All the positions are treading water at present - no big up or down movements - here's the state of the LM portfolio as at the close of play on the 19th June 2020:
| Code | Sector | Date Bought | Cost | Value | Gain/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LM009 LM009-2 |
Gas, Water & Multiutilities | 05/02/2019 04/02/2020 |
£2020 | £2120 | 4.93% |
| LM012 LM012-2 |
Real Estate Investment Trusts | 20/05/2019 28/11/2019 |
£2030 | £2450 | 20.69% |
| LM023 | ETF | 19/05/2020 | £1020 | £1010 | (0.92%) |
| LM024 | ETC | 01/06/2020 | £1010 | £1120 | 10.58% |
And here's a great blog post - Chris Reining comments on how his stock trading account now has a 7 figure balance but there was no fanfare, no fireworks went off. One evening he logged in and noticed that that he was now a millionaire.
Becoming a Millionaire Is a Letdown
Fantastic.
I look forward to seeing the same thing in my account one day!
Whilst I should've just ignored the comments I went ahead and read them. As I imagined, it was a mistake.
It's difficult to understand why some people have to whinge, or find some issue with Chris's achievement. This is an ordinary individual investor who has made a huge return on his investments. I want to know how he did it but others just want to belittle his feat. Here's the comment that stuck out for me:
"Solid but I think it's also important to note a lot of your gains were just the luck of investing in the most lucrative bull market rally for the past 5-6 years"
It's not "luck".
He was investing at the time he was investing - not in the future and not in the past. He was buying when he was buying so he got the results he got. How was he to know it was a bull market? There was no way of knowing that at the time. Only afterwards can you look back with hindsight and see what kind of market you were in. Chris was smart enough to keep on buying and obviously whatever technique or method he decided to follow worked very, very well so hat's off to him.
Who's to say that the next "5-6 years" won't be an even bigger bull market?
And if I was to make lots of good returns over that time does this lessen my achievement because the market is rising?
There's a saying in football (although I suppose it's valid in most sports): "you can only beat the team that is put in front of you".
The league leaders don't always beat the minnows but when they do it's still an accomplishment.
As I see it our job as investors is to work with what we have to try and grow our portfolios. It makes little sense to try and lessen someone's fantastic achievement simply because you feel they did it in a rising market.
The stock market is designed to go up, that's its job.
Downturns or stock market crashes are not as frequent as people may feel they are so the vast majority of the time the market will go up and over the long term we can be confident it is going to rise.
I'm going to continue reading Chris's site as hopefully there's some solid gold investing advice waiting to be found. Sadly there are also some pretty daft comments lurking there but that's the internet for you.