LM portfolio as at 10/09/2021:
| Code | Sector | Date Bought | Cost | Value | Gain/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LM026 LM026-2 LM026-3 |
ETF | 14/10/2020 09/12/2020 06/07/2021 |
£3430 | £3970 | 15.93% |
| LM028 LM028-2 |
'No specific industry' | 16/11/2020 10/08/2021 |
£2280 | £2810 | 23.18% |
| LM032 LM032-2 |
Industrial Transportation | 07/12/2020 20/01/2021 |
£2070 | £2650 | 28.50% |
| LM033 LM033-2 |
Health Care Equipment & Services | 04/01/2021 03/08/2021 |
£2320 | £2640 | 14.10% |
| LM034 | Food & Drug Retailers | 18/01/2021 | £1020 | £1230 | 20.72% |
| LM035 | Food Producers | 19/01/2021 | £1040 | £1210 | 16.34% |
| LM037 LM037-2 |
Life Insurance | 03/03/2021 05/07/2021 |
£2290 | £2660 | 16.30% |
| LM038 | Banks | 10/03/2021 | £1020 | £1100 | 7.39% |
| LM039 | Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology | 30/03/2021 | £1030 | £1170 | 13.87% |
| LM040 | General Financial | 27/04/2021 | £1020 | £1070 | 4.50% |
| LM041 | Real Estate Investment Trusts | 27/07/2021 | £1270 | £1330 | 4.58% |
| LM042 | Construction & Materials | 27/07/2021 | £1270 | £1430 | 12.73% |
Unfortunately, the LISA Millionaire experiment is far from my first experience with trading.
It's fair to say I have made a few disasterous attempts at building up a bank in the past.
Back in the mid-2000s I managed to lose several hundred pounds of a small bank with an ill-disciplined attempt at "trading" on Betonmarkets and using the spreadbetting platform Finspreads. Both sites have long since been rebranded or taken over so mercifully I am unable to log in and view the horrendous records. I doubt that viewing them would teach me much 15 years on anyway.
From what I can remember - and it has to come from memory because I had no trading plan and kept no real records - my largest loss came from a punt on Betonmarkets. I made a 3-figure bet that Gold would hit a certain level within a short timeframe.
Let's pretend the Gold price was supposed to hit $430 within a week. The bet cost £500 and the payout was probably £800. My profit would be £300.
This was long before iPhones were available and at this time I didn't have internet access at work. The only way I would know if the bet had worked would be if I got a text to tell me that Gold had hit the magic level.
So all day, every day for a week I got excited whenever I received a text only to be disappointed when I read it. As you have probably deduced, the bet lost and my £500 disappeared.
Shortly after that there was a daft spread bet on the Pound/Dollar exchange rate, also known as "Cable".
My main memory of this trade was checking my voicemails at work and discovering the meaning of the phrase "margin call".
I had opened a position that was far too large for my account size and quickly gone into a hole when the currency rudely went in the wrong direction. As soon as I was back at a PC I did something sensible - I closed the position immediately and swallowed another large loss. Then I withdrew what little I had left of my trading bank and forgot about trading for a while.
Maybe two years later I tried again. This time I completely ignored Betonmarkets and concentrated on spreadbetting only. I pulled the plug after losing just over half my bank in 6 months.
Finally, I traded, again via spreadbets, for nearly 3 years and had mixed results.
In the end I made about 18% return over the 3 years and kept very detailed records. The return would've been much higher but I made some rash decisions towards the end of this period, quickly losing a good chunk of the bank.
The main takeaway from this last trading period was that I was able to keep the winning trades open and quickly close the losing trades. And by doing this my bank slowly grew.
It was far from "get rich quick" but I could see that a disciplined approach to trading could pay off.
And now, around 17 years after the first of those failed trading attempts, the LM portfolio is chugging along.
Speaking of which, there are no new positions since the previous update. The only position which may need some input is LM032 because it has weakened noticably over the last few weeks. It is perilously close to being closed and this may well happen at some point this week.
Should this position be closed, the funds that are freed up will then likely be used immediately as I can see some opportunities in my weekly checks.