With Autoinvest about to land I thought I’d share my plans on how I intend to build my portfolio and a but about my previous trading.
My first trade
My first ever share trade was in a company called Ramco Energy PLC (LSE:ROS). Ramco were an oil company based in Scotland who managed to bag a lucrative deal with the Iraqi Drilling Company for oil exploration in Iraq. I had been following the company for a while and decided to take the plunge just before the joint venture was announced. I sold on the news of the JV and made a decent profit. The company subsequently failed to raise the funds and lost the JV contract.
My next major investment was in a company called Baobab Resources (LSE:BAO). Baobab were a mining explorer based in Mozambique. They had a huge resource in the Tete Province. They subsequently went on to sell the company to Redbird, a subsidiary of African Minerals & Development.
Current investments
Along the way I have traded in a number of companies mainly oil and mining. Two companies I have investments in are Gulf Keystone Petroleum and Amur Minerals. These are companies with great prospects and I will continue to hold them in my portfolio going forward.
Future plans with Autoinvest
I don’t have time to day trade and looking back it is fair to say amongst my winning trades I have had a number of costly losers as well. Had I simply invested my money in an index tracker I would be significantly in profit. That is why my investing strategy has changed. I favour ETFs over individual stocks because finding the right needle in a haystack is not easy. I am still relatively young (in my 30s) so have a high level of risk tolerance and am prepared to have a significant exposure to equities. This is how I plan to build my Autoinvest portfolio (this isn’t set in stone and I will adjust):
Very good point I must admit I was swithering about them and definitely the first out of all my investments to ditch. At the moment I’m content but I’m mindful that q2 could be choppy and things could quickly change.
I’d have preferred most to be at least BBB but I suppose you don’t get the highest yield with the investment grade bonds.
But yes definitely watching the underlying performance!
I am trying to seek the smallest risk for the maximum gain.
I strictly trade ETF’s for the diversification and simplicity.
( SWDA / VUSA / VFEM / ISF / VMID / VJPN / VEUR / IUHC + REIT’s ( IWDP / IUKP / IPRP ) )
Global and US having the largest segment of my portfolio, the others roughly 2 - 5 % each.
I have a play money allocation of a couple of grand for individual stock picks, but honestly every time I buy them I always feel it would be better put to use in an ETF.
Mainly in cash right now (70%), the rest bought on the lows of this year.
I am also mainly cash, I guess that we may miss out on the rise, but its a risk that I guess I will have to accept. I would rather miss out on rise than invest now and see investments halving.
You can find a couple of content on YouTube showing with real data from 2000 and 2008 that being out of the market (cash) has no benefits on long term holding during the downturns, since is 99,99% guaranteed that you will miss the bottom and the top anyway.
I will try to find some of them in my account history.
We had nice practice course in March. Setting up limit orders with 5-10% price drops gives a nice buffer that you dont overbuy before it drops bottom and still makes sure you get decent chunk even if it doesnt go all the way down.
I cought few drops of 80% at absolute bottom. So I wouldn’t say it is 99% chance to miss bottom…
So by your logic if I bought shares at 18$ it will bring same returns over years to the purchase of same stock at 3.3$ per share?
Makes sense…
Ofc I didn’t catch absolute bottom which was 86% discount, non is aiming this, but I rather buy at 83% discount then at full price…
As the absolute bottom was 2.65$, my average price is 3.3$, High price before Covid was 18.97$.
I think it was a good deal, already 146% up on that one…
It’s not what I said
If you have a lump sum to invest only once, ofc nobody will buy a stock very close to all time high (Tesla believers, don’t read this), the point is that in big drops scenarios, catch the absolute bottom is mostly a betting thing than anything else, and if you do a sort of “dollar cost average” during the bear market, the overall return on long term will be very similar that close to the bottom
Image if you have bought at 80% instead 86%… over 10 years… 15 years… how much difference it would be in the overall return?
It depends 100% on how long do you plan to hold that equity, bigger the time, less relevant is how much close to the bottom you bought it
@krr13 what you feel AMC doing over the next month or so. I accidentally bought some, and I’m waiting for it to break even before selling. I can’t see any reason why it should be going up anytime soon, what’s your timescale you see in this moving significantly?
Also do you know what this peak and dump was about? I’m struggling to make a connection to news. I won’t mind keeping if it wants to do that again to 2p otherwise it looks like a dead duck.
