Wednesday 31 May 2017

Wednesday 31 May - Market Report

Bit of a bounce today, the portfolio is up +£261.63

So how did the rest do? Mostly neutral but the way is up which is okay by me.

Here are the winners
  GlaxoSmithKline PLC
GSK:LSE


£13,838.80 +1.82% +11.19% +38.76%
+£247.77
  Tritax Big Box Reit PLC
BBOX:LSE


£11,264.97 +1.17% +6.55% +12.55%
+£129.8


and the losers
Marks and Spencer Group PLC
MKS:LSE


£3,916.80 -1.14% +4.34% -12.87%
-£45.06


iShares £ Index-Linked Gilts UCITS ETF GBP (Dist)
INXG:LSE:GBP


£10,550.26 -1.22% -1.83% -2.95%
-£130.39

Tuesday 30 May 2017

Tuesday 30 May 2017 - Market report

Finally a bit of a fall in the markets today, I lost -£1,312.60

Not too bad and nothing to get concerned about, people are sellin to capture the huge gains over the last few weeks and I gues the Election doesn't help, FTSE100 was down 21 and the FTSE250 down 33, hardly anything

My Winners
  Associated British Foods plc
ABF:LSE


£4,804.24 +1.15% +6.19% +6.84%
+£54.74
  GlaxoSmithKline PLC
GSK:LSE


£13,591.03 +1.79% +9.20% +36.27%
+£239.65
By value
 GlaxoSmithKline PLC
GSK:LSE


£13,591.03 +1.79% +9.20% +36.27%
+£239.65

and Losers
  Imperial Brands PLC
IMB:LSE


£12,554.10 -1.98% -3.93% +79.96%
-£254.04
  Murray International Trust Plc
MYI:LSE


£6,804.14 -1.19% +2.46% +36.14%
-£81.78
By Value
  iShares Core MSCI World UCITS ETF USD (Acc)
SWDA:LSE:GBX





-£624.61

 
And thats it for now, month end tomorrow when I take my snapshot of how things are doing.

Monday 29 May 2017

How to start investing (not saving)

This is for all of you who are nervous or don't know how to invest.

Basically a passive portfolio works - don't be fooled into thinking an active portfolio or fund would be better. You pay more for any active fund or tracker for no benefit. And don't think a small differecne in costs won't matter, it will. A 1% differecne in costs can ad up to many tens of thousands of pound difference over time.

So thats the style of investing decided, passive, next is how to diversify so you don't get hit with a massive loss when things start heading south. 

To do that you need to have some equities (i.e. shares or stocks) and some bonds.

And to just diversify a bit more add a bit of cash and some property.

So thats it four items in your passive portfolio.

So how do you do this.

Well I use TD Direct Investing and I only invest in ETF's, very cheap and no fees from TD.

And which ETFs should you pick. This is picked straight from Monevator

3. Rick Ferri’s Core Four Portfolio

Asset class Asset allocation Fund name OCF
Domestic equity 36% Vanguard FTSE UK Equity Index 0.15%5
Developed world 18% Vanguard FTSE Dev World ex-UK Equity Index 0.3%
Property 6% BlackRock Global Property Securities Equity Tracker D 0.28%
Government bonds (Gilts) 40% Vanguard UK Government Bond Index 0.15%

Ferri’s 60:40 split between equities and bonds is another common convention, broadly indicating a portfolio set for moderate growth and volatility.

I've gone for different mix and I've gone down a 60% Global Equity SWDA, 20% Bonds split 10% short term and 20% Index linked, and then 20% in property, 15% global property and 5% UK property.

And thats all there is to it.

Rebalance each year when you top up your ISA, you're allowed £20k per person per year, so a couple can shelter £40k from any tax each year.

There is an even simpler way, and that would be to buy Vanguards Lifestrategy fund, they vary in their mix of Equities to bonds, the Lifestrategy 60 fund is 60% equity and 40% bonds. You can see the mix when you check out it's portfolio.

This is an ultra cheap way of setting up your portfolio and I think works just as well as building one yourself, but there is certain amount of satisfaction in the DIY method, probably totally un-justified.

So don't hang about, just get on with it.

Property vs Pensions

The usual old conundrum, property or pensions - which way should you go?

Well we all need to live somewhere so you're going to either rent or buy. 

If you buy, don't do it to provide a pension in later years, buy because you like the property, and it suits your needs.

So it's a pension then and in actual fact a pension beats property hands down, and an article in last weeks Sunday Times has the detail.

It all came about from Andy Haldane, you know who I mean, he's the cheif economist for The Bank of England, and last year he said property was almost certainly better than a pension. Now you need to understand he will get a pension from BoE of £84,000/year when he retires so it seems an odd statement.

So the ST looked into it and this is the result of their Propert V Pensions since 2008


                    Property Wealth Growth       Pension Wealth Grwth
Southwest   22%                                       92%  
Southeast    26%                                       74% 
London        50%                                       52%

Northwest   -1%                                        69%


So there we have it - go with a pension, but only after you've decided whether to rent of buy - good luck

Another Bank Holiday and it's raining

It's a bit damp outside, but that's given me a chance to try something out on DEGIRO - a really cost effective online dealing platform https://www.degiro.co.uk/


I've used the tips from Simon Thompson of Investors Chronicle - here he has a 'bargain portfilio' - http://tinyurl.com/y89hzhdd

I've followed this, buying about £100 of each, I've not actually bought all of these, in later columns Simon sets new criteria, so I've dropped a few recomendations, and added others.

This is what I've done:
Share                  ISIN    QTY   PRICE(p) TOTAL(£)
====================== ====    ===   =======  ========= 
BowLeven Plc           BLVN    335   30.00    100.50
Avingtrans Plc         AVG     50    238.00   119.00
TISO BLACKSTAR         TBGR    170   61.00    103.70
Cenkos Securities Plc  CNKS    100   100.00   100.00
Bioquell Plc           BQE     60    166.00   99.60
Electrocomponents      ECM     9     555.00   49.95 (Note 1)
easyHotel              EZH     100   99.00    99.00


Note 1: Not in the list but I'm topping up an earlier purchase to £100

So this experiment is about investing about £1,000 in tem stocks and a few others to see how it works. If sucessful I'll go large and start investing £1,000 in each sstock, or maybe more, or maybe some form of weighting.

It's only a bit of fun but may be quite profitable, the only trouble is that everything is going up, even a monkey with apin could make money now - notice how monkey and money are very similar, one has a K
The reason I'm using DEGIRO is because  it's so cheap to trade, about £2 a trade - using TD Direct Investing it would cost £about £14 for each trade, not cost effective for just a few shares
 
Some alternatives for cost effective trading could be iWeb or x-o, about £6 a trade.

                                       
http://www.iweb-sharedealing.co.uk                    http://www.x-o.co.uk/


So the choice is yours - if you decide to go down the DEGIRO route let me know and I'll send you a link that will give a bit more discount. 

Happy trading everyone.