Well I guess that’s it then? Summer has well and truly vacated us for another year hasn’t it? I mean, I’ve resisted the temptation to stick the heating on just yet, but it feels like it’s not far off now. That along with the seemingly never ending rain is enough to make anyone start browsing for holidays, so that is exactly what we did this past weekend! We’d been talking about booking a winter break for some time but due to Mrs CT’s massively busy schedule we hadn’t been able to make any firm plans. We discussed a few possible destinations but decided due to one reason or another to settle on Mauritius for 2 weeks of sunshine in January. I love it when the UK weather is cold and miserable, with dark mornings and dark nights, and then just being able to jump on a plane and fly away to somewhere exotic and hot! I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it! Before then we have a much different weekend break planned to the coast of northern Wales. It’s my first venture with an Airbnb and fingers crossed it’s a pleasurable one. It’s a short break away in a small beach village with our dogs to celebrate our 2nd wedding anniversary.
Along with the bad weather seemingly comes a higher than usual number of bad drivers! I currently have the unfortunately pleasure of sitting on the M6 twice a day as I trundle to and from the office. This week alone I have seen a number of clowns who either believe it’s acceptable to have no lights on at all during thick fog, or that it’s even more acceptable to cut people up whilst chucking a cup of McDonalds cola at another car in the outside lane, alongside your usual fill of tailgaters! I honestly don’t see why people get so angry and stressed behind the wheel, I’m just happy to arrive each day in one piece! I’ve been running through a few ideas of things to add to the site, one of which is having a few guest posts from you guys. So I guess this is a bit of a request really, I’m looking for content from you! It can be about anything you like really, though obviously fitting it around investing and trading is what the site is about. Please feel free to get in touch if you have something already out there, or if you fancy giving it a go but have never set up a blog for yourself, or even if you are a distinguished, established blogger already! Contact me either in the comments section here or via email. Markets Please note I am not tipping any shares and would seriously encourage anyone reading this to carry out thorough research on any company they are thinking of buying!!!!!! My portfolios have retraced a touch since my last update though that certainly is no bad thing. There had been some decent gains in the past couple of weeks which couldn’t have continued at the same pace… Current star performer XL Media (XLM) has held nicely above 140p since their half yearly report was published last week. It’s also reassuring to notice that a few more well respected investors have dipped their toes in here which helps to sooth any potential worries of a drop. I know with this being an AIM listed business based in Israel has meant many approach with caution, hopefully with the seemingly now consistent positive results coming out will mean it gets the attention it deserves. As things stand I’m looking at profits of around 32% across my SIPP and ISA. BooHoo (BOO) seems to hovering around 250ish pence mark pending their next set up results which, as mentioned previously, are due later this month. It hasn’t seen the usual rise holders have come to expect from this share, but I suppose it could only keep that pattern up for so long? Morgan Sindall (MGNS) has started to very slowly creep up though to be honest I will expecting a little more after the last set of results. Still, more than happy to be patient with this one as I hold in both my SIPP and ISA. Creightons PLC (CRL) continues it’s rollercoaster ride of biggish rises following similar sized retraces. Again happy to be patient here and the movement is to be expected due to the slightly smaller market cap than what I usually deal with. There have been a couple of shares which have come onto my radar this week following good results. Both Billington Holdings (BILN) and Swallowfield (SWL) have seen good gains today off the back of these and I’ll be looking more closely into these this evening. On the face though the figures appear to be encouraging. Until next time… Ian
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It’s quite unbelievable that it is exactly 16 years to the day of the attack on the twin towers. It was one of those days where you knew exactly where you were as the news hit. I’d not long been out of a bed after working an evening shift at the Alton Towers Hotel of all places! Switching the TV on to check out the news and seeing that second plane fly into The South Tower, and ever since then the world has changed remarkably. We saw wars on terror, which only resulted in even more terror worldwide! What are currently left with can only be described as something of a clusterfuck!
Despite the gloomy outlook for the world generally presently, things are thankfully much better closer to home! Mrs CT has just gained herself a promotion, which has been more than earned for the effort, long hours and amazing talent she has. I shan’t inflate her ego too much but to say I’m immensely proud is an understatement! We went into our local town on Saturday evening to celebrate, grabbing something to eat in one of the newer trendy bar/eateries that have sprung up in the past 12 months. It really has become something of a cool place to go to dine and have a few drinks since we’ve moved to the area, further reinforcing our belief we absolutely made the correct decision! I’m just looking forward to my wife’s continued rise through the ranks, as I’ll then be able to retire even earlier and become a kept man!! As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, my football team are Port Vale, who appear to be doing all they can to get worse and worse. After another defeat on Saturday we are literally the worst club in the professional game! I’m really not looking forward to having to go this coming Saturday! Markets Please note I am not tipping any shares and would seriously encourage anyone reading this to carry out thorough research on any company they are thinking of buying!!!!!! Despite my previous comments regarding September being traditionally a bit crap, it has actually been excellent so far! I’m not going to count my chickens too much but I’ve managed to claw back most of the drop experienced in recent weeks! XL Media (XLM) have this morning dropped their 6 month results which make excellent reading which leaves the current share price up 8% on the day at the time of writing. Creightons (CRL) has also shown a remarkable turn around in the past week which at one point saw me down 10%. As we speak I am now showing a profit of around 13% on paper, hopefully we’ve seen the turn on this one as I think it’s a company with great potential. Elsewhere BooHoo (BOO) has now turned from a loss to a profit within my portfolio, results are due very soon so all being well they will continue to follow their excellent progress from the past couple of years. There’s not a great deal else to report on current holdings, I’m steadily building funds up in my ISA as I mentioned previously and I’ll let that get a bigger pot before I look to invest funds there, hopefully it won’t be too long though! I have however this week taken some time to review how I'm doing and what lessons can be learned from previous trades. When I look through the list of previous sold shares, the profits/losses that I took on these, and where these shares are now, the lesson flashes in massive letters I SELL FAR TOO EARLY!!!!! This is both as far as selling losers and winners! I won't run through the full facts, but basically had I been in a position where I'd have held all shares bought in the past 18 months, I'd have made TEN TIMES MORE PROFIT than I actually have done! So there's plenty of food for thought here and a lot to take away and think on regarding strategy going forward. But basically, I am able to find a decent share, but as is often the case, it's what I do with it once held that needs working on! Until next time… Ian Hello and welcome, I’m back once again like a renegade master! First of all thanks for the comments on my previous post, it’s very much appreciated! The day I posted that last blog post was the busiest the site has been since its inception (not that it would take much!) and more of you are starting to sign up to my mailing list, which you can also join by clicking the link in the top right of your screen!
I’ve started making one or two changes to the site now as I’m looking to develop it and will be making more changes as the weeks go by. First major change is I’ve actually bought a proper domain name for the site, so if you have this site bookmarked then I’d suggest you now change that to www.thecraptrader.co.uk. Secondly I’ve added a Trading Beginners Tips page, again this will develop over time as I learn more and find more resources to add. This isn’t a page where I give advice about what to do, more where I think are good places to look for proper information when you think about beginning your trading adventures. For those of you who are far more experienced than myself and have any thoughts or decent resources which you think would be helpful please feel free to let me know and I’ll look to add them in! Once again life has been very busy since my last trading blog hence it taking a couple of weeks to get something up. That plus the fact my folio has taken a severe beating recently has left me hiding in a corner somewhat until it all stops but more on that shortly! This coming weekend sees me fly out to the island of Ibiza for a few quiet (!!!!) nights with friends. This will be the 3rd year running I’ve been now and can’t get enough of the place. People probably think I should act my age a bit more but who cares, I can’t wait! Monday saw the conclusion of series 7 in Game Of Thrones! Do we really have to now wait until 2019 to see the concluding season as is rumored everywhere. So many questions unanswered, and so many potential scenario's and plot twists I just don't know what will happen!! It really has been a tremendous TV show though with many outstanding performances, not least from Lena Headey who's portrayal of Cersei Lannister in that last episode was remarkable. She plays the character to absolute perfection! Markets Please note I am not tipping any shares and would seriously encourage anyone reading this to carry out thorough research on any company they are thinking of buying!!!!!! As I alluded to a few lines up, I’ve taken a real battering recently with my SIPP falling from all-time highs to seeing a good 5%+ wiped off the value! Amongst this I saw TAP drop even further to knock me out of my stop loss. Now I’m struggling a bit with regards to where I place my stops. I had originally followed The Naked Trader’s advice and had been applying a 10% trailing loss to my holdings, but this saw me knocked out of long term winners such as BOO and IQE. So I then tweaked this a little to leave a 15% trailing stop on TAP, but still I got knocked for a very small profit. Obviously I realise markets go down as well as up, but I do prefer to have that safety net should a company I hold put out a really cruddy piece of news which knocks half the value off. This however means I potentially get stopped out of the good shares as evidenced just. If anyone would like to share their own strategies or thoughts on where I could be going in the comments section please do so, or alternatively please feel free to drop me a mail at thecraptrader@gmail.com. Any comments are very much welcome! As we’re moving into the traditionally tumultuous September, I’m keeping some cash aside to see if there are any bargains to be had during this time. Until next time… Ian Thank you for joining me in another exciting update from myself, The Crap Trader, or Ian as I’m more commonly known to my friends (I do have some). There is a hint of irony in that first sentence there! This week I’m going to talk about the future, or more specifically my future! It’s a big scary subject, “the future”, though I suspect not so scary for readers of this blog as we are all probably investors of some kind, all doing what we do in order for a brighter future as it were.
I’d been having a think over the past couple of weeks about my own future, what I want to be doing and where and kept thinking “oh well I’d like to be in such and such position (job wise), earning ‘x’ amount” yada yada. Then I had an epiphany, I don’t actually LIKE working! So I thought about what I really want, which is I don’t want to have to work for a living. I want to be able to get up in a morning, and not think about what deadlines I have to meet, or about the meetings I have lined up, or even the dreary commute down the M6 once more. I want to wake up, clear of mind and do whatever the hell I want! With this in mind I started to make a plan, quite simple really, start with what you want to achieve, and work back from there step by step. I came to the conclusion I want to make a living investing, with minimal stress. Now I hear you all say at once “well that’s what we all want”, of course, it’s been my ambition for some time as well, but this was the first time I sat down and worked out exactly what I need to do to get there. So the plan has been made, I now know exactly what I need to do, and steps have already been taken. It certainly won’t be easy, I’m under no illusions about that, things will be thrown at me that will take me off course but I have a plan I can refer to during these times to hopefully keep me on track. I still have a hell of a lot to learn in the markets but I think if I can keep my discipline, stick to the investing rules I’ve put in place, make sure I take the most advantage of good market conditions whilst hiding, I mean being even more disciplined during the downturns and keep learning from my mistakes then you just never know what might happen! In other news, the football season is back!! I know the Premier League doesn’t actually start until this weekend, but the real football began last week. My team, for all their faults is Port Vale. For those who don’t know, we play in the lowest of the low division before you have to rename as a local pub and hire a pitch from the council. We kicked off our campaign with a real positive however with an away win at Crawley Town, something of a major surprise as I think we’ve only won 2 or 3 away games in the previous 2 seasons! I’m not sure yet how we’ll fair this season as we’ve had a massive turn around in player after a disastrous season last year which ended in relegation. We’d tried to recruit a bunch of unknown foreigners with a foreign manager who then quit on Boxing Day. Anything better than that will be a big plus!! Markets Please note I am not tipping any shares and would seriously encourage anyone reading this to carry out thorough research on any company they are thinking of buying!!!!!! Urgh what can I say! This past week started off very brightly with prices moving northwards all round. Then by midweek Trump and Un started their playground antics and the past couple of days have been spent looking at the markets through my fingers! Everything has dropped, some more dramatically than others! Apart from TAP, TAP is on my good list currently as my only saving grace as it continues to try push on from 400p! This does of course create some potential buying opportunities, and as I’m adding to my ISA funds a bit more regularly now I will have more cash available going forward. In the meantime I’ll be using this time wisely to test out my discipline and market physcology!! Not a great deal of an update on my movers and shakers in the markets this time as I’m now going to lock myself in a cupboard, preferably a nuclear resistant one! Until next time… Ian Welcome to the latest instalment of The Crap Traders blog where I’ll be going over what my portfolios have been doing over the past week, along with some general rambling about the things I’ve been getting up to away from the markets.
This weekend saw Mrs CT and myself travel to Hinckley to celebrate the marriage of her brother and his lovely fiancée. Luckily the weather just about held out for the outdoor ceremony, well I say held out, there were a few spots of rain halfway through but no more. It’s just a good job it wasn’t any later as shortly after we got back inside the rain came and didn’t leave again all night! I think I must have eaten something dodgy earlier in the day as I definitely wasn’t feeling myself the next morning. I also have absolutely no idea why I had a lingering taste of Sambuca in my mouth either!! Sunday afternoon we finally settled down to watch the first episode in the new season of Game of Thrones! We were late comers to this epic series having only started watching it a couple of years ago but I’ve been looking forward to this since we finished season 6 a few months back. It was a slow episode but I feel it was laying the groundwork for the fireworks to come, of which there’ll no doubt be a lot! I also stuck on the first episode of the Netflix series Narcos on Tuesday evening to see what the fuss is all about. I have to say I was very impressed, I’ve added it to my watch list, although that means I’ll have to watch it again as Mrs CT was working away and we tend to watch these things together! Markets Please note I am not tipping any shares and would seriously encourage anyone reading this to carry out thorough research on any company they are thinking of buying!!!!!! So not too bad a week overall really, portfolio has moved up a touch with encouraging gains from recent buy Morgan Sindall (MGNS) and also BooHoo (BOO) has started to move up after hovering around the 220p mark. I had relaxed my stop a little bit on the latter as from experience I’ve noticed the price tends to drop quite markedly before it springs back up beyond previous highs. This is what happened to me the first time I held this share and I got stopped out whilst making me nervous I would lose my gains, since then I think it’s trebled in price! So hopefully I’m being a little wiser this time and it’ll pay off longer term. A slight cause for concern is the drop of Taptica (TAP), it appears to have dropped around 12% from recent highs. Again I’m trying to be wise and not panic into selling as I personally see no immediate reason for the drop, there was a very encouraging recent update. This is where I have to keep telling myself to look at cold hard facts rather than looking at day to day price movement, something which I am quite guilty of! To use a Naked Trader character assessment, be less like Jones ("Don't panic!!"), for those Dad’s Army fans! Finally this brings me onto my only trade this week, and a first for myself! I’ve bought a new issue! Well, bought it as soon as it came on the market for the first day, I think I was a little late to the party to try and buy the IPO. The company in question is Quiz (QUIZ), a women’s fashion outlet with a number of stores nationwide as well as an online store. The facts released prior to listing appear encouraging in their own right, and I’m also hoping there is a large interest with similar companies such ASOS and BooHoo both showing amazing gains in recent years. I managed to get hold of some a touch under 187p first thing this morning. Until next time… Ian Well what do we have here? I bet all 2 of you who read this blog thought I'd fallen off the face of the earth no?? Well fortunately not, I have however been pretty damn busy with work and general life! Trying to balance a hectic work, family and social life has never really been my strongest trait so as you can see, blog updates have been non-existent for much of this year. I will desperately try to rectify that in the coming weeks/months though so keep your eyes peeled.
I’ll try to use this update to give as brief an overview as possible on my investing has been going so far this year but I apologise in advance if this post is a bit long winded! So… First of all the bad! Management Resource (MRS) finally came out of suspension in May at a heavily discounted price of 5p which I immediately sold at taking a heavy, heavy loss. It hurt in a monetary sense, however I was quite relieved to be rid of at long last. No more taking penny stock tips from Twitter from me!!!! I spent a short time holding Empresaria (EMR) after it had broken out into it’s 52 week high. However very quickly it came back down again and hit my stop in place to sell for a 10% loss. As it stands today it’s down even further so a good move in the end! As mentioned in a previous post I had been keeping an eye on Taptica (TAP) and eventually added it to my SIPP in the middle of last month. This is a very similar company to the already held XL Media (XLM) which did make me hesitate, however the figures were very encouraging, the chart was in a very nice upward swing and there was a trade update due soon and thought it looked too good to miss out. This has really moved upwards breaking into new highs this past week and currently sees me sitting on a paper profit of 28%. XLM is also at a healthy 22% profit at the time of writing so for the time being I’m more than happy to hold both. Last month saw me dip my toe back into Boohoo (BOO). After months of stewing and moaning about the fact I sold last year for around a 1/3 of its current price, I saw the plans for the expansion of the distribution warehouse to cater for a huge increase of revenue and was enough to see me back in. Slightly down currently on this one but happy to look longer term with this rapidly growing clothing brand. Creightons (CRL) released its full year results at the end of June which made very good reading. Significant revenue increase and its operating profit was up by a whopping 171% year on year. This is a slightly smaller company than I would normally go for with a market cap of only 22 million, but the figures speak for themselves and the company really do seem to be going places. I feel it could be a touch volatile but fingers crossed I’m onto a winner here. Finally there is the purchase of Morgan Sindall (MGNS), who released a trading update with the very much sought after phrase “trading for the 6 months to 30 June 2017 has been substantially ahead of the previous year”. The profit to market cap ratio from the previous results still show that this appears to be slightly on the cheap side, so I’m expecting a decent rise here in the run to the results being announced. That’s all I’ve got for the moment, but like I say I’ll be trying to keep this updated a bit more regularly. If you’d like to know when I post on the site please use the link in the top right corner to subscribe to the website. Ian Please note I am not tipping any shares and would seriously encourage anyone reading this to carry out thorough research on any company they are thinking of buying!!!!!!
Stop losses, don't you just hate them when you knocked out of your favourite share for no reason what so ever! Well, no actually, certainly not in my mind anyway. See, the above is exactly what happened to me this very morning with IQE despite the release of some very positive year end results. For whatever reason, the market reacted very negatively to news that the company had increased it's yearly pre tax profits by a very healthy 17%. Share price very early doors was down by 15% which had triggered a stop loss I had put in place following recent rises. This meant I sold IQE completely unemotionally for a 15% profit without having to lift a finger. Now you may be saying, "but the results were really good, this share is only going to continue upwards", I actually agree, I do think they will continue upwards. Which is why I actually brought back in at a slightly higher price than what I was stopped out at. "Madness" I hear you screaming! "You shouldn't have such a tight stop you complete nincompoop!!!". You could well be right, but this (so far at least), works for me. It takes out all the emotion from selling. Now if these results had come out this morning and had been absolute trash, and I didn't have a tight stop loss in place, I might have been sitting on a loss as I type this out. However unlikely that is, personally, it's a risk I don't wish to take. A very valuable lesson I learnt in October with QP. when bad news meant a very costly loss! So my mantra with this sort of thing at present, let the stops act first, then take a rational look at the situation afterwards when your money isn't on line. The fact is here, the results are very good, so good in fact, I ended up buying back in like I mentioned previously. Again I've a stop loss in place should things slide back. As of this evening the price had stabilised around 50p, fingers crossed the selling has finished now and we can continue moving upwards. Elsewhere, Somero (SOM) also released their end of year results on the 15th. Headline figures which jumped out at me were 22% increase in pre tax profits, net cash increase of 60%, dividend increase of 61%. The company is very positive about the forthcoming financial year also and with the profits to market cap ratio still at just under 8 times, I feel this still has plenty of room to grow. Ex divi date is 31st March with payment on the 17th April which will be a nice little bonus on top of what has already been an impressive rise. I currently sit on a profit of over 45% here in my SIPP, and a profit of 15% in my ISA. I've not made any other trades since my last update, I am however keeping an eye on Taptica (TAP) who produced a positive set of end of year results. There are just one or two small issues with the spread (5%) and the NMS (less than 5k) which are stopping me currently. If the share price starts to move up though I will be very tempted to jump on board! I have updated my TRADES PAGE to reflect the recent trades completed. What's this I hear you say? Another blog post? 2 within a month? Does this man even have a job??
Well, unfortunately yes I do have to work for a living, but I want to start posting with a bit more regularity than I have thus far in 2017 so here we are again! As I write to you today my local town is clearing itself up from the devastating aftermath of "Storm Doris"! I was most perturbed yesterday evening when I took my dogs for a walk, to find my usual route blocked off by a felled tree leaving me completely flummoxed as to where to go! I have now managed to get over it (the stress, not the tree) and this morning found some somewhere else to walk them much to my relief. In all seriousness, it did cause chaos in many parts of the land. Indeed having to drive home from Glasgow through it all was certainly interesting, particularly for the poor chap who was picking up various bits of his car in the untouched snow covering the fast lane of the A74(M) along with a helpful Police Officer. I've also seen videos of trucks getting blown over, along with of course the obligatory and countless videos/pictures of children's trampolines making a getaway from their gardens across the country. Luckily the trampoline at the house directly behind us stayed firmly within it's boundaries. Markets Please note I am not tipping any shares and would seriously encourage anyone reading this to carry out thorough research on any company they are thinking of buying. So a couple of trades to tell you about since the last update, and both have happened in the past couple of days. First up is the selling of what was a favourite of mine in Berkeley Energia (BKY), I like to have trailing stop losses on all of my buys, I feel it gives me that unemotional detachment from dithering on decisions about selling a share on. Wether it is the right way to go long term I'm unsure, but certainly for now it makes me feel much more comfortable with shares that I hold. So indeed BKY had started to fall off over the past week, and eventually it triggered my stop yesterday at 57p, leaving me with a healthy profit of £580, an increase of just under 50% from my original investment. This freed up some cash to look elsewhere and indeed bought a few shares in Amino Tech (AMO) this morning for a price of 196p. I'd noticed this earlier in the week on the 'Breakouts' toplist on ADVFN. The Breakouts list is one of their Premium toplists which requires a yearly subscription, but it's invaluable for finding which shares are breaking out of the existing price range, especially if you choose breakouts over a 52 week period. The company provide "digital entertainment solutions" such as internet TV and IPTV etc. A recent results RNS showed pre tax profits to have risen a staggering 96% on the previous period, and has plenty of cash in reserve which is always a big plus in my view. It is at the higher end of my valuation, but I think there is definite potential here for growth. Time will tell as always! With regards to my other current holdings, everything else seems pretty flat overall, just the usual slight day to day movements you get with these things. I'm just eagerly anticipating the forthcoming results from Somero (SOM). I have updated my Trades page to reflect the above, and as you can see at the top of that page, I am now in profit since starting this blog. Long may it continue!!! So it appears to be apparent that not only am I a Crap Trader, but also a bloody lazy blogger!! Apologies it's taken me so long to provide any updates lately, but a combination of busy work, lack of trading, and mostly being a lazy arse mean that I've not provided any updates this year at all!
It's been a pretty quiet time around the world in the past couple of months mind, I mean aside from the lunatic taking over the asylum across the big pond and the feeling that he'll piss off either China, North Korea or anyone for that matter at the click of a tweet! Markets have been very buoyant recently which have given some good gains for most (sensible) investors since the turn of the year, of course as the saying goes "everyone is a genius in a bull market". Personally I'm happy to let some profits run for now, but I do have stops in place should (or rather when) things start to turn southwards. I get the feeling I'll learn a lot more when the markets do indeed turn the wrong way than I am currently. That said I can only be too pleased with how things have performed since the turn of the year. Indeed as we speak today, my SIPP is currently valued 12% higher than it was on the 31st December last year, mustn't grumble (older listeners of Radio 1 will get that reference)!! So let's take a look at what I've been doing since my last update, or not doing as the case mainly is... Markets Please note I am not tipping any shares and would seriously encourage anyone reading this to carry out thorough research on any company they are thinking of buying. I have made a couple of buys since the turn of the year, firstly was IQE which you may remember me mentioning in a post in early December. I eventually took the plunge at the start of January buying at 40.6p and have already seen good gains since the purchase, currently sitting at 13% profit. My second buy came following a really positive update from current holding Somero (SOM), I was tempted to buy a few for my ISA after I got some funds injected into the account. Really think these will rise well this coming year. Of my current holdings, stand out performer so far is Berkeley (BKY) who had a tremendous over the Christmas period which just continued throughout January. The price of Uranium has begun to creep up which has helped, along with an Investors Chronicle tip, it really has shot up. I'm currently sitting on a 66% profit with no intention of selling, but have a stop loss in place should it begin to slide. I received another dividend payment from Empiric (ESP) recently also which makes up for the 6% loss I'm currently sitting on with it. Still unsure what to do with this share if I'm honest, it's crept up a little in the past week so may see if that continues. Back onto Somero (SOM), as mentioned above they gave a really positive update back in January, and the results are due out early March which should help push it on again. Currently sat at 25% profit from my original buy here. All trades can be found here! So here are then, it's nearly the end of another year that has flown past in the blink of an eye! It's been a year of the celebrity death, and whilst there are just over 24 hours to go still, are any celebs still safe?!
We've had quite a bit of change this year in the Crap Trader household, in that the household moved to a new town/county. We made the perilous journey from north Staffordshire, across the border to south Cheshire where we've settled in very nicely indeed! However it's been one of those years where we have been crazy busy, but don't appear to have done much? We've just been doing a lot of 'stuff'. Markets Please note I am not tipping any shares and would seriously encourage anyone reading this to carry out thorough research on any company they are thinking of buying. I wanted to write this post to carry out a bit of a review of my years dealings, lessons learned etc. So here we go, as I haven't actually traded that much this year, it shouldn't drag on for too long so bare with me! Best Trades of the Year I'll start with the positive stuff as that's easier to deal with! There are two particular trades which stick out immediately, the first one would easily be BooHoo (BOO). Whilst this is appearing in my Best Trades section, it could quite easily fall into the worst section also. I'll try to explain a bit more now... I bought this at the end of May at around 52p, it just kept gaining and gaining up to around 85p. However it seemed to drop sharply which caused me to get the jitters a bit, and I sold at just under 79p thus giving me a healthy profit of around 50%. However (a fancy 'but'), it has continued to surge and as it stands today, is around 135p to sell so there's definitely a lesson to learn from that which I'll go over later. My second 'best' trade of the year is one I'm still holding and that is Berkeley Energia (BKY). As we stand at close today, I am currently sat with a paper profit of 40% having bought this in early July at a fraction under 38p. I've spoken about this quite a bit in my recent posts but the potential upside from here is still very attractive and as things stand I am in no hurry to reach for the sell button. Worst Trades of the Year Without question the worst trade of the year, and indeed biggest mistake made was with the Quantum (QP.). Having bought this at 72.5p and seeing it rise to the low 90's, I made the fatal error of going on holiday to a completely different timezone without having any kind of stop loss in place. One lazy afternoon by the pool in Bali while supping the drinks back I absent mindedly just checked the markets to see if anything was going on to be greeted with a 50% drop on this share. I immediately sold having read the half year report and seeing the words which sends shivers down any traders spine, "the Board now expects performance will be materially below market expectations". What a shitter! I mean, what numpty would go on holiday without putting any stop losses on a volatile pharma company?! This is closely followed by another shitter of a share and that is Management Resource Services (MRS). This is currently suspended thus disabling me from doing anything other than reading the RNS' be released as the board try to get to the bottom of whatever funny business it's former CEO was up to with the companies books. It certainly doesn't look good and as mentioned in an earlier post, I've pretty much written off any funds in this as a costly mistake. Portfolio Review The trades you see on these pages are from two accounts I currently trade with. That's an ISA, and a SIPP. However the only holding in my ISA MRS which, as mentioned above, is currently suspended. Therefore I'm unable to give you any figures here as there's so little in it. It is however a bit different with my SIPP... I started trading with this account in May of this year (2016), and as we stand as the close of the markets today the valuation of this account is up by 9.2% which I'm actually quite pleased about for just over 7 months work. Especially factoring in the Quantum farce! It may not look like a huge increase, but if you can consistantly make 10% a year, in just over 7 years you will have doubled your original investment which is certainly not a figure to be sniffed at. I always remind myself of the famous Warren Buffet quote when I think I want to be making more money quicker... "The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient, to the patient". Lessons Learned As you can see I've made a few mistakes this year, but I am glad I've made them to be honest as they are mostly school boy errors that could have easily been avoided and each time they have refocused me and made me more determined not to do the same again. Firstly there's the stop loss. Stop loss, stop loss, stop loss. I know some people don't like to use them, and prefer to use any drops as opportunities to top up, or average down as they say. However I like to keep things as simple and emotionless as possible (I'm also not clever enough to know when is good to average down!!). I just think that there will always be other shares which could make you money while your original holding could otherwise continue to drop. Second lesson I learned is to never, ever buy a share off the recommendation from someone on a forum, or Twitter, or anywhere really, without doing thorough research and investigation. Always, always try to look for the negatives with a company you are thinking of buying into. There are too many people out there who are looking to hook people into shocking shares because it has risen rapidly in a very short space of time. These are usually penny stocks that shift up 70% in the blink of an eye, then drop 90% even quicker. Or companies which are on the verge of created the next big thing. Avoid anything like this like the plague in my experience!! Lastly, and I feel this is possibly more important than the other two, is knowing when to let profits run. You saw above my comments regarding BooHoo and how since I sold it has continued it's tremendous run northwards. I think it's essential that you have a plan of what you are going to do with a share not only when it drops, but also when it climbs. I'll be looking to review any share which shows good gains and feel I really need to have more confidence in myself to stick with a good climber and let the profits run. Wether that is by simply leaving it alone, or wether I will take some profit (top slice) with my holding. This is something I still need to get better at, and will definitely be reading more on the subject. So there we go, I've tried to not go into too much detail but hopefully it's given you a bit of an insite into my year (or 7 odd months) in the markets and see what I've done right, and more importantly, what I've done wrong! Until next year... |
AuthorConfessions of a Crap Trader is a blog following a regular investor trying to make profit via the London Stock Exchange. Follow his journey as he attempts to hopefully one day pay his mortgage off in full! Archives
April 2018
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