Week 523 Review - A dreadful week rescued by Optibiotix.

It was a bad week across most of the portfolio, but a good week for OPTI:Optibiotix rescued it and the deficit between cost and value reduced by £1,633 to £139,005 despite me taking £580 profits. The deficit between injection and value narrowed to £63,111 and total portfolio value increased to £112,871.

The biggest faller was BEZ:Beazley which dropped 14% after H1 results, which seemed way over-done considering they were still very profitable. My holding is now 20% down after just a few weeks, but I've re-set my monthly investment to these, as I'm anticipating them slowly moving back up, and I can average my price down over the next few months. My next purchase will be around 20th August so they will be cheap.

SAE:Simec Atlantis Energy dropped 13% which was likely profit taking after a big rise last week.

TLOU:Tlou Energy dropped 13% but it moves by that amount regularly.

SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics dropped 11% after an underwhelming trading update saying revenue would be below expectations. They still look like becoming profitable by next year, and surely a Croda deal will be announced soon?

FXPO:Ferrexpo dropped 7% and are now 89% down, so if they drop next week I won't have to report it as they will pass the 90% down mark.

IES:Invinity Energy dropped 7% and I suspect will continue to slide until there's evidence of revenue coming in.

TRX:Tissue Regenix is another one that has a recent spike upwards and is now drifting back down, falling another 7% this week.

PSN:Persimmon gave solid H1 results but still slipped 5% and are now 25% down.

FOUR:4imprint crashed last week despite decent H1 results, but bounced back 6% this week. Fortunately my regular investment went through just before the rise, so my holding is only down by 24% which is significantly better than before I started buying a little each month. It is a really good way to buy shares. Unfortunately buying small amounts only really works with the monthly investment process, because the commission is just £1.50. I suppose if I built a decent cash buffer then I could put in multiple monthly purchases. It would mean I'd spend £6 on commission for every £1,000 instead of £5 but would give me the advantage of potentially buying cheaper shares or being able to switch strategy if I decide the company I picked was a mistake.

Share of the Week is OPTI:Optibiotix which went up 15% after announcing a new Slimbiome contract in USA. This is quite a big one and could see the company into profitability even without the Sweetbiotix revenue, if it ever appears. It's a while since we got a decent rise in OPTI though, and it nullified all the big drops everywhere else.

Here's the ISA and shares portfolio after week 3 of year 11.

			Weekly Change
Cash	£81.08		-£4.22
Portfolio cost	£115,878.07		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price-commission)	£38,382.90	(-66.9%)	+£1,016.53
Potential profits	£64.25		-£39.60
Yr 11 Dividends	£0		+£0
Yr 11 Interest	£0		+£0
Yr 11 Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Yr 11 proj avg monthly profit	-£11.51	(-0.2%)	-£11.51
Total Dividends	£12,488.07		+£0
Total Interest	£8.57		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£17,560.27		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£244.28	(3.4%)	-£0.50
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Not much happened. Monthly fees dropped cash by £4 and BOKU:Boku dropped 4% and knocked £39 off potential profits. OPTI:Optibiotix helped portfolio value go up by £1,016.

I've dropped the compound performance stat from the table above when I realised that it's just showing long term average monthly cash profit multiplied by the number of years I've been doing it, which is a waste of time.

Still grim

Still below the trend line

The SIPP looks like this after week 507 overall and week 39 of year 10.

			Weekly Change
Cash	£150.12		-£457.48
Portfolio cost	£135,768.44		+£1,043.72
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£74,257.79	(-45.3%)	+£616.84
Potential profits	£7,037.20		-£733.09
Yr 10 Dividends	£1,515.52		+£9.35
Yr 10 Interest	£3.96		+£0
Yr 10 Profit from sales	£4,261.41		+£580.29
Yr 10 proj avg monthly profit	£621.26	(8.4%)	+£50.51
Total Dividends	£17,622.87		+£9.35
Total Interest	£16.86		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£21,269.35		+£580.29
Average monthly cash profit	£319.21	(4.3%)	+£4.39
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)

Lots happened here.

First there was my regular monthly investment into FOUR:4imprint where I bought 7 shares at 3199.1185p costing £226.56. They ended the week at 3365p so it was a rare well-timed purchase.

I had some dividend money and the left overs from the monthly savings, so I also bought 92 shares in CAML:Central Asia Metals at 157.4727p costing £149.87. That's less than I would normally spend, but the £5 commission at AJ Bell makes smaller purchases a little more bearable than on HL where I pay £11.95.

I decided to sell BHP:BHP Group because the issue with the litigation from the burst dam years ago is still hanging around. It stopped my buying for years, and the fact it still hasn't gone away is too much of a worry, so I sold my 63 shares for 2004.452p and made £52.06 (4.3%) profit, or 5% if you include the £9 dividend. I went back to my magic formula and selected CKM:Clarkson, which is ranked number 11 and also ranks in the top 30 every time if I remove one of each of my four measures and re-rank. I bought 33 shares at 3574.104p costing £1,190.35. They dropped 3% since I bought them and are 4% down when you include spread and commission.

Next I decided to top-slice a little profit from PAF:Pan African Resources, as it was up by 102% and I could do so and still have over 10,000 shares. I sold 1,800 shares at 60.7476p making £528.22 (93.4%) profit. It was a shame I sold on a mini-dip, as it's now back at 102% up. I selected another magic formula share and bought 320 shares in FSV:Fidelity Special Values at 380.6p costing £1,235.96. They went up by 0% but are still 2% down on spread and commission.

The end result was the portfolio cost going up by £1,043, and value only going up £616 due to removing £580 profit. Potential profits dropped by £733 altogether so I lost another £253 on top of what I banked.

Year 10 performance is looking great at 8.4%, but long term performance only increased by 0.1% to 4.3% which is half of my original target 10%.

I also got a £9 dividend from GAW:Games Workshop.

Remarkable how I'm maintaining such an even gap beneath the injection line.

Just above the trend line but not enough to make any difference

This one's quite pleasing and suggests my magic formula approach may be bearing fruit. Unfortunately there's all the original stuff spoiling it, and they steadfastly refuse to increase enough for me to sell and switch to magic formula.

I am now at the stage where there are only 2 more magic formula shares I'm looking at. One is JHD:James Halstead and the other is KNOS:Kainos Group. The problem is they are both in steady share price decline, and I've learned my lesson from FDM:FDM Group that now is not a good time to buy them. The only way I can rescue myself with FDM is to start adding in my monthly investment once the price starts heading upwards. I did that successfully with IGG:IG Group and it seems to be happening with FOUR:4imprint too. I'm not catching a falling knife, but averaging down as their price heads up. With that in mind, all new purchases will be increasing my holdings in existing magic formula shares until I refresh the rankings next year.

Thinking more about what I mentioned in the FOUR:4imprint review at the top of the blog, I do quite like the idea of leaving a big lump of cash and setting up monthly investments with it. It means I earn interest on the cash, keep an emergency pot, and spread the risk when I'm buying shares. Next time I sell something I'm going to keep the cash and set up a new monthly investment for £250 and see how that works.