Week 240 review - Another massive drop

This week wasn't as bad as 2 weeks ago, but it was very nearly as bad. Add to that buying a load of shares on Monday and Tuesday thinking they were bargains, only to find they were about to get a lot cheaper. The combined portfolios dropped by an eye-watering £16,073 and the deficit between cost and value increased to £59,131. What's really depressing is the total value of the portfolio is only £52,305 which is less than half what I paid for it.

Worst performer was TRMR:Tremor which fell 19%, but is only in my trading account so didn't cost me much.

More serious was the 12p drop in OPTI:Optibiotix which is an 18% dip and cost me £13,200 of the £16,000 lost this week. The share price is down 48% just a few weeks after it came within a whisker of breaking even. My purchase on Tuesday was at 42.78p. If I'd waited 3 days I could have got them for 35p. It's really quite shocking this has dropped so far given the profits that are going to be made in 2020. It looks like there's a lot of private investors that had spread bets open and had to close their positions after margin calls, causing a domino effect. I still think traders are in control and able to manipulate the share price. Somebody's doing something very clever with it, but there's no transparency whatsoever. Even my purchase on Tuesday was shown as a sell, so the system is set up with smoke and mirrors. That's why they will never report sales and purchases properly, as this sort of price manipulation would be much harder to get away with.

IQE:IQE and JLP:Jubilee Metals both dropped 17% and are both in my top 5 major holdings. I can't believe that even precious metal prices and mining shares are dropping. That's meant to be a safe haven!

MMX:Minds + Machines was within 1% of getting in the black 3 weeks ago, but a 10% fall this week means it's 19% down now. Looks like I'll be waiting to get that maiden dividend.

CAML:Central Asia Metals is my 2nd largest holding, and my purchase on Monday at 158.6p could have been made at 145.6p if I had waited. I could howl with frustration! It dropped 7% this week, which compared to the other shares isn't too bad. If the price stays like this for another 10 days I'll be putting half my pension transfer in here to get back to my target 5,000 shares. The other half will start off my magic formula experiment.

IKA:Ilika reversed last week's Share of the Week performance and dropped 6%, which is about half last week's gains, so not too big a drop.

There is no Share of the Week, as nothing increased in value.

Good grief!

Nearly £60,000 in the red could be regarded as a bit of a disaster.

Here's the ISA and share portfolios

			Weekly Change
Cash	£55.48		+£45.79
Portfolio cost	£59,787.80		+£2,004.22
Portfolio sell value (bid price-commission)	£26,484.92	(-55.7%)	-£8,708.70
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Dividends	£0.63		+£0
Yr 5 Profit from sales	£-167.28		+£0
Yr 5 Average monthly cash profit	-£26.12	(-0.5%)	+£0.84
Total Dividends	£1,342.93		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£20,224.13		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£385.47	(7.7%)	-£1.62
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)
Performance/Injection	11.8%		-0.7%
Compound performance	54%		-3%

I added £40 cash to take part in an IKA:Ilika open offer, as I'm always in favour of buying shares with no commission if the chance arises. Portfolio cost went up due to the OPTI:Optibiotix purchase and portfolio value plummeted by £8,708. The increase in portfolio cost and the extra injection of cash means my performance based on injection value dropped by 0.7% but is still above 10%. Performance against portfolio cost dropped to 7.7%. There was also a reduction in the compound performance of 3% due to the increased injection.

Not much I can say other than "bugger!"

Huge deficit, and I suspect it will be around for a while yet.

Here's the SIPP after week 224

	Weekly Change
Cash	£48.51		+£0.79
Portfolio cost	£49,176.17		+£2,180.86
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£24,755.65	(-49.7%)	-£7,156.89
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Dividends	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Interest	£0.03		+£0
Yr 5 Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Average monthly cash profit	-£15.06	(-0.4%)	-£1.00
Total Dividends	£1,899.24		+£0
Total Interest	£0.20		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£12,549.10		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£269.86	(6.6%)	-£1.21
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Performance/Injection	10.2%		-0.7%
Compound performance	44%		-3%

Cash is up a fraction due to some of the £2000 injection not being spent. I can't work out why the portfolio cost is calculated as having risen by £2,180 when the shares were just under £2,000, but the current figure is right so maybe the previous one was slightly under what it should have been.

Another massive drop, and the injection has also damaged my performance, with the performance over injection about to drop below 10% when I add £2,000 in 10 days time.

The account that had never dropped below injection amount has now done exactly that, and by some.

A familiar vision of misery.

The trading account, which was starting to look promising, is now looking less promising after week 190.

			Weekly Change
Cash	£48.24		+£0
Portfolio cost	£2,321.29		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£912.87	(-60.7%)	-£207.93
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 4 Dividends	£13.20		+£0
Year 4 Profit	£0		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£1.68	(0.9%)	-£0.05
Dividends	£47.92		+£0
Profit from sales	-£64.29		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.37	(-0.2%)	+£0.01
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)
Performance/Injection	-0.2%		+0%
Compound performance	-1%		+0%

A huge 10% drop, with everything falling.

Hmm - I think I need to adjust the chart axis for next week so we can see under £1,000

It was looking hopeful 3 weeks ago. Less hopeful now.

I've decided to give up reporting on the virtual magic formula portfolio. I'll just keep an eye on it and report on the real magic formula shares as part of the SIPP roundup. At the moment CAML:Central Asia Metals is a magic formula top 30 share, so I'll be adding more as I'd rather get that to 5,000 just before the dividend and while I can guarantee the dividend will be huge for the tiny price I'll be paying.

The other share I'll buy is still FXPO:Ferrexpo as it's way above everything else in my ranking. If the mine gets confiscated then I'll lose my £1,000, but I think there's more likely a 200% climb in the offing, and at this price a big dividend which will help my average performance figures get back on track. I'll gradually move all my SIPP shares to dividend paying companies once I sell the existing holdings. Fortunately I'm anticipating OPTI:Optibiotix becoming a dividend paying share in the not too distant future, as I'm hanging onto them.

The American stock market waited for the UK stock market to close before putting on a huge 9.4% rally. The UK market has been hit much harder by this crash, which always seems to happen. I'm really hoping we get a bit of recovery next week, as I hate to see the portfolio value less than half what I paid for it. On the other hand, I don't want it to climb too much before I get my pension transfer...

Bargain shopping

I feel much better about the stock market crash after a spot of bargain hunting over the last two days.

I mentioned in my last blog that I had decided to use some of my spare cash post-mortgage to take out an interest free loan for £4,000 payable in September 2021.

The cash came through today, but I had enough in my account to spend half of it yesterday and the other half today.

My purchase yesterday was in my SIPP, where uploading £2,000 means I get £500 from the tax man in May. I bought 1,253 shares in CAML:Central Asia Metals at 158.6p costing £1,999.21 with commission. The bid price is already up to 162.6p so these are starting to pay their way.

This takes my overall SIPP holding to 4,253 shares and reduces my weighted average cost from 196.6p to 189.7p. They cost £8,090 altogether and are now losing £1,187 (15%), but there's a dividend due soon, and last year it was 8p. Production has been good so I'm hoping it will be maintained, which would give me £340 and is due around the same time as my tax rebate.

An 8p dividend is 4.2%, but this is just the 6-month dividend. Total is likely to be 14.5p which is £616 or 7.6%.

When the share price goes back up to where it's meant to be at 340p, I'll be sitting on £6,357 paper profit, and even a 6% dividend at 340p would be 20.4p, which for me would be a dividend of £867 (10.7%).

I really shouldn't dismiss the beauty of buying a good dividend paying company cheap, as the annual return on the initial investment just gets better and better. Unfortunately I have precious few stocks like this, but aim to increase them as I ditch the more risky shares.

My second purchase was this morning, when I loaded the other £2,000 into my ISA and bought 4,657 shares in OPTI:Optibiotix. I had to at these prices, even though I'm already so heavily exposed. They cost 42.78p each and were registered on the trading stats as a sell, which is ridiculous. Cost including commission was £2,004.21.

So, my holding has increased to 109,989 shares costing a weighted average of 64.66p. This purchase reduced the average price in my ISA from 65.38p to 63.56p. I really, really hope this is the last opportunity I get to buy them cheap!

They only climbed 1p on the bid price today, so I'm still down on the ones I bought, although it's more expensive to buy them now than it was this morning. Now it's just a case of battening down the hatches and waiting for the current madness to blow over.

The portfolio isn't doing great after the first 2 days of this week. It's down £4,109 right now, but that's better than the £6,000 down at the end of play yesterday. It's worrying that the FTSE100 lost all its early gains to finish slightly in the red, particularly when the US markets are on the rise.

I don't usually time these purchases very well, but both these are at multi-year lows, so given both companies are doing so well, it's hard to think it won't be a good long term buy.

Week 239 Review - And still the slide continues

Generally this wasn't such a bad week, with some small recoveries in shares affected by last weeks crash. In fact on Wednesday evening I was £1,500 up. However, OPTI:Optibiotix lost 4p at the end of the week which cost me £4,200 and my second biggest holding CAML:Central Asia Metals also had a bad week, so I ended up down by £4,465. That widens the deficit between cost and value to £43,058 and reduces the portfolio value to £64,147.

Worst performer was CAML:Central Asia Metals, which along with other industrial metals producers got hammered for a second week and lost 8%. They now have a P/E ratio of 8.2, which is crazy for such a reliable company. It means their dividend yield is now 8.45%, and will be at least that forever if you buy at these levels.

OPTI:Optibiotix dropped 4p, which is 6% and was really annoying. You can buy these for 49p now - that's crazy - I want some more!

Those were the only big fallers this week, so there was definitely a bit of a pause from last week's sell-off.

TRMR:Tremor climbed 5% and I'm quite hopeful, once the market sorts itself out. They are in the trading account so not meant to be a long term hold, but they do pay a reasonable dividend.

JLP:Jubilee Metals bounced back 7% this week, but are still 19% down after going so close to being in the black a few weeks ago. My levels of frustration are quite high.

Share of the Week is IKA:Ilika, which would have been almost in profit if they hadn't announced a placement on Friday and generated a dip. They still climbed 11% and are only 12% down. I think things are starting to happen here, so when the open offer arrives I will be taking my share. If they can crack the big car battery development, then this could turn out to be a better investment than I first imagined. There's still a sliver of doubt that they are more interested in the science than the commercials, but with the right business partner they could pull it off.

Looks like my worst ever position. Never mind 'eh.

Yep - biggest ever deficit.

The ISA and share portfolios look like this

			Weekly Change
Cash	£9.69		-£3.75
Portfolio cost	£57,783.58		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price-commission)	£33,189.40	(-42.6%)	-£2,018.61
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Dividends	£0.63		+£0
Yr 5 Profit from sales	£-167.28		+£0
Yr 5 Average monthly cash profit	-£26.96	(-0.6%)	+£0.36
Total Dividends	£1,342.93		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£20,224.13		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£387.09	(8.0%)	-£1.69
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)
Performance/Injection	12.5%		+0%
Compound performance	57%		+0%

The OPTI:Optibiotix drop was mitigated a little by rises elsewhere, particularly JLP:Jubilee Metals. Cash dropped a little thanks to the monthly fees. Not much else to say.

Abject misery.

Equals the worst ever deficit.

The SIPP looks like this after week 223

			Weekly Change
Cash	£47.72		-£11.69
Portfolio cost	£46,995.31		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£29,731.68	(-36.7%)	-£2,454.19
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Dividends	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Interest	£0.03		+£0
Yr 5 Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Average monthly cash profit	-£16.06	(-0.4%)	-£2.47
Total Dividends	£1,899.24		+£0
Total Interest	£0.20		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£12,549.10		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£271.07	(6.9%)	-£1.45
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Performance/Injection	10.9%		-0.1%
Compound performance	47%		+0%

This account has been hit worse due to the CAML:Central Asia Metals drop in addition to OPTI:Optibiotix. Monthly charges were also paid, so the year 5 performance is looking pretty bad as I haven't sold anything or had any dividends yet, so we're just seeing the monthly fee.

Yes, the green line has gone just below the orange for the first time ever.

Worst ever deficit by over £2,000

The trading account looks like this after week 189

			Weekly Change
Cash	£48.24		+£0
Portfolio cost	£2,321.29		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£1,120.80	(-51.7%)	+£7.63
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 4 Dividends	£13.20		+£0
Year 4 Profit	£0		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£1.73	(0.9%)	-£0.06
Dividends	£47.92		+£0
Profit from sales	-£64.29		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.38	(-0.2%)	+£0
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)
Performance/Injection	-0.2%		+0%
Compound performance	-1%		+0%

Incredibly, this account went up! Rises in TEK:Tekcapital and TRMR:Tremor were enough to make up for the losses in CAML:Central Asia Metals and IQE:IQE. Still no sign of TALY:Tally re-listing.

I hope the recovery gets steeper than that!

Total rubbish.

Here's the fantasy magic formula account

			Change
Cash	£748.50		+£0
Portfolio cost	£29,846.39		+£0
Portfolio sell value	£26,675.83	(-8.9%)	-£4,751.83
Potential profits	£381.16		-£895.50
Dividends	£0		+£0
Profit from sales	£678.96		+£0

This is the change over the last 2 weeks, as I was unable to take a snapshot last week. The fall in value is around 10% which matches that of the FTSE. Potential profits have been hammered, but at least there are some.

Nearly everything is down, with the only shares in the black being PLUS:Plus500, PSN. Persimmon, IGG:IG Group Holdings, ASY:Andrews Sykes Group, RDW:Redrow and BWY:Bellway. Everything else is making a loss.

I started my in-depth research of FXPO:Ferrexpo, with my main priority trying to work out why the shares are so cheap given their fundamentals. I soon found out why! Their CEO is being charged with all sorts of stuff by the Ukrainian government. They have frozen all his assets, including his enormous shareholding in FXPO. That wouldn't be a worry on its own, other than the potential of a forced sale, but you would expect lots of institutions to take those up in a controlled manner.

The problem is how FXPO came to own their mine in the first place. The ex-CEO is accused of driving the mine into bankruptcy so he could buy it cheap on behalf of FXPO. So the risk is that the Ukrainian government will regard the ownership of the mine to be void, and seize the whole lot.

Would they though? I honestly don't know. It's a very successful mine and bringing lots of tax revenue, so would they risk losing that to punish the ex-CEO, when now it's part owned by thousands of shareholders? I think the potential rewards are high enough to risk adding this to my pension in a few weeks.

Next on my list for research is PLUS:Plus500. I'll take a look at them during the week. I'm suspecting there's fear of regulators curtailing their spread betting as people can lose so much money, but their share price has been increasing rather than decreasing, so I'll just need to dig deeper into the figures to see what's causing them to be so high up my rankings.

I've done something quite rash while writing this blog. I shouldn't allow myself to get incensed at the injustice of a big market crash when I have no cash to take advantage, but I am incensed and I have acted in order to get some bargains.

I had a special offer come through from Barclaycard for £4,000 at 0% interest until September 2021. Given that I've now paid off my mortgage and have no other loans, and given it's 18 months away, I've accepted the offer. I may come to regret it in September 2021. I only need to pay back £222 a month to get it interest free, which is quite a lot less than my mortgage was.

My aim is to add £2,000 to my SIPP to buy CAML:Central Asia Metals, and get £500 back from the tax man. The other £2,000 will go in my ISA, and you guessed it - I'll get bargain OPTI:Optibiotix shares at 49p. That's assuming the money arrives on Monday and there isn't a gigantic surge in share prices before I can act.

If I do this, then I'll feel the crash was an opportunity rather than a complete nightmare. Both these companies are superb, and I won't sit by as they get hammered without taking advantage.

Buying CAML:Central Asia Metals with cash means I can still launch my magic formula experiment, as I don't want to delay starting that by another 4 months to use the pension transfer for CAML.

Let's hope we see a recovery next week - but not until after I've bought my shares!

Week 238 Review - Coronavirus-led collapse

A late update this week after gallivanting around the Lake District at the weekend. I needed the tranquility of the hills to try and forget the worst ever week for my portfolio. Everything tanked, and I ended up £17,040 worse off. That undid all the recent gains and widended the deficit between cost and value to £38,593, with the portfolio value reduced to £68,628.

Worst performer was OPTI:Optibiotix, which dropped 13p and so accounts for £13,650 of the losses. That's a 19% fall in a week. I wish I could come p with some way of buying more at this price, but everything else is now loss making, and my pension transfer doesn't come through for another 3 weeks. Part of me hopes that will be too late, but part of me wants a bargain, but another part of me doesn't want to delay my magic formula experiment by another 4 months, so I really can't use it for bargain OPTI.

One of my other largest holdings is JLP:Jubilee Metals, and that also lost 19% just as I thought they were about to go into profit. That seems a long way off now.

CAML:Central Asia Metals is another of my largest holdings and fell by 15% and into the red, taking away my only profit making share.

IKA:Ilika dropped 14%, IQE:IQEdropped 13%, SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics dropped 14% in my SIPP and 11% in my ISA so average drop around12.5%, TRMR:Tremor dropped 11%, TEK:Tekcapital dropped 9%, TLOU:Tlou Energy dropped 8%, MMX:Minds + Machines dropped 7% and WRES:W Resources dropped 6%.

I can't have a Share of the Week as not a single share increased in value.

Back below the injection line. What did I say last week about not wanting to yo-yo?

Well, we seem to be back on trend. No danger of flattening the line now.

The ISA and share portfolios look like this

			Weekly Change
Cash	£13.44		+£0
Portfolio cost	£57,783.58		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price-commission)	£35,208.01	(-39.1%)	-£9,156.85
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Dividends	£0.63		+£0
Yr 5 Profit from sales	£-167.28		+£0
Yr 5 Average monthly cash profit	-£27.32	(-0.6%)	+£0.94
Total Dividends	£1,342.93		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£20,224.13		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£388.78	(8.1%)	-£1.64
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)
Performance/Injection	12.5%		-0.1%
Compound performance	57%		+0%

What can I say? Absolute carnage. I'm too sad to write any more.

Well below the injection line. Oh building society, why did I shun thee?

Just awful.

The SIPP looks like this after week 222

			Weekly Change
Cash	£59.41		+£0
Portfolio cost	£46,995.31		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£32,185.87	(-31.5%)	-£7,678.40
Potential profits	£0		-£362.97
Yr 5 Dividends	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Interest	£0.03		+£0
Yr 5 Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Average monthly cash profit	-£13.59	(-0.3%)	+£1.05
Total Dividends	£1,899.24		+£0
Total Interest	£0.20		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£12,549.10		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£272.52	(7.0%)	-£1.23
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Performance/Injection	10.9%		-0.1%
Compound performance	47%		+0%

Same story as the ISA, but also lost all potential profits

As usual, this account manages to stay above the orange injection line, but is closer now than it has been for 6 months.

Back down almost to the lowest value in 12 months. Let's hope it doesn't continue downwards.

Here's the trading account after week 188

			Weekly Change
Cash	£48.24		+£0
Portfolio cost	£2,321.29		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£1,113.17	(-52.0%)	-£205.21
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 4 Dividends	£13.20		+£0
Year 4 Profit	£0		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£1.79	(0.9%)	-£0.06
Dividends	£47.92		+£0
Profit from sales	-£64.29		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.38	(-0.2%)	+£0
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)
Performance/Injection	-0.2%		+0%
Compound performance	-1%		+0%

A huge loss compared to normal weeks.

Just as it was sneaking up.

It's hard to be optimistic about this one.

No review of the fantasy magic formula account this week, as I forgot to take a snapshot. I suspect I wouldn't like what I saw so will wait for next week in the hope it bounces back.

I'm off to continue being sad now, especially as after Tuesday I still haven't recovered more than £460. It could be a long, painful wait...

Week 237 Review - Last week's gains are gone.

Not very much happened this week. Mid afternoon today it was looking like a completely flat week, but a 30,000 OPTI:Optibiotix sale took 2p off the share price and spoiled everything. As a result, almost all last week's gains were wiped out as the portfolio value dropped by £2,294 compared to last week's rise of £2,317. The deficit between cost and value widened to £21,552 and total value dropped to £85,668.

Biggest loser was SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics which dropped 10% in my SIPP and 7% in my ISA. It goes to show the short-term view of AIM investors, as the fall was caused by news of a deal to treat psoriasis. I think people were expecting a deal with earnings within 6 months, as this had been hinted at by SBTX CEO in an interview, but it was clear from the RNS that this will take at least 2 years to develop. At this price I really want to buy more, as the recent deal with CRDA:Croda is massive, and that alone will bring in huge revenues, but again in 18 months or so. Buy now and sit on them, but I have no ammo to make a purchase until the end of March, and that's promised to my pension magic formula project.

IQE:IQE were starting to look really good, with the shorts closing and the share price rising 8% a week. This week saw progress falter as Apple warned the coronavirus would impact iPhone production. There was a knee-jerk reaction which gave the shorters an opportunity to close more positions, which I think limited the drop to 5%.

Only one share increased by more than 5% and so Share of the Week goes to JLP:Jubilee Metals, continuing recent good form and rising 8%. They are only 7% down now, so another week like this will see them in profit. I've got 104,545 shares costing £4,639, making it my 4th biggest holding after OPTI:Optibiotix (£69,515), CAML:Central Asia Metals (£6,408) and IQE:IQE (£5,049). With the revenues soaring, I think there's a reasonable chance these could get to 15p, which would give £11,000 (238%) profit. The problem is their amazing ability to shoot themselves in the foot, and their seeming complete disregard for shareholders. It's a major red flag that the CEO owns practically no shares and the Chairman has used this company to help bail out one of his other failing companies, of which he has many. If JLP make any money, it could easily vanish into fixing other disasters without the shareholders seeing a penny. For that reason I don't see this as a long term holding as it's too risky.

Please don't let this be the start of another downward cycle. I'm fed up of bounce, bounce, bounce.

The drop keeps us well above the trend line

The ISA and share accounts look like this

			Weekly Change
Cash	£13.44		+£0
Portfolio cost	£57,783.58		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price-commission)	£44,364.86	(-23.2%)	-£1,005.76
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Dividends	£0.63		+£0
Yr 5 Profit from sales	£-167.28		+£0
Yr 5 Average monthly cash profit	-£28.26	(-0.6%)	+£1.01
Total Dividends	£1,342.93		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£20,224.13		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£390.42	(8.1%)	-£1.65
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)
Performance/Injection	12.6%		+0%
Compound performance	57%		+0%

The drop in value was around £200 less than last week's gain, and apart from that nothing much to say.

Back to being closer to the orange line than the red.

This is it - the last week before all the weeks in the black disappear. A whole year in the red. Desperate.

The SIPP looks like this after week 221

			Weekly Change
Cash	£59.41		+£0.01
Portfolio cost	£46,995.31		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£39,864.27	(-15.2%)	-£1,273.59
Potential profits	£362.97		-£15.00
Yr 5 Dividends	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Interest	£0.03		+£0.01
Yr 5 Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Average monthly cash profit	-£14.64	(-0.4%)	+£1.22
Total Dividends	£1,899.24		+£0
Total Interest	£0.20		+£0.01
Total Profit from sales	£12,549.10		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£273.75	(7.0%)	-£1.24
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Performance/Injection	11.0%		+0%
Compound performance	47%		+0%

The value dropped by around £200 more than the gains last week, which is bad. Nearly everything dropped in value. I discovered another 1p interest that I missed on the 9th February, so at least I made some money this week!

Not much change really, and still closer to the red than the orange, so moderately happy.

I can feel the trend line being dragged flatter every day.

The trading account looks like this after week 187

			Weekly Change
Cash	£48.24		+£0
Portfolio cost	£2,321.29		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£1,318.38	(-43.2%)	-£15.34
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 4 Dividends	£13.20		+£0
Year 4 Profit	£0		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£1.85	(1.0%)	-£0.06
Dividends	£47.92		+£0
Profit from sales	-£64.29		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.38	(-0.2%)	+£0
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)
Performance/Injection	-0.2%		+0%
Compound performance	-1%		+0%

I'm relieved that the loss was only £15, as nearly everything dropped in value.

T'is but a blip.

There's momentum, but then there has been momentum before, and it got clobbered in one week.

Here's the fantasy magic formula account, which will be very complicated as I made some big changes

			Weekly Change
Cash	£748.50		+£594.89
Portfolio cost	£29,846.39		+£84.07
Portfolio sell value	£31,427.66	(+2.5%)	+£128.91
Potential profits	£1,276.66		-£1,053.95
Dividends	£0		+£0
Profit from sales	£678.96		+£678.96

The portfolio value climbed a little, but is pretty flat given the cost also went up. Potential profits fell by £1,053, but that's largely because I banked £678. If only this account was real!!

The house builders are still doing best, with PSN:Persimmon (29%) and RDW:Redrow and BWY:Bellway (both 24%) leading the way.  ASY:AndrewsSykes Group is up 14% in a week, and III:3i Group is up 10%. Most of the biggest losers got sold, but DGOC:Diversified Oil & Gas is down 11% and ITV:ITV down 9% in a week.

I changed my formula to include the ratio of debt to earnings, and the dividend yield. Those were added to P/E ratio and return on capital employed (ROCE). I figure this gives me a cheap share (low P/E) combined with good return on capital, combined with high dividends, combined with low debt compared to earnings.

The company that came out on top was FXPO:Ferrexpo, and the company that came second was PLUS:Plus500. Those are the two that I need to research closely for the next month, as they are top candidates for the £2,000 pension transfer.

The change meant I lost all the dodgy AIM companies that don't pay any dividend, and most of the house builders as they have high debts. I sold anything that didn't come in the revised top 30, even if for a loss, and my net gain was £678 realised profit. I stuck to my rule of only spending £1,000 for each share and filled the gaps to make the new top 30. Here they are:

There are a few house builders still in there, and I'm really happy to say that CAML:Central Asia Metals comes in 14th out of 450. Given that I absolutely know that's a great company and under-valued, then it gives me a lot of hope for this formula. I've owned REDD:Redde, RDW:Redrow, JLG:John Laing Group and ASHM:Ashmore Group before, and all were good companies.

Unfortunately I can only buy 2 companies every 4 months, so it's going to take years to get the full 30 in real life. I may be able to accelerate the purchases if I can sell a few from the existing portfolio, and I already have CAML:Central Asia Metals so don't need to buy any more of them.

There are a few I won't buy on environmental grounds such as DGOC:Diversified Oil & Gas, so a big part of my research needs to be to ensure they are acceptable environmentally, and any where there are glaring red flags will be passed by.

Note that the account holds £748 cash. My rule is I can't buy another share until there is £1,000 to spend, and then I either buy a new company that has entered the top 30, or if there isn't one then I buy another £1,000 of whichever company is highest up the ranking and still has only had £1,000 spent.

It's quite frustrating that I don't have £30K to try this out for real, but I guess it's good to practice on a virtual portfolio for a while so I don't do anything stupid with real cash.

My target for next week is for just one of my shares other than CAML:Central Asia Metals to go into profit - it's not an awful lot to ask...

Week 236 Review - Another small notch upwards

This week started off really badly, but rallied towards the end with a nice rise of £2,317. That brings the deficit between cost and value to £19,257 and total portfolio value to £87,963.

The week was possibly the quietest ever for big movers. There were no shares that declined by 5% or more, and only one that increased by 5% or more.

Share of the Week goes to IQE:IQE, which climbed 6% for the second week running in my ISA as the shorts are closing fast. The rise isn't as rapid as I hoped, but I think that's because the short squeeze isn't panicked - they are just gradually closing their positions. If they can return to the 100p range that they occupied before the last shorting attack, I'll bank the £689 (32%) profit in my ISA and keep the SIPP holding for longer term. The ISA holding was meant to be a short term purchase anyway - it just went a bit wrong when the crash came straight afterwards.

Back to halfway between orange and red, but this has been the point of resistance several times over the last six months.

Here's the ISA and share accounts performance

			Weekly Change
Cash	£13.44		+£0
Portfolio cost	£57,783.58		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price-commission)	£45,370.62	(-21.5%)	+£1,273.38
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Dividends	£0.63		+£0
Yr 5 Profit from sales	£-167.28		+£0
Yr 5 Average monthly cash profit	-£29.27	(-0.6%)	+£1.09
Total Dividends	£1,342.93		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£20,224.13		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£392.07	(8.1%)	-£1.67
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)
Performance/Injection	12.6%		-0.1%
Compound performance	57%		+0%

A healthy rise of £1,273 in value, mainly thanks to a 2p increase for OPTI:Optibiotix and the 6% increase for IQE:IQE. There are still no shares in profit, but OPTI:Optibiotix is only 3% down now, so there is hope. IKA:Ilika is 12% down and very volatile, so that could come good soon. JLP:Jubilee Metals is 15% down and I feel still primed for something exciting, and IQE:IQE is 21% down and will be in profit within 4 weeks at the current rate of improvement.

There are now 3 shares in this portfolio that are down by 100%. BLCC:Block Commodities used to be AFPO:African Potash and has been an unmitigated disaster. They are a perfect example of falling for a sweet talking CEO who will never deliver anything other than a paycheck for himself. Not only have they abandoned any ideas of supplying potash to African farmers, there appears to be no movement whatsoever on their blockchain financing plans, and now they are talking about getting into medicinal cannabis! They are listed on NEX, but are standing at 0.007p a share after I paid 2.45p. It's £707 that I will be writing off as a loss at some point.

TRK:Torotrak have gone bust so I don't even know why my shares still exist. I guess once the liquidation is over there might be a few pennies left to return to shareholders, but I very much doubt it. My holding only cost £106, as it was one of the first shares I bought, and taught me a valuable lesson about fishing for shares at their lowest ever price.

The final share down 100% is my biggest investment mistake so far. I sank £2,521 into MTFB:Motif Bio because they had passed Phase III trials and I naively thought that was enough to market the product. Little did I know that the FDA would ruin all that and reject their drug application. Some company is going to make a fortune on the back of the work done by MTFB, while shareholders are left stranded with a vague hope that selling the rights to the product raises enough to reverse takeover into something else. My lesson from this? Stay well away from junior pharma as they don't have the cash needed to get a drug through the regulatory hurdles. Only the big boys can afford that.

Still closer to the injection line than the cost line, so a long way to go

Only one week in the last 12 months where this account was in the black, and it will be gone very soon. The very top of the trend line is still £2,000 in the red. All rather bad.

The SIPP looks like this after week 220

			Weekly Change
Cash	£59.40		+£0
Portfolio cost	£46,995.31		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£41,137.86	(-12.5%)	+£1,034.08
Potential profits	£377.97		-£15.00
Yr 5 Dividends	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Interest	£0.02		+£0
Yr 5 Profit from sales	£0		+£0
Yr 5 Average monthly cash profit	-£15.86	(-0.4%)	+£1.44
Total Dividends	£1,899.24		+£0
Total Interest	£0.18		+£0
Total Profit from sales	£12,549.10		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	£274.99	(7.0%)	-£1.26
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees / Months)
Performance/Injection	11.0%		-0.01%
Compound performance	47%		+0%

Very similar story to the ISA, with the increases in OPTI:Optibiotix and IQE:IQE causing an increase in value of £1,034. Potential profits dropped by £15 after CAML:Central Asia Metals fell by 0.5p. I'm concerned about average performance dropping to 7%, but still can't see where my salvation is coming from.

There is some hope though, as OPTI:Optibiotix is only 4% down in this account - not that I will ever sell any. MXX:Minds + Machines is torturing me, as it's been only 1% down for the last 2 weeks but tends to stay still until there's news. I'm amazed that news of a dividend didn't attract more investors. SBTX:SkinBioTherapeutics is only 19% down and very volatile, and I bought these with the intention of trading to try and get my ultimate number of shares up. My mistake was thinking 14p would be the low just before they dropped to 12p!!

There are no 100% losers in this portfolio, but TRX:Tissue Regenix isn't far off, with a 95% drop. I still can't fathom how a company with such a good product and potentially global sales can spend so much money that it keeps making a loss. If they can get someone with a commercial brain on the board then there may still be hope.

N4P:N4 Pharma is a candidate for going to 100% loss. I bought them around the same time as MTFB:Motif Bio before I learned my lesson about junior pharma. I thought my reasoning was sound - they were re-formulating and improving widely used drugs, and also had Nuvec for delivering cancer treatments. I figured that much diversity must lessen the risk. Unfortunately their re-formulation of Viagra failed miserably and revealed the whole process was flawed and they shut down that part of the business. All diversity gone in a day and now they are a one-trick pony, down 87% and with very limited chance of recovering the £1,244 I invested.

My other SIPP disaster is SAE:Simec Atlantis Energy, which I bought because I believed they were going to build a huge tidal power farm. They still have only 4 turbines!! They seem to be another R&D company with no commercial brain. They have now taken on the massively risky and expensive re-purposing Uskmouth power station to burn waste. I don't have high hopes, but only invested £659 so won't lose too much.

As with the ISA, this has reached the resistance point, but it's much closer to breaking even. I had a note from Hargreaves Lansdown with the projected value of my pension when I'm 65. They reckoned £50,000. It cost nearly that! I'm counting on it being worth £50,000 in 2020, not 13 years in the future.

Nice to know I still have 3 months before I lose all the above-zero weeks.

The dreaded trading account looks like this after week 186

			Weekly Change
Cash	£48.24		+£0
Portfolio cost	£2,321.29		+£0
Portfolio sell value (bid price - commission)	£1,333.72	(-42.5%)	+£10.05
Potential profits	£0		+£0
Year 4 Dividends	£13.20		+£0
Year 4 Profit	£0		+£0
Yr 4 Average monthly cash profit	£1.91	(1.0%)	-£0.06
Dividends	£47.92		+£0
Profit from sales	-£64.29		+£0
Average monthly cash profit	-£0.38	(-0.2%)	+£0
(Sold stocks profit + Dividends - Fees  / Months)
Performance/Injection	-0.2%		+0%
Compound performance	-1%		+0%

Another small rise, but I'm making the stunning profit of almost £2 a month this year, and still making a 38p a month loss overall. That's an utterly desperate return from 3.5 years. I might be the worst trader ever!

At this rate it's going to take 10 years to get to break even.

We're still just above the trend line, so lets remain positive.

Here's the fantasy magic formula account.

			Weekly Change
Cash	£153.61		+£0
Portfolio cost	£29,846.39		+£0
Portfolio sell value	£31,298.75	(+4.8%)	+£288.73
Potential profits	£2,330.61		+£534.21
Dividends	£0		+£0
Profit from sales	£0		+£0

Well, it appears the magic formula is much better at picking stocks than I am. Potential profits increased an impressive £534, but some losses deepened as the overall value only went up £288. This account has gone up every single week!

The 7 house builders are doing the best, all up between 25 and 30%. WIZZ:Wizz Air is up 14% and GROW:Draper Esprit is up 12%.

BUR:Burford Capital is worst, down 19%, and BMN:Bushveld Minerals is down 16%, with SQZ:Serica Energy being the only other double-digit loser, down 11%.

My pension cash will come through at the end of March, so it will be interesting to see how the list pans out by then. I suspect all the house builders will have dropped off, as they will be 30% more expensive and I missed my chance. It takes a long time to prep the list as I have to check each company individually. I'm thinking of adding a few more criteria to the ranking system too. Dividend yield being the one that immediately springs to mind, but I think debt is also one I'd like to add.

No news anticipated next week, although the latest OPTI:Optibiotix interview on Proactive Investors was the most upbeat yet, and there were some very interesting hints about progress with Sweetbiotix development. It's only a matter of time before one of those lands, and we'll need to buckle up when it does.