Week 203 Review - Massive recovery as Optibiotix flies

An absolute blinder of a week for OPTI:Optibiotix saw all last weeks losses recouped, and almost as much again as the portfolio value increased by £8,437 and smashed the deficit down to just £2,538. Total portfolio value is knocking on the £100K door again at £99,001.

Worst performer was the disastrous holding company for my CWR:Ceres Power proceeds. I put it all into C4XD:C4X Discovery Holdings and it was looking good at first, but now they have dropped to an all-time low and fell 8% this week. Meanwhile CWR is getting towards where I want to buy back in, but I don't have the funds available to do it unless I take a loss and wipe out my profits from the initial sale. Note to self - never do this again!

Next worst performer was TLOU:Tlou Energy which fell 6%. I'm a bit confused with this one, as they seem to be in a far better place than they were when the shares were 16p yet they have more than halved to 6p. My holding is down 32% and losing £863 but my confidence hasn't been shaken. It's a sector I've decided not to invest in any more due to environmental concerns for climate, but my principles don't stretch to making a loss.

Nice that there were very few big fallers this week. However there were very few big risers too. VRS:Versarien recovered from last week's drop and climbed 6% to go back into the black. They are only 2% up but that's better than most of my shares. They actually got an order for some graphene which will help rather a lot.

IQE:IQE was bound to have a small recovery after the disaster last week. My SIPP holding climbed 5%, trading account climbed 6% and ISA holding which I bought at a much lower price climbed 9%.

Share of the Week goes to OPTI:Optibiotix which climbed 10p or 15% and reversed the slide of the last few weeks. When this climbs it climbs quick. The rise accounted for £8,290 of this week's gains, which is nearly all of them. My portfolio performance it totally dependent on this one company. Not terribly balanced, but with £12,961 potential profits when things haven't even got started yet, I may not need any other shares. The increase was down to two significant announcements. The first was a manufacturing and distribution deal with Agropur for North America and the second was the appointment of Goetzpartners Securities Limited to provide financial advisory services, including sector specific equity research and investor support services. This should make up for the chronic inadequacies of the broker Finncap in encouraging investment, especially with planned spin-off of Probiotics and the sale of SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics shares so they can pay us our long awaited dividend.

I went through my accounts and added all my cash injections as this chart wasn't really different enough from the other one. Now it shows the difference between the cash I put in and the cost of the shares. It reveals I'm doing ok, but given the cost and injection lines are almost identical in shape, suggests all my profits were made a long time ago and I've been treading water for the last 12 months.

Back above the trend line and nearly back into the black.

Here's the performance of the ISA and share accounts

			Weekly Change
Cash	£23.23		+£0
Portfolio cost	£57,827.12		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price-commission)	£55,008.64	(-4.9%)	+£5,108.82
Potential profits	£8,331.17		+£5,055.88
Yr 4 Dividends	£88.07		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£1,606.13		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£152.75	(3.2%)	-£3.32
Total Dividends	£1,326.40		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£20,303.25		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£457.79	(9.5%)	-£2.26
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)

All increase in potential profits was thanks to OPTI:Optibiotix and that left a £50 improvement in losses across the rest of the portfolio. You could say it was a flat week everywhere except OPTI:Optibiotix.

The new injection line shows that nothing has been added to the account for 12 months whereas there has been a slight increase in costs from re-invested profits, but not a lot.

Back above the trend line and I think the mountain is well and truly factored in now, so in a couple of months the line should flatten , but will be remarkably close to the £0 line.

The SIPP looks like this after week 187

			Weekly Change
Cash	£84.80		+£0
Portfolio cost	£41,248.68		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£42,401.74	(2.8%)	+£3,284.90
Potential profits	£5,679.12		+£3,072.33
Yr 4 Dividends	£361.99		+£0
Yr 4 Interest	£0.07		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£732.65		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£140.22	(4.1%)	-£4.67
Total Dividends	£1,704.24		+£0
Total Interest	£0.10		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£11,277.57		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£292.17	(8.5%)	-£1.57
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Almost the same story as the ISA, but losses reducing by £200 is better, and the best news is that we're back in the black and 4 of the 9 holdings are in profit.

The injections are more regular in this account as I transfer out of my work pension every time it gets more than £2,000. The next injection will be the end of July when I should be able to transfer around £2,200. If prices stay as they are I'll be putting it all into CAML:Central Asia Metals and really wish I had spare cash to top up now.

Back above the trend line and keeping the end of the line in the black

The trading account looks like this after week 153

			Weekly Change
Cash	£35.04		+£0
Portfolio cost	£2,321.29		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£1,448.05	(-37.6%)	+£43.33
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 3 Dividends	£33.57		+£0
Year 3 Profit	£177.06		+£0
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£18.63	(9.6%)	-£0.39
Dividends	£34.72		+£0
Profit from sales	-£64.29		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.84	(-0.4%)	+£0
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)

A positive week, but only clawing back 30% of last week's losses. The nearest share to being in profit is CAML:Central Asia Metals and it may not be long before a production update. That ought to see a significant re-rate as revenues and profits should be double what they were last year and the P/E ratio is already less than 10. People forget that this is a very low cost producer, so the low metal prices don't impact the profits so much. Granted they get more if the prices are higher, but they still comfortably earn enough for a spectacular dividend when the prices are low.

I'm quite looking forward to losing the pre-£2000 lines so I can re-scale the graph. My ambition to get the injection line down to £0 as I take money out hasn't really worked. I was meant to be paying off the interest free loan with those profits. Instead I'm having to use my own money. Not a great investment move, but it will pay for itself in education and experience if I finally get the hang of it.

Still a long way to go, and if LION:Lionsgold never re-lists it will take years to get into the black with this account. There is some hope though, as the ticker TALY has been reserved and intentions to re-launch as TALY:Tally have been published, so we'll wait and see.

So where are we at with my cunning attempt at trading in my ISA? I sold SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics at 23.2p and they have dropped to offer price of 20.5p. My intention was to buy back as soon as they fell below 20p. However like a complete idiot I decided IQE:IQE dropping to 75p was a brilliant opportunity for short term gain, so I tied up all the cash in there and they've dropped to 60p so I'm buggered. Genius move - why can't I hold cash? Such a plank.

My second attempt mentioned in the blog intro involved selling CWR:Ceres Power at 184.1p and those have dropped to offer price of 169.5p so still a way to go to my target 150p, mainly due to the announcement of a supply contract which reversed the decline. In my most cunning plank-like tradition I put the money into C4XD:C4X Discovery Holdings at 48p and they are now 45p to sell, so another disaster meaning if CWR do fall I won't be able to take advantage.

What have I learnt from this? I've learnt I'm an idiot who doesn't learn from his mistakes and can't resist buying shares even when it's the wrong thing to do. I should really do what Graham and Buffett recommend and always have 10% of my holding in cash, but can I really bring myself to do that? I'm chronically lacking in discipline and get way too excited by the next shiny share.

Even in this blog I've discussed putting my £2,200 pension transfer into CAML:Central Asia Metals when I should be targeting a cash holding of £4,000 in that account. I wouldn't mind, but it pays a reasonable rate of interest too. Even if I did end up with that much as cash, the very first "bargain" that came along and I'd be buying it - I'd end up with the cash part of the account being a trading fund until I lock it up into some loser for 2 years.

OK - this time I'm really going to do it - when the pension transfer comes through I'm going to leave it as cash. What are the odds of me holding to that?

Week 202 Review - IQE crashes amongst general carnage

An utterly awful week, with just about everything tanking. Even shares that should have done well like CEY:Centamin hardly climbed at all. My recent big purchase of IQE:IQE was hammered on Friday and is now 30% down, and my SIPP holding is 60% down. All this contributed to a drop of £5,261 in one of my worst weeks ever. The deficit has widened to £10,975 and overall value dropped horribly to £90,564.

By far the worst performer was IQE:IQE, which after saying the Huawei issues wouldn't have much affect, have now changed their mind and decided this is going to be a pretty bad year. The shorters rubbed their hands with glee and attacked. My new ISA holding fell 29% of my purchase price, my trading account holding fell 20% and my SIPP holding fell 16%. It knocked over £1,000 off my portfolio value on relatively small holdings.

VRS:Versarien also tanked, dropping 13% and going into the red. Why didn't I bank profits while I had a chance? This was always going to be a volatile share and a dream for traders.

TEK:Tekcapital had looked like making a recovery for my trading account, but lost nearly all last week's gains as it dropped 11% and is back to being a long way from sellable.

TND:Tandem Group was in profit, but not any longer as it fell 10% on Friday despite only 6 trades, of which there were three times as many buys as sells. Can anyone explain that? Suspecting foul play, I'm going to close my limit order as something may be afoot and I don't want to be tied to my current limit.

OPTI:Optibiotix is having another trader-induced slump and fell 5p which is 8% and accounted for £4,145 of this week's deficit. The fact that I lost over £1,100 from my other shares shows haw dreadful a week this was.

MMX:Minds + Machines was meant to be a quick win but is now turning into a very slow value trap, and fell another 6% to go 29% down. I'm still confident these will show good cash generation when the next results come out, but will the board give anything back to shareholders? Last time they bought another company instead, which isn't a bad thing, but hammered the share price as people expected this to start paying dividends by now.

TRX:Tissue Regenix was probably victim of the great Woodford sell-off and dropped 6% to go 78% down.

There was only one share that managed to hit a 5% climb this week, so Share of the Week goes to JLP:Jubilee Metals. Given the price of gold has soared this week, I expected it to be CEY:Centamin, but that only climbed 2%. Platinum isn't following gold like it used to, but if it decided to try and catch up then things would look even better for JLP.

Bugger

Oh well, heading towards biggest deficit this year and the performance has dropped well below the trend line. It's been declining steadily for the last 6 months and no sign of reversal.

Here's the ISA and share accounts performance

			Weekly Change
Cash	£23.23		+£0
Portfolio cost	£57,827.12		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price-commission)	£49,899.82	(-17.7%)	-£2,980.01
Potential profits	£3,275.29		-£2,531.06
Yr 4 Dividends	£88.07		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£1,606.13		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£156.07	(3.2%)	-£3.46
Total Dividends	£1,326.40		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£20,303.25		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£460.05	(9.5%)	-£2.29
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)

Over £2,500 wiped off paper profits and and additional £400 drop through deepening losses. My cunning plan to make a quick buck from IQE:IQE so I could buy back into SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics looked sound last week. This week it looks like a catastrophe. If I'm going to trade a share I really must learn to keep the cash in the account and not put it somewhere it's at risk. If SBTX drops now, I have absolutely no way to take advantage. Really, really bad mistake.

Dire

Also dire.

Here's the SIPP after week 186

			Weekly Change
Cash	£84.80		+£0
Portfolio cost	£41,248.68		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£39,116.84	(-5.2%)	-£2,143.77
Potential profits	£2,606.79		-£1,547.39
Yr 4 Dividends	£361.99		+£0
Yr 4 Interest	£0.07		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£732.65		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£144.89	(4.2%)	-£5.00
Total Dividends	£1,704.24		+£0
Total Interest	£0.10		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£11,277.57		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£293.74	(8.5%)	-£1.59
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Potential profits down by £1,500, but then losses deepening by an additional £600 as some of the week's worst performers were in this account. Average performance is getting worryingly below target 10% but there's nothing I can do to turn it around, or at least there's nothing I'm prepared to do right now.

This account is rarely in the red, so this is a very sorry sight.

Just like the other charts. Maybe I need to stop buying the same shares in both accounts as it doesn't give much variety when so many are shared.

The trading account looks like this after week 152

			Weekly Change
Cash	£35.04		+£0
Portfolio cost	£2,321.29		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£1,404.72	(-39.5%)	-£137.50
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 3 Dividends	£33.57		+£0
Year 3 Profit	£177.06		+£0
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£19.02	(9.8%)	-£0.40
Dividends	£34.72		+£0
Profit from sales	-£64.29		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.84	(-0.4%)	+£0.01
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)

One of the worst weeks ever, mainly due to big drops for IQE:IQE and TEK:Tekcapital. Rising optimism has just been crushed.

Ouch!

It's not even good that we're above the trend line because it's a devastating trend line.

I'm too miserable to write any more this week.

Week 201 Review - Another slide downwards

The drip drip slide of the last few weeks has continued, with a drop in value of £1,408 all caused by a 2p slip in OPTI:Optibiotix. Fortunately some other shares did OK so the losses were less than the £1,640 OPTI dropped. The deficit betwen cost and value is now £5,714 and total portfolio value is £95,825.

JLP:Jubilee Metals has been on a good run lately but dropped 5% this week as people took profits. They are 33% down and losing £1,514 but for the first time in a while my confidence is growing that they could come good. They just need to focus on getting profitable before they spend yet more cash.

TAP:Taptica had another desperate week and fell 5% but it could have been worse after an announcement they are being sued by Uber. It sounds like a dodgy case so hopefully it will go away, but these are down 64% now so it's a long haul back to profit.

Apart from the small drop in OPTI:Optibiotix, it wasn't a bad week for risers. CEY:Centamin climbed 8% for the second week in a row. My ISA holding is still down 15% and losing £236, but very happy to say my SIPP holding is up 6% and making £165 potential profit. This is a long term holding though.

VRS:Versarien climbed an impressive 11% and has gone back into profit. My holding is now 9% up and making £128 potential profit. Slightly worried that there are stories about our man in America being prosecuted, but they are from sources that have always been negative about VRS and may have short interests. If the price does drop on Monday it's just another buying opportunity.

Share of the Week is TEK:Tekcapital which climbed 15% and is now only 15% down. I only have a small holding in my trading account, but with the huge spread the offer price is almost what I paid for them, and it moves really fast when it does go up. Fingers crossed!

I keep saying not good - because it isn't.

Below the trend line is deeply upsetting

Here's the performance of the ISA and share accounts

			Weekly Change
Cash	£23.23		+£0
Portfolio cost	£57,827.12		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price-commission)	£52,879.83	(-8.6%)	-£1,162.55
Potential profits	£5,806.35		-£1,011.92
Yr 4 Dividends	£88.07		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£1,606.13		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£159.53	(3.3%)	-£3.63
Total Dividends	£1,326.40		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£20,303.25		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£462.34	(9.6%)	-£2.31
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)

Not much to say. Losses deepened slightly more than the lost OPTI:Optibiotix profits, and IQE:IQE went back into the red so removed that small profit too. TND:Tandem is my other profitable share but that's dropped to £4 so isn't going to set my performance on fire if I sell now. I have a limit sell order in but it's 30% higher than the current price. This share is so illiquid it could potentially move that far in a few days.

Just like the overall chart

Not quite below the trend line which is a crumb of comfort.

The SIPP looks like this after week 185

			Weekly Change
Cash	£84.80		+£0
Portfolio cost	£41,248.68		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£41,260.61	(0%)	-£281.09
Potential profits	£4,154.18		-£368.11
Yr 4 Dividends	£361.99		+£0
Yr 4 Interest	£0.07		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£732.65		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£149.89	(4.4%)	-£5.35
Total Dividends	£1,704.24		+£0
Total Interest	£0.10		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£11,277.57		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£295.33	(8.6%)	-£1.60
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Very little change, with the loss in OPTI:Optibiotix profits mitigated by the rises in CEY:Centamin and VRS:Versarien. My average performance has slipped to 8.6%. I need to get the average monthly profit up to £343 a month to hit 10% which is £48 a month more than I am on now, and I've been going for about 45 months. That makes £2,160 profit from one sale to get back on track. Quite a tall ask!

Still just the right side of the red line.

No doubt that performance is getting worse every week.

The trading account looks like this after week 151

			Weekly Change
Cash	£35.04		+£0
Portfolio cost	£2,321.29		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£1,542.22	(-33.6%)	+£46.68
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 3 Dividends	£33.57		+£0
Year 3 Profit	£177.06		+£0
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£19.42	(10%)	-£0.42
Dividends	£34.72		+£0
Profit from sales	-£64.29		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.85	(-0.4%)	+£0
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)

A great week thanks to TEK:Tekcapital and despite losses elsewhere. I think there's a glimmer of hope here.

It's been sneaking upwards for about 6 months now but will take about 5 years to break even at this rate.

The trend line will get a lot steeper before it starts to flatten, but we're on the right side of it.

I have a feeling I may get to sell something next week. There are a few shares simmering and hopefully contemplating a spike upwards.

How are my 2 attempted trades in the ISA going?

I sold SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics for 23.2p a few weeks ago and they are now 23p to buy. Ideally I want them to drop to below 20p before I get back in. I invested the proceeds in IQE:IQE which I bought at 75.0795p and they are now 75.2p to sell, so I'd lose £20 commission. I really need these to get to about 84p before selling and buying back SBTX.

I sold CWR:Ceres Power for 184.1p and they are now 176p to buy, so that's gone in the right direction. Unfortunately my investment in C4XD:C4X Discovery Holdings bought at 48p is still 47p to sell and hasn't really moved, although it is 50p to buy now. I need that to get to 54p bid price, and for CWR to drop to arond 160p.

It's probably a stupid thing to try and pull off - I should have just kept the cash rather than re-investing. It's worth a try though...

Week 200 Review - Dire news for Motif Bio

A pretty dreadful week for news, with MTFB:Motif Bio receiving the minutes from the FDA meeting to discuss the requirements for Iclaprim to be accepted. They want further clinical trials to look at potential liver toxicity, so a fundraise will be required and the share price dropped 50% instantly. That contributed to a weekly drop of £2,320, widening the gap between cost and value to £4,305 and reducing the portfolio value to £97.242.

As mentioned above, the biggest loser was MTFB:Motif Bio, dropping 16% of my original purchase price and now standing at a 74% loss with no short term prospect of recovery and a real chance of going bust. That eventuality would cost me £2,500 so I'm really hoping they can get funding to continue. It's so frustrating when they have a drug that passed Phase III tests and could save many lives.

IKA:Ilika had a bad week dropping 7% to go 32% down altogether after it seemed like a recovery was on the cards.

VRS:Versarien fell 5% and is now approaching top-up territory, as I said I would buy more if they went below 100p.

OPTI:Optibiotix also dropped 5% which contributed to most of this week's losses. The 3p drop cost me £2,460 in paper profits.

TEK:Tekcapital is finally looking like it may recover to profit, climbing 7% and showing some momentum. It's still 30% down but has been rising fast.

JLP:Jubilee Metals is really volatile at the moment, and climbed 9% this week to go only 28% down. That's a much better position for one of my biggest shares.

Gold has rallied and so has CEY:Centamin, climbing 8% of purchase price in my ISA, but 11% of purchase price in my SIPP which earns it Share of the Week. I wish I could have bought more in the 80p zone as this was so clearly going to bounce back.

Not good.

Back below the trend line which is steepening more in the wrong direction each week.

Here's the performance of the ISA and share portfolios

			Weekly Change
Cash	£23.23		-£3.75
Portfolio cost	£57,827.12		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£54,042.38	(-6.5%)	-£1,517.31
Potential profits	£6,818.27		-£1,512.90
Yr 4 Dividends	£88.07		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£1,606.13		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£163.16	(3.4%)	-£4.17
Total Dividends	£1,326.40		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£20,303.25		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£464.65	(9.6%)	-£2.42
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Monthly fees reduced cash and all the drop was down to reduced paper profits.

Very similar to the overall chart.

Just on the trend line which isn't good enough.

The SIPP looks like this after week 184

			Weekly Change
Cash	£84.80		-£336.70
Portfolio cost	£41,248.68		+£520.54
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£41,541.70	(0.7%)	-£814.46
Potential profits	£4,522.29		-£1,120.80
Yr 4 Dividends	£361.99		+£0
Yr 4 Interest	£0.07		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£732.65		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£155.24	(4.5%)	-£8.34
Total Dividends	£1,704.24		+£0
Total Interest	£0.10		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£11,277.57		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£296.93	(8.6%)	-£2.01
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Portfolio cost went up £511 as I added £200 to my dividend to top up on 230 shares in CAML:Central Asia Metals at 221.125p costing £520.54. I had to buy more at these stupidly low prices. It takes my holding in this mega dividend paying company to 3,902 shares costing £7,652 and currently making £802 (10%) paper profit. However if you add the £1,280 dividends over the last 4 years, it's up by 27%. It makes up 8.3% of my portfolio cost so there's room to buy more.

Profits were hammered thanks to OPTI:Optibiotix and CAML:Central Asia Metals both dropping. CEY:Centamin helped reduce the impact, wiping all it's losses and going into profit, so the portfolio only lost £814 in value. Average performance stats dropped a bit more than usual due to the £16 monthly fee.

Nearly back in the red

Oh dear...

The dreaded trading account looks like this after week 150

			Weekly Change
Cash	£35.04		+£0
Portfolio cost	£2,321.29		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£1,495.54	(-35.6%)	+£11.37
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 3 Dividends	£33.57		+£0
Year 3 Profit	£177.06		+£0
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£19.84	(10.3%)	-£0.44
Dividends	£34.72		+£0
Profit from sales	-£64.29		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.85	(-0.4%)	+£0.01
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

It's gone up! Horrible to see that after nearly 3 years I'm still losing money with this account. What a complete disaster. Every time one of the shares looks like moving to profit, something unexpected happens and it plummets. I just wish I could get that elusive £65 profit to move it into the black.

My ambition is to get the injection line down to £0. I seeded the account with £2,000 on an interest free loan. The idea was I'd make loads of money, but I would have made more putting it in a building society account. Trading is hard, especially when you're shit at it.

That's actually a more encouraging chart than the last one. Performance is better now than it's been for the last 6 months.

The blog is a week late as I went to Iceland last week. Now time to write this weeks...

Week 199 Review - Another flat week

A relatively flat week, with no change in OPTI:Optibiotix and more losses than gains elsewhere, particularly a drop in JLP:Jubilee Metals. Some profit taking helped increase the deficit between cost and value by £410. The deficit is now £1,895 and total portfolio value has dropped slightly to £99,372.

Biggest loser was TEK:Tekcapital in the trading account, so that account had a bad week. There was a 12% drop which wiped out most of the recent rise and left my holding down by 37%.

The other big loser was quite costly, with TLOU:Tlou Energy dropping 8% to go 16% down. I think people are starting to believe that the news release from the Botswana government just meant that the tender process is progressing and the rival bids are both being considered, rather than Tlou having anything in the bag.

Mostly small rises and falls elsewhere, but there were a couple of bigger risers. IQE:IQE climbed 7% of my purchase price in the ISA with the shares I bought as a temporary holding area for the SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics sale. That's good news but if I'd left it invested in SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics I'd be better off, as that has continued to climb.

Share of the Week is one of the most volatile at the moment. IKA:Ilika climbed 11% and is up and down like a yo-yo. My holding is still 25% down though.

Still underwater but so close to breaking the surface.

Just above the trend line but competing with that huge mountain from last summer so very unlikely to flatten out the trend.

Here's the ISA and share portfolios

			Weekly Change
Cash	£26.98		-£0.21
Portfolio cost	£57,827.12		+£256.31
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£55,559.69	(-3.9%)	-£430.69
Potential profits	£8,331.17		-£233.38
Yr 4 Dividends	£88.07		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£1,606.13		+£256.11
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£167.33	(3.5%)	+£22.44
Total Dividends	£1,326.40		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£20,303.25		+£256.11
Average monthly cash profit	£467.07	(9.7%)	+£3.25
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Quite revealing that the sale of CWR:Ceres Power which generated £256 was only enough to keep the average monthly performance at 9.7%. Small profits are not doing much to help the performance any more. The problem is I'm running out of profitable shares to sell. I realised a 23.4% profit from CWR:Ceres Power after only holding a short time. I do want to get back in but the shares have a habit of drifting badly on no news.

I re-invested the proceeds in C4XD:C4X Discovery Holdings which quite a few of my fellow OPTI:Optibiotix shareholders are keen on. I decided that they were way oversold given the potential for big revenues, and so bought them while I wait for CWR:Ceres Power to drop back around 150p. I bought 2,762 shares at 48p costing £1,337.71. They are up 4p but with commission and spread I'm still down 2%.

The drop in paper profit was down to the sale, and the losses were mostly JLP:Jubilee Metals.

The gap widens slightly. Nice to see the cost line creeping up after a very flat year.

Pretty similar to the overall performance chart, with the mountain looming.

The SIPP looks like this after week 183

			Weekly Change
Cash	£421.50		+£0
Portfolio cost	£40,725.38		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£41,844.81	(2.7%)	+£60.39
Potential profits	£5,643.09		-£40.03
Yr 4 Dividends	£361.99		+£0
Yr 4 Interest	£0.07		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£732.65		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£163.58	(4.8%)	-£6.29
Total Dividends	£1,704.24		+£0
Total Interest	£0.10		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£11,277.57		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£298.94	(8.7%)	-£1.64
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Tiny drop in profits caused by small fall in CAML:Central Asia Metals but everything else as flat as you can get.

In a relatively happy place on this chart

In a much less happy place on this chart, both below the trend line and with the mountain approaching. There's no doubt that we have almost a year of declining performance now, in what has always been my best account.

The trading account looks like this after week 149

			Weekly Change
Cash	£35.04		+£0
Portfolio cost	£2,321.29		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£1,484.17	(-36.1%)	-£39.48
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 3 Dividends	£33.57		+£0
Year 3 Profit	£177.06		+£0
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£20.28	(10.5%)	-£0.46
Dividends	£34.72		+£0
Profit from sales	-£64.29		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.86	(-0.4%)	+£0.01
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Another bad week and most of the recent gains are gone.

Dropping down towards its lowest low

In 6 months time the trend might point upwards.

Really late with this week's update as I was driving down from Scotland all weekend. This week isn't going very well so far, although I did add £200 to my SIPP and combined it with my CAML:Central Asia Metals dividends to buy another 230 shares in the same company at 221.125p costing £520.54.

I had to take advantage of these low prices and would rather buy more CAML than hold the dividends as cash. When current performance is revealed they will soon climb to 300p and I've decided to keep accumulating long term as the dividend is so great. It's a perfect share for the SIPP, so if any of my other smaller holdings bear fruit I'll likely buy more of these with the proceeds. They make up 8.5% of my total portfolio cost so plenty of headroom before I start to worry about being overweight at 10%.