)	-£18.72
Total Dividends	£916.10		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£9,422.08		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£383.17	(17.4%)	-£3.36
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

The £501 drop was almost entirely down to the 10% drop in CAML:Central Asia Metals. I'm hoping this was a tree shake as I think this has a long way to go, and the next trading update could be a corker.

That's looking very bad indeed - this account hasn't looked like going into the red for a long time but is now on the brink!

The trading account looks like this after week 80

			Weekly Change
Cash	£0.03		+£0
Portfolio cost	£345.65		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£250.43	(-27.5%)	+£11.09
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 2 Dividends	£0		+£0
Year 2 Profit	-£218.50		+£0
Yr 2 Average monthly cash profit	-£33.82	(-117.4%)	+£1.25
Dividends	£1.15		+£0
Profit from sales	-£241.35		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£13.01	(-45.2%)	+£0.17
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

It says something when my best performing share of the week LION:Lionsgold caused only an £11 rise in value. I've not lost hope in this one - the shares are incredibly volatile and the slightest thing could generate a 100% increase, but I timed my dalliance to the crypto-bubble perfectly badly, just before the burst, so it's a good job I restricted myself to a few hundred quid in my play account.

So basically a really shitty week, only brightened by the opportunity to get some bargain OPTI:Optibiotix shares which generated an instant return despite the share price still being horribly low.

All eyes are now focused on the IQE:IQE shorting saga. Last week the hedge funds got their media mates to post a load of fake news about Apple cancelling the iPhone X. They were hoping for bad news from the Apple trading update, but must have been horrified when it came out positive, with quotes like the iPhone X is the best iPhone ever.

Amazingly, the day after the good Apple results, a report was made available (despite being published in December) claiming financial misconduct by IQE:IQE. The person writing the report admitted that they are shorting IQE:IQE. Talk about desperation measures! The problem is, the attack was successful and the price didn't recover so the shorters are still in control.

Then came the revelation that although about 12% of IQE:IQE shares are being actively shorted by those having more than 0.5% of the share capital, there are actually 25% of available shares out on loan. This means the shorters still have a hell of a lot of ammunition to fire at the share price.

I'm not sure I have the stomach to fight them, and with IQE:IQE making up 13.3% of my portfolio value, keeping everything invested is looking like quite a risk in the short term.

It makes me angry that I may have to capitulate and help them in their quest, but if I sell 2,000 of my ISA shares even at this depressed price, I make £1,286 (155%) profit and still leave 10% of my combined portfolio value invested for the long term.

It's a big decision as I would much prefer to see the shorters destroyed, but how can a tiny private investor hope to compete with that sort of power? If I were to top-slice any other share for 155% profit I'd be really pleased. If it hadn't been 400% profit a few months ago I wouldn't be so hesitant. I shouldn't forget that I sold my initial SIPP holding at 137p making £4,978 (186.9%) profit which isn't much more than I would make if I sold some of these now. The sale would also rescue my flagging ISA/share accounts performance and take my average monthly return back up to 9%.

This would also help me get back to my maximum 10% rule, as it would leave OPTI:Optibiotix as the only share left flouting the rule. Granted at 53.3% that's flouting it pretty brazenly, but once the free shares are dished out I can consider gradually dropping it back towards 10%. The free shares will actually help there, because they will reduce the percentage of the portfolio OPTI:Optibiotix comprises so I won't have to off-load as many!

So I have a decision to make over the weekend - fight the shorters or capitulate?

Edit - I've made my decision. The shorters can go jump. This is war, and I'm fighting on the side of the righteous.  They're not getting my bloody shares!