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Usually when scribbling these Chart Blogs I have Absolute Radio in the background which if turned down low enough doesn’t seem to distract me too much from the job in hand. Tonight things are a bit different though because I sort of want to be distracted because I am desperately trying to learn some Amy MacDonald Tunes as I am off to see her next Saturday Night in Reading - and I have made the unforgivable error of not getting her latest Album and I only have an old one called ‘Life in a Beautiful Light’ which I have owned for perhaps a couple of years but not really played it enough to know it. The upshot being that as much as I want to concentrate on these Charts I really must multi-task (hey, I’m a Bloke, it ain’t easy for us !!) and learn the Songs as well.
Last week was a bit disappointing for me on the Markets - with Indexes climbing new Highs almost everywhere (although the FTSE100 has not really kept up) it is upsetting when my Portfolio is still unable to ‘Breakout’ and get over the High Point it racked up in May - I keep getting within touching distance and then it drops back - it is driving me to Drink (well, Coffee anyway). My Portfolio dropped last week by about 0.75% - ok, this is no big deal but it is grating on me. Part of this was a Short I had on the S&P500 misbehaving (more in a bit) and that hit me for about 0.3% of my Portfolio Value - so we are only really talking limited damage here but I just so want my Portfolio to crack on properly.
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If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, then scroll back down my Blog Page a tiny bit and you should find it very easily from about a Week ago. It includes a list of the Parts to come and what is hopefully going to be in them (if I actually get around to writing them !!).
Features of an Income Portfolio It’s probably easiest for me to write this as Bullets:
I am so running behind today it is ridiculous - I have been helping a mate who smashed up her car look for a replacement and tonight she is around because I am lending her my BMW z3 while she sorts the new one out. It’s a nightmare because normally I have peace and quiet with no distractions to work on my etchings, but tonight that is utterly different !! I have sent her off in my z3 to get a Chinese so hopefully I can pinch 20 minutes to crack on and make some proper progress……….
I do enjoy hunting out for Cars though - doing it for a mate means I get all the fun bits of the chase but without the downside of me having to part with my own hard fought for Cash. Overall Markets keep generally rising, especially in the US with those Markets looking extremely ‘overbought’ and it does make me nervous that some sort of ‘reckoning’ is gonna hit us - I am not saying we will necessarily have a meltdown or anything but surely we need to see a bit of softness (or at best some Sideways) to unwind these overbought conditions. On the positive side there is a lot of Support down below which should be natural Levels where Buyers come in to stop things getting out of hand.
If you glance over at the ‘Portfolios’ page on my Website, you will see at the top that I start off talking about my own Income Portfolio which I have been running for just a few years. There is a bit of spiel around it trying to explain the logic and principles behind my Income Portfolio but it only recently hit me that this barely even glances the surface of what is actually quite a lengthy subject; and I came to the realisation that my Archive of Information was sadly lacking the kind of detail needed to really do it justice. So this Blog Series is to correct that shortfall.
As you will see from the intro stuff below, this Blog was inspired as an alternative to Annuities and Drawdown upon Retirement but I can see far younger readers finding this useful as a concept for somewhere to stash their ill-gotten gains from Share Trading etc., in a home that is low maintenance, fairly low risk and yet gives a Return which by far exceeds anything that can be gained on Cash or with Bonds or suchlike.
I’m sure that was a Pink Floyd song - or maybe I am getting mixed up with the Bovril Turner Overdrive - it’s my age you know……
These Markets are truly remarkable - it seems like whatever happens they just keep going up. Readers of my Charts stuff, Tweets, Website Trades etc. might have seen I put a Small Short on the S&P500 on Monday Night Last Week as it looked really poised to drop back a bit - but in the event it has actually been flirting with my Stoploss and at the Close on Friday it was still a fraction below - I will look at this Chart etc. in due course. I was thinking about my Shorts earlier this afternoon and I am of a view that the best approach is to open fairly Small Shorts initially and then if they go my way to increase them and ‘Push the Position’. Last week my Overall Portfolio (including the Overseas Unit Trusts but not the Income Portfolio) was down 0.15%, which is really just ‘Noise’ in the bigger scheme of things and I am still right up at the All Time Highs although I still am slightly below the High Point the Portfolio hit back in May - wasted Summer or what ?!!
My mate Steve kindly offered some thoughts on Gambling as a supplementary activity to messing about with Stocks via an email and he very kindly agreed to the text being used for a Guest Blog because I am sure many Readers will find this useful. I have had to slightly edit it to protect the innocent but it is well worth reading - particularly because it makes some excellent points about the risks and how Steve in effect ‘compartmentalises’ his Gambling and Investing activities.
Thanks Steve !! WD.
It is Saturday night and I am running really late after spending far too much time out in the Jardin De Wheelie clearly up the remains of my Vegetable production and with a particularly tedious emphasis on sorting out deceased Tomato Plants and their Pots - I am of course getting a bit twitchy that Winter Frosts are not far away and the last thing someone as stingy as myself wants to do is spend hard earned Quids on new Plastic Pots.
I am out socialising for most of tomorrow (Readers will be stunned to hear I am not expecting to be visiting a PUB) so it is a Saturday Night Special and I will try to rip through it quite quickly. There are some Stock Charts I want to visit and the Indexes strike me as being near some sort of Turning Point and I want to dig into this.
This blog has come about as a direct result of Wheelie’s Summer Bash which was on Saturday 23rd September when a load of us met up in a Boozer local to me. If you take notice of my Twitter Feed, you may have spotted that at the End of each Day (usually around 5pm to 7pm ish) I do a Report via a Tweet of how my Portfolio Value has changed during the Day and the larger ‘DOWN’ and ‘UP’ movements of that day for the relevant Stocks. On a Friday I report the numbers for the Day but I also show the Weekly Result for my UK Portfolio and Spreadbets.
On a few occasions over the last 3 years I have been asked by a Twitter Follower what the Numbers actually mean and I have given a fairly full response on the whole I think but obviously the 140 Character limitations of Tweets probably leaves many People just as bemused as before I tried to answer !!
Phew, that is September out of the way - this is historically the worst month on average so for us to have got through pretty much unscathed (apart from the odd cuts and bruises perhaps) is quite something. I covered October in last weekend’s Charts Blog (you can find it if you scroll down the Blog page in theory) but it tends to be an OK month and is ranked 5th Best of the Year. The only caveat is that some of the really nasty Biggest Falls for the Stockmarket took place in October - so this sort of taints its otherwise good record (the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the 1987 ‘Black Monday’ both transpired in October).
It is a bit of a double relief for me as I had a really pleasant turnaround for my Portfolio last week. From pretty much Monday through to Thursday I was bleeding Money every day, especially because my Biggest Holding BOO had a big drop, but by the Close on Friday I managed to eke out a small Gain of 0.25% - so I was pretty pleased about that (yet again a triumph for Diversity). |
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