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Services. 2024-09-09 14:59:32 - Paul D. Foy - Trading I read comment advocating Marks & Spencer as a good investment, which I broadly concurred with. However the strategy to benefit from M&S's good prospects was suggested that I should take a long OPTION on their shares. That is (for a small price) agree to buy their shares in the future at today's price. Thus if the shares rise appreciably I shall do well and would have a geared investment because the sum put up to achieve the appreciation is much less than the share price I would have to pay to own the shares. Presumably there will be some mug somewhere that loses out. But if the shares go down I lose heavily. I didn't do this, I bought the same number of shares directly (as I believe in the investment). To me this trading is gambling, and how far does one take it - do I buy options on the option for even less and have an even more leveraged investment. There is usually a time limit to these options so if things go wrong - you are not left holding the same share of the Company (it's just worth less but that might be temporary). One could argue that you need less capital to do this - but that's poor form its like borrowing money to buy a property only to rent it out to someone else to pay your mortgage - you don't really have the money you are just putting the burden on someone else. So I think 'investing', being a shareholder does have responsibilities. I should add that I have traded by buying and selling a wildly fluctuating share price when I thought some kind of irrational exuberance had inflated or depressed the share price beyond reasonableness. But I've usually done this with the same share, one that I own and one I end up owning some of going forward. You've got to start small and cautiously, there's no escaping that I feel. About £1000. 2026-05-10 10:34:36 - Paul D. Foy - Perhaps a simpler term to understand is the APR (Annual Percentage Rate) of the investment. This is the formulae: 100 * (StartValue-EndValue)/(TimeInYears * StartValue) %. The AER tends to over egg short trades. My APR was 16%, weighted over all stocks for the 24 years, were I had sold them at some point. I think this is not too bad. I enjoyed the investment. The software is now available on my website. My advice (with hindsight) is to keep simple records of your investments (buy, sells, rights issues, splits, amalgamations, bankruptcies). You can do this with this software. 2026-05-08 13:21:30 - Paul D. Foy - I'll make the software doing this available so the working man can do what I've done - managing my money whilst doing a completely different job. Anybody can do the same, just making judgements about what has potential and when that potential has run its course or is over hyped. Anybody can do it. Just start with one stock with about £1000. Of course if you are a professional investor, you are handling much bigger amounts and your actions can distort the market. You need to know the Chairman of the Companies in that case. 2026-05-08 10:33:00 - Paul D. Foy - I have completed the inputting of the buy and sells of my ISA portfolio since 2002 (541 entries) and have computed the average weighted AER of the CAPITAL return (that is a good return of a large amount of money is more significant than a bad return of a small amount of money etc. ). No account of income or dividends is included. The trading involved both equities and gilts. I have ommited returns where I closed the position within about 10 days (these returns would have been enormous as they were inevitably gains (that is why I closed the position as I believed the behaviour was out of all kilter with any fundamental measure)). I have ommited instance of stock splits or amalgamations as I generally dont't have the record of it, and I would have to do a lot of research to find out what it was. These could be either positive or negative - for example F&C regularly does stock splits to keep the price reasonable for the private investor. There are about 50 un-closed positions to date, including one or two bankrupt or near bankrupt stocks. This is a working return - an AER. The return from 2002 to now (08-05-2026) is 25%. 2026-05-08 06:03:43 - Paul D. Foy - Were I to include them the figures would be completely distorted to the positive by enormous returns from a few holdings that I bought and sold within a few days. I have also ommitted by a few results which are altered by stock splits, which I have not the records of. These may be positive or negative. 2026-05-07 17:14:34 - Paul D. Foy - The figures of amazing AERs are squired by a few investments that were held for a short time that appreciated markedly in that short time and then sold. This is not my typical strategy - but if there are mugs about, then watch out!. 2026-05-07 11:34:23 - Paul D. Foy - I'm feeling like Foreign & Colonial, the investment trust, and I should write a book on my 26 years of investing. There's some revealing experiences. How about a bond I bought from a French bank, Societie Generale that I held for a few weeks and then sold for about a 600% AER!. Now bonds are bought for their stable income (the coupon or interest rate) and this is what attracted me to these predominantly. Yet I sold this one, foregoing the interest because of the large capital appreciation. I remember they were marketed as 'autocorrelators' or something. Who is the loser to my gains!. Its not me, the community where I am, or those things I get involved in. It's probably a series of people that made bad decisions, the poor buyers and sellers. It's not the broker, there getting a steady income out of the trading. It's probably not the market maker, creating the buy/sell demand taking a small cut in the price spread - unless there is a buyers strike and he is left with the bonds, having bought them at a high price for them to redeem at par. I very much doubt it is the bank they have budgeted for paying a steady coupon over a time period (unless they run into trouble because of their capital ratios or something). So its a series of mugs as I said before. I remember conversations with my broker over these things at that time when he described the issuer as giving money away (it was a very good coupon, because the price was low) - but did he say that to all his clients buying one of those? What a laugh, investing fun!. 2026-05-06 17:26:12 - Paul D. Foy - Today I made some enhancements to my 'Portfolio' software to enable it to calculate the AER of an individual investment and indeed the weighted average AER of a group of investments. The hard work was actually the data entry of the stocks in my portfolio into the software - I've still got some way to go. The calculation was a click of a button, once I had wired up the underlying Newton Raphson technique. It revealed some interesting phenomena of my strategy, my life, and my investing life. For the first 10 years of serious investing (there was much dabbling before, as a very young man and also intrusting myself to open ended funds), from 2002 to 2012 my portfolio investments, that I managed myself, retuned an average AER of about 36%!!. So I was a trader! And what does this mean I sold a share to some mug who thought it was undervalued at the high price and bought it back from another mug at a lower price, who thought it would go down. I am wealthy on the back of the (generally) other wealthy mugs. But as I said in the opening comment I generally ended up holding some shares of those I traded as I thought the investment was a good, sound, ethical ones. A salutory lesson in life. Hang about with people you agree with or share your values, and who are doing positive things - or you might get ripped off, if you disagree with them or are holding the contrary opinion. Hang about with positive people, buy when they buy and sell when they sell :). Perhaps, as I've said before, I should offer to manage the country's pension fund, or to be a fund manager (I tried that once, I think it was in about 1995). Also I didn't write all this software to monitor things, to keep records of my portfolio when I was younger, because I was too busy working, doing work for my Companies even in the evening sometimes(which I was called a mug for!). 2024-09-13 11:26:42 - Paul D. Foy - As St. Ledger's day approaches the serious investor should by now be fully invested. For the gentry are returning from harvesting their crops, a flush with ready cash, and beginning to speculate on stocks and horses. There is a general adage sell in May and come back on St Ledger's day. But the wise will operate counter cyclically to this to better profit from this trend. The St Ledger event was initiated in the late 1700s in Doncaster (shortly after it's magnificent mansion house was completed), and is a race for thoroughbred colts and fillies. Notable participants early on were the Marquis of Rockingham and the 4th Earl FitzWilliam (of the imposing Wentworth Woodhouse estate). Post a comment: |