Week 207 Review - Flattest week ever

Nothing happened this week. The combined portfolios dropped by £30 increasing the deficit to £13,011 but I got a £50 tax rebate in my SIPP so I'm up by £20. Total portfolio value is £88,623.

There was only one really bad performer and that was TLOU:Tlou Energy which dropped 5% for the second week in a row to go 39% down. I'm still confident things are moving in the right direction here, but it's high risk so won't be buying any more.

The trading account had some good cheer when TRMR:Tremor climbed 6% this week. It's still 53% down so there's a long way to go before I'm prepared to sell.

Share of the Week was IQE:IQE, which climbed 12% of purchase price in the SIPP where it is 49% down, 14% in the trading account where it is 38% down and a whopping 20% in the ISA where it is only 11% down. The ISA was meant to be a short-term buy, so if it can just climb back to 75p I can flog them and put them where I want them to be in SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics and CWR:Ceres Power.

At least it didn't get worse.

Wrong side of the steepening trend line, but in 3 weeks the mountain disappears.

The ISA and share accounts look like this

			Weekly Change
Cash	£27.36		+£0
Portfolio cost	£57,887.63		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price-commission)	£48,620.39	(-16%)	+£8.68
Potential profits	£2,233.44		-£208.15
Yr 4 Dividends	£103.97		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£1,659.19		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£146.31	(3.0%)	-£2.92
Total Dividends	£1,342.30		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£20,356.31		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£450.31	(9.3%)	-£2.18
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)

OPTI:Optibiotix dropped 0.4p which took £208 off the profits, but reduced losses mainly in IQE:IQE meant the account stayed just about in the black this week. Next week is the last week of Year 4, so it's looking like a really poor one for returns, with an average of just 3% per month. I doubt there will be an opportunity to sell anything next week, unless IQE:IQE goes bonkers.

Very similar to the overall chart, and the mountain will also leave here in 3 weeks to help flatten the trend line.

The SIPP looks like this after week 191

			Weekly Change
Cash	£131.10		+£50.01
Portfolio cost	£41,232.99		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£38,412.67	(-6.8%)	-£128.71
Potential profits	£1,562.49		-£270.26
Yr 4 Dividends	£361.99		+£0
Yr 4 Interest	£0.09		+£0.01
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£743.60		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£123.58	(3.6%)	-£3.64
Total Dividends	£1,704.24		+£0
Total Interest	£0.12		+£0.01
Total Profit from sales	£11,288.52		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£285.94	(8.3%)	-£1.50
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Much worse than the ISA, with the reduced losses not being enough to cancel the OPTI:Optibiotix drop, and CAML:Central Asia Metals dropped as well. I need to sell something! £50 arrived as a tax rebate and I got 1p interest on the account.

I've had confirmation that my transfer request is being processed so the £2,200 may come through next week. I keep saying I should keep it as cash, but SBTX:SkinBiotherapeutics is now below my purchase price so I at least want to get back to the number of shares before I last sold. OPTI:Optibiotix is madly cheap, and CAML:Central Asia Metals is also deserving of a top-up, so the cash won't be lying around for long. I think £550 of SBTX to get me past 10,000 shares. £850 would make CAML 10% of my portfolio cost, and that would leave £800 for an OPTI top-up. Unfortunately CWR:Ceres Power have spiked up recently and are likely to drift down, so the timing isn't right to buy back there.

If any of them head upwards before the money arrives I'll have to re-think.

The trading account looks like this

			Weekly Change
Cash	£35.04		+£0
Portfolio cost	£2,321.29		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£1,397.30	(-39.8%)	+£89.48
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 4 Dividends	£0		+£0
Year 4 Profit	£0		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£0	(0%)	+£0
Dividends	£34.72		+£0
Profit from sales	-£64.29		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.82	(-0.4%)	+£0
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)

A great week for IQE:IQE and TRMR:Tremor, offset slightly by a bad week for CAML:Central Asia Metals. There was hopeful news from LION:Lionsgold as I received a message from my broker that they have changed to TALY:Tally Ltd. I'm suspecting they would only do that if they were planning to re-list fairly soon, so fingers crossed!

Year 3 is over and year 4 begins so all the counters re-set.

I'll be able to tweak the vertical axis next week so £0 to £1,000 is hidden.

Still a mountain to remove, but a few weeks later than with the other accounts.

Here's my virtual portfolio

Looking much better. I've climbed 686 places to 838th and am impressively in profit.

I don't think I'll sell anything as I think they all have further to go, and I'm not aware of any bargains to be had as I've not had time to do any research, so will leave it alone for now.

31st July will be an important date, as CEY:Centamin are releasing their outlook for 2020 and 2021. This is likely to cause a major re-rate, but I don't know in which direction. The SIPP is currently £484 (16%) up, whereas the ISA is £119 (8%) down. If the price goes up enough for the ISA to be back in profit, the SIPP will be £828 (27%) in profit and worth £3,842. The problem is, gold appears to be on a bull run, so although I could get my performance back up to 10%, do I really want to lose most of my gold holding now? I think not! I really need to stay focused on keeping profitable shares for the long term, particularly in the SIPP which I want to be the more stable account.

Week 206 Review - Can it get any worse?

Another dreadful and depressing week. OPTI:Optibiotix is having a major slump and will soon be back at a loss. The combined portfolio dropped by £4,080 and is now £12,981 in the red and only worth £88,604. I'm feeling a bit miserable.

Worst performer was my recent purchase SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics which plunged 10% and has now gone to a 9% loss. Oh great!

Next biggest drop was IQE:IQE which I have in all three accounts and which dropped 9% in my ISA and is already 31% down when this was meant to be a short-term holding place for cash until SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics went below 20p. Well it has, but I don't have the cash to take advantage - brilliant move!

OPTI:Optibiotix crashed 7% which cost most of my losses this week. I really don't know what's going on, as there has been relentless good news and yet hardly anyone is buying the share, leaving it open to traders to fill their boots. It's been going on for 4 years now and I'm getting a bit fed up. So fed up I bought some more!

IKA:Ilika dropped 6% and any hopes of getting rid in the near future have been dashed.

TLOU:Tlou Energy had been creeping up, but tanked 5% this week for no reason.

Share of the Week is easy yet again because only one company climbed more than 5% and that was  MMX:Minds + Machines. They issued a very positive trading statement to say they have paid off all their debts, are generating cash, and have started a share buy-back while the price is so low.I think there's a good chance these will start paying dividends in the future, but it hasn't been the quick win I was hoping for as they are 20% down.

I've decided to stop commenting on the charts as single words like "dire" are pretty obvious just by looking at it. I think dire would have been the word for today. There's also the small matter of the cash injection line leaping up by £9,000 after I discovered an error with my ISA calculations that under-recorded the initial injection by £9,000. It was all a bit confusing in the early days and as the Brewin Dolphin account no longer exists I had to do a load of calculations and got them wrong, as I was working against portfolio value instead of cost, but it's all fixed now.

The ISA and share accounts look like this

			Weekly Change
Cash	£27.36		+£0.22
Portfolio cost	£57,887.63		-£34.30
Portfolio sell value (bid price-commission)	£48,611.71	(-16%)	-£2,876.24
Potential profits	£2,441.59		-£2,360.39
Yr 4 Dividends	£103.97		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£1,659.19		-£33.52
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£149.23	(3.1%)	-£6.01
Total Dividends	£1,342.30		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£20,356.31		-£33.52
Average monthly cash profit	£452.49	(9.4%)	-£2.92
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)

I sold my holding of 550 shares in TND:Tandem Group, which I had intended to hold for much longer, but the anticipated rise following the recent trading update just never came. It's an incredibly illiquid share with very few in circulation so tends to have quite extreme movements, but I've wanted out for a long time as the dividends are pathetic compared to the massive director remuneration. It's a classic example of a company that takes advantage of the shareholders to line the pockets of the directors.

I had £81.47 dividends over the 4 years I've been a holder (compared to over £1,000 dividends from CAML:Central Asia Metals over the same period), so I was prepared to take a £33.52 (3.1%) loss to liberate cash so I could buy more OPTI:Optibiotx. I purchased 1,441 shares at 71.99p costing £1,049.33.

This takes my OPTI:Optibiotix holding to 84,108 shares bought at a weighted average of 67p and costing £56,665.14 including commission. They are making just £3,352 potential profit when less than a year ago they were up by around £40,000. It's been really difficult watching that vanish, but I'm not selling a single one because I believe the story, and I believe there is immense long term value. I'll keep taking advantage of these blips to buy more, and if my next £2,200 pension transfer comes through in time, I'll probably be putting it here.

Each 1p change in share price is worth £841 now, so there will be some extreme swings in the portfolio over the next 12 months.

Meanwhile I lost half my paper profits and the rest of the portfolio sank by another £500 so it was a bad week.

The injection line is now corrected and shows I haven't put anything in this year.

The SIPP looks like this after week 190

			Weekly Change
Cash	£81.09		+£0
Portfolio cost	£41,232.99		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£38,541.38	(-6.5%)	-£1,224.71
Potential profits	£1,832.75		-£1,228.83
Yr 4 Dividends	£361.99		+£0
Yr 4 Interest	£0.08		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£743.60		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£127.22	(3.7%)	-£3.85
Total Dividends	£1,704.24		+£0
Total Interest	£0.11		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£11,288.52		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£287.44	(8.4%)	-£1.53
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Nothing much to say. Apart from losing paper profit, the rest of the portfolio was flat.

I put a transfer application in for £2,200 today. It usually comes through in about 2 weeks so we'll get another rise in the injection line soon.

The trading account looks like this after week 156

			Weekly Change
Cash	£35.04		+£0
Portfolio cost	£2,321.29		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£1,307.82	(-43.7%)	-£13.73
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 3 Dividends	£33.57		+£0
Year 3 Profit	£177.06		+£0
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£17.55	(9.1%)	-£0.35
Dividends	£34.72		+£0
Profit from sales	-£64.29		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.82	(-0.4%)	+£0.01
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)

A small drop as IQE:IQE obliterates a reasonable performance in the other shares.

This has been going for 3 years now, and this is the first year my profits have been anywhere near the target 10%. The problem is the 9.1% was from just one sale of KOD:Kodal Minerals right at the start of the year. That made 34.5% and got my optimism up for the rest of the year, but I've not made a single trade since then. Utterly hopeless. I need one share to get to the point I can sell it so I can start treating this as a proper trading account as I reckon I have a much better idea what to do now, but no opportunity to try it.

Not much further and we'll have a 50% loss.

Here's the This is Money fantasy stock picking performance

Having 4 out of 7 in profit is better than my usual performance, but IQE:IQE has really dragged me down and I'm 1,524th which is a drop of around 400 places.

Nothing setting the portfolio on fire, but it's quite good. I've realised I don't have enough time to spot when a bargain is available so I'll just have to hope this lot perform.

I'm not aware of anything significant happening next week. Just waiting for summer to end and hoping we can be dragged out of the doldrums, as "Sell in May and go away" is sounding like the best plan this year.

Week 205 Review - Small rises blatted by Optibiotix slump

Yet again the volatility of OPTI:Optibiotix causes a big drop in portfolio value as 5p is knocked off the share price. That cost me £4,145 but happy to say the portfolio value only dropped by £3,968 so everything else as up a few hundred quid. The deficit is now £8,900 and portfolio value down to £92,718. Looks like the magic £100K wasn't as close as I thought.

Worst performer was TEK:Tekcapital which lost any remote respect I had for it when carrying out a placing at 8p a share when the share price was 12p. That's an absolute disgrace and would have netted their city mates an instant 30% profit when they sold them immediately. Needless to say the share price dropped 23% in a day, almost to the placing price and they are now 42% down.

OPTI:Optibiotix was the main reason for this week's losses as traders went into price hammering mode and it dropped 8%. It's still 14% up, and given I have another £2,000 coming from my pension in 2 weeks time, I'm contemplating a top-up even though I know it's naughty.

Only one company climbed by 5% or more to win Share of the Week, and with the gold price still riding high it's not surprising that was CEY:Centamin. The 5% climb could also be due to imminent interim results which I desperately hope will show that production challenges are behind them and will drive the price back to where it was before the trading statement that hammered it.

Yeah - that's bad.

Can't believe we're on the trend line and it's pointing very much downwards.

The ISA and share portfolios look like this

			Weekly Change
Cash	£27.14		+£0
Portfolio cost	£57,921.93		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price-commission)	£53,897.02	(-11.1%)	-£2,409.07
Potential profits	£4,801.98		-£2,517.27
Yr 4 Dividends	£103.97		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£1,692.71		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£155.24	(3.2%)	-£3.24
Total Dividends	£1,342.30		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£20,389.83		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£455.41	(9.4%)	-£2.23
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)

Potential profits absolutely hammered thanks to OPTI:Optibiotix and losses reduced by £100 means it was pretty flat elsewhere.

Bad.

Not as bad as the overall chart as we're just above the trend line but it's not getting any shallower.

The SIPP looks like this after week 189

			Weekly Change
Cash	£81.09		+£0
Portfolio cost	£41,232.99		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£39,766.09	(-3.6%)	-£1,446.10
Potential profits	£3,061.58		-£1,533.30
Yr 4 Dividends	£361.99		+£0
Yr 4 Interest	£0.08		+£0
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£743.60		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£131.07	(3.8%)	-£4.10
Total Dividends	£1,704.24		+£0
Total Interest	£0.11		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£11,288.52		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£288.97	(8.4%)	-£1.53
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Slightly more complex story than the ISA, with OPTI:Optibiotix doing lots of damage, but also CAML:Central Asia Metals dropping yet again, but CEY:Centamin negating those losses and going £357 (12%) into profit. Performance is well down now, so I will need to sell something for a substantial profit soon , but not many options.

Back into the red.

Well below the trend line.

The trading account looks like this after week 155.

			Weekly Change
Cash	£35.04		+£0
Portfolio cost	£2,321.29		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£1,321.55	(-43.1%)	-£113.42
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 3 Dividends	£33.57		+£0
Year 3 Profit	£177.06		+£0
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£17.90	(9.3%)	-£0.35
Dividends	£34.72		+£0
Profit from sales	-£64.29		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.83	(-0.4%)	+£0
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)

Utterly disastrous week thanks to TEK:Tekcapital and the despicable placing. This account is cursed.

Plunging towards the lowest value since priming the account with £2,000 almost a year ago. In that time I've done one trade. Hard to describe this as a trading account - I've done more trading in my SIPP!

Hopeless

Lat week I was looking forward to the CAML:Central Asian Metals trading statement. It was as expected, with everything on track, but the share price went down. This week I'm expecting CEY:Centamin to do theirs. I really hope it doesn't have the same effect. Meanwhile nothing seems to be going right and there's a malaise over the whole portfolio.

I've entered the "This is Money" share picking competition. I'm 1,116th in my first week which isn't very good, but I'll post an update on progress each week.

Quite happy that the worst performer is only down by 1.49%, but best isn't exactly flying away.

I've kept with a few favourites and also gone for a few that have been on my watch list for a while. I don't want to have too many companies, so will aim to stick with between 7 and 10.

Let's hope for one good thing to happen next week.

Week 204 Review - Goodby to a quarter of last week's gains

This was a week when nothing much happened, but a 2p drop in OPTI:Optibiotix meant it was always going to be a red week. That contributed £1,650 of the £2,393 drop in value, so that's an additional £700 of losses throughout the portfolio. Practically nothing went up this week, so I guess the loss shouldn't be a surprise. The deficit has widened to £4,932 and portfolio value dropped to £96,687.

Worst performer was JLP:Jubilee Metals which gave back all the gains that earned it Share of the Week last week. I'm still more optimistic about this one than I was 12 months ago.

KIBO:Kibo Energy is now my worst performing share and dropped a further 5% this week to go 90% down and with paper loss of £2,362. I'm beginning to doubt that any of its projects will happen, and forking out for power stations in UK that are never likely to fire up seems like folly.

CAML:Central Asia Metals is my best run company, and one of my favourite shares. It still managed to drop 5% this week and my holding is only 4% in the black. Last year it was making massive profits and about 35% up. However, if you factor in the £1,280 dividends I've had over the last 4 years, it's actually up by 18%. At these prices I had to buy more.

I love the story at VRS:Versarien, and it could be absolutely massive, but I've been increasingly concerned about them recently. The appointment of a guy to run the American operation who had to be sacked a few weeks later because he's on trial for multiple counts, a mass of MOUs but practically no orders for graphene, and a CEO who spends way too much time arguing with trolls on Twitter.

Their valuation is way higher than OPTI:Optibiotix, and OPTI has over 40 international contracts which are actually delivering revenue. It takes a long time to build a big business, and I think that realisation will hit shareholders soon. When it does there will be a re-rate like there was with OPTI. I made the mistake of buying just before the re-rate and sat on big losses for 3 years. I don't fancy that with VRS:Versdarien.

I sold my 1,505 shares for 101.166p and made a tiny £10.96 (0.7%) profit. This enabled my to buy another 705 shares in CAML:Central Asia Metals for 210.85p costing £1,498.44. My recent purchases have dragged up my initial price of 151p and 145p to a weighted average of 195.9p. My total holding is 4,607 shares costing £9,136.67 and a small paper profit of £387 (4%). They make up 9.4% of my portfolio cost and I want to get that to 10% as they are a great company.

Share f the Week is my only riser TLOU:Tlou Energy. This climbed 6% but is still 26% down. I still think this one is going to be a winner, but won't pile in any more as I've become risk averse to African mining and energy projects recently.

Last week was nice. This week less so.

Still above the trend line but no sign of it reversing.

The ISA and share portfolios look like this

			Weekly Change
Cash	£27.14		+£3.91
Portfolio cost	£57,921.93		+£94.81
Portfolio sell value (bid price-commission)	£53,897.02	(-6.9%)	-£1,206.43
Potential profits	£7,319.25		-£1,011.92
Yr 4 Dividends	£103.97		+£15.90
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£1,692.71		+£86.58
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£158.48	(3.3%)	+£5.73
Total Dividends	£1,342.30		+£15.90
Total Profit from sales	£20,389.83		+£86.58
Average monthly cash profit	£457.64	(9.5%)	-£0.15
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)

This is all rather complicated. First of all I had a £15 dividend from TND:Tandem Group, the share that just will not go into profit and let me sell them. The cost went up because I needed to buy back into SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics when the price went below my target 20p. Unfortunately the cash I should have used to increase my holding from when I sold is stuck in IQE:IQE which has crashed. Instead I had to get the proceeds from my CWR:Ceres Power shares which were resting in C4XD:C4X Discovery  Holdings.

I sold my 2,762 shares at 52p after buying at 48p making £86.58 (6.4%) profit. Unfortunately I only had enough to buy back 7,285 shares as opposed to the 9,260 I sold to put into IQE:IQE. Given the whole point of the exercise was to build my holding in SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics the exercise has clearly failed miserably. If I manage to sell TND:Tandem Group I will put these into SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics too, but only if the price stays below 20p.

The sale just meant my average monthly performance dropped by a bit less than usual, and general misery as the paper profits fell by £1,011 and losses deepened by and extra £200.

This account has spent far more time in the red than the black.

Very similar to the combined chart, except a bit worse.

The SIPP looks like this after week 188

			Weekly Change
Cash	£81.09		-£3.71
Portfolio cost	£41,232.99		-£15.69
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£41,212.19	(-0.1%)	-£1,189.55
Potential profits	£4,594.88		-£1,084.24
Yr 4 Dividends	£361.99		+£0
Yr 4 Interest	£0.08		+£0.01
Yr 4 Profit from sales	£743.60		+£10.95
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£135.17	(3.9%)	-£5.05
Total Dividends	£1,704.24		+£0
Total Interest	£0.11		+£0.01
Total Profit from sales	£11,288.52		+£10.95
Average monthly cash profit	£290.50	(8.5%)	-£1.67
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Similar story to the ISA with £1,084 drop in potential profits and losses deepening by a further £100. The puny £10.95 profit from selling VRS:Versarien didn't change the average performance and I actually retained a bit of cash so the portfolio cost dropped a bit. Cash decreased despite retaining some profits because I paid £15 monthly charge.

I've decided to move my SIPP shares into fewer, safer companies so as I get rid of TRX:Tissue Regenix, SAE:Simec Atlantis Energy, N4P:N4 Pharma, MMX:Minds+Machines, and possibly IQE:IQE I will re-invest in CAML:Central Asia Metals, CEY:Centamin and a few blue chips I don't currently own. If I sold them all now I could re-invest £2,500 but I'm not prepared to lose the £4,600 as that would cripple my average performance. I just need to wait for them to recover or go bust.

The green line has just snuck beneath the red so we're back underwater.

Back below the trend line

The trading account looks like this

			Weekly Change
Cash	£35.04		+£0
Portfolio cost	£2,321.29		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£1,434.97	(-38.2%)	-£13.08
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 3 Dividends	£33.57		+£0
Year 3 Profit	£177.06		+£0
Yr 3 Average monthly cash profit	£18.25	(9.4%)	-£0.38
Dividends	£34.72		+£0
Profit from sales	-£64.29		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.83	(-0.4%)	+£0.01
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)

Lots of small losses so we're down £13 and still no sign of being able to sell anything. TAP:Taptica have now changed their name to TRMR:Tremor but it hasn't helped the share price.

Just 4 more weeks and the week of the £2,000 injection will vanish off the chart. 12 whole months of nothing!

The trend line is so bad it's off the chart, so it would be difficult not to be above it.

That's it for another week. A couple of sales and I'm relieved to be out of VRS:Versarien but I'll watch them closely as I think they have a huge future, but there are too many amber flags for me to be there right now. So glad to be back in SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics, but annoyed it's a smaller holding than I had before. I'm almost tempted to take the hit of the loss on TND:Tandem so I can get in below 20p and bolster my holding before inevitable news of a multinational partnership deal. Meanwhile the paid trolls have appeared in droves on the OPTI:Optibiotix bulletin board which means someone either wants cheap shares or has a big short. I suspect the former.