The FTSE 100 rose nicely at the beginning of the week only to drop back below 6000 and by close of play on Friday it was up just 10 points up on the week.
There were articles out there talking about how at one point the market had risen "23%" from the low on 23rd March.
While this is technically true, it certainly doesn't mean that anyone has actually caught that 23%.
Very doubtful that many people were deciding to buy heavily the day that the market dropped below 5,000. Fewer still would have bought in the very short amount of time the market was below 5,000 and then sold when the market temporarily went above 6,000.
It makes for a nice article but no-one catches all of these moves.
Briefly the FTSE 100 was back over its 50 day simple moving average but the next day it returned below.
The only strategy I feel confident with at the moment is waiting. I wait, monitor my two little positions and add cash to my LISA when I have the money available.
My hope is that I will look back in several years and be thankful I waited.
Here's the status of the vastly-reduced LM portfolio this week:
| Code | Sector | Date Bought | Cost | Value | Gain/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LM009 LM009-2 |
Gas, Water & Multiutilities | 05/02/2019 04/02/2020 |
£2020 | £1990 | (1.69%) |
| LM012 LM012-2 |
Real Estate Investment Trusts | 20/05/2019 28/11/2019 |
£2030 | £2250 | 10.74% |
Watching the actions of various companies during this "pandemic" has been interesting. We've got airlines - specifically Easyjet - who are offering refunds for cancelled flights but putting up huge barriers by forcing customers to call in to get these refunds. Obviously the phone lines are being hammered so it's very difficult to get through.
Surely if a flight is cancelled then the airline has the ability to simply refund all the passengers immediately? The only reason I can see for them making it difficult is that they don't have the money available to refund which means they have spent it. That's not good...
Closer to home I had an issue with a hotel in London. We'd booked and paid for two nights but then the PM said there should be no non-essential travel.
In short there was no way we could travel to London over Easter weekend whether we wanted to or not. Surely the hotel would just refund the money?
No.
They offered to move the dates - providing we paid the difference. Certainly not a reasonable offer by anyone's measure.
After many, many phonecalls and emails and a lot of wasted time on both sides they finally saw sense and refunded the money.
All they accomplished was ensuring we would never, ever book a room from Leonardo Hotels ever again. Pure stupidity at a time when companies in the leisure industry really do need to keep their customers happy. When life returns to normal these hotels will need as many bookings as possible.
People don't forget and going forward I will prefer to pay more to stay elsewhere than ever give a penny to Leonardo Hotels. I bet I'm not the only one.