LM portfolio as at 15/10/2021:
| Code | Sector | Date Bought | Cost | Value | Gain/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LM026 LM026-2 LM026-3 |
ETF | 14/10/2020 09/12/2020 06/07/2021 |
£3430 | £3810 | 11.28% |
| LM028 LM028-2 |
'No specific industry' | 16/11/2020 10/08/2021 |
£2280 | £2760 | 21.18% |
| LM033 LM033-2 |
Health Care Equipment & Services | 04/01/2021 03/08/2021 |
£2320 | £2450 | 5.94% |
| LM034 | Food & Drug Retailers | 18/01/2021 | £1020 | £1250 | 21.87% |
| LM035 | Food Producers | 19/01/2021 | £1040 | £1100 | 5.80% |
| LM037 LM037-2 |
Life Insurance | 03/03/2021 05/07/2021 |
£2290 | £2460 | 7.62% |
| LM038 | Banks | 10/03/2021 | £1020 | £1240 | 21.17% |
| LM039 | Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology | 30/03/2021 | £1030 | £1100 | 7.14% |
| LM040 | General Financial | 27/04/2021 | £1020 | £1260 | 23.18% |
| LM041 | Real Estate Investment Trusts | 27/07/2021 | £1270 | £1340 | 5.69% |
| LM042 | Construction & Materials | 27/07/2021 | £1270 | £1300 | 2.41% |
| LM043 | ETF | 27/09/2021 | £1260 | £1340 | 6.56% |
| LM044 | Support Services | 27/09/2021 | £1270 | £1210 | (4.51%) |
Another week, another example of a company potentially frustrating its customers by using Facebook to run its business online.
It's easy to understand why someone might do this. First of all it's free to add a business to Facebook and the setup likely only takes minutes. Secondly, everyone in the world appears to use the site so your customers are already there.
Except the ones who aren't.
There are many customers who are inconvenienced if your only online presence is on so-called "social media".
Look back 15 years and there were countless top quality websites which web surfers may have browsed on a regular basis. Content sites and forums would be examples of frequently visited sites.
Unfortunately this has now changed and the "world wide web" probably boils down to half a dozen sites - FB, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Reddit, the Daily Mail website and one or two others.
And these sites aren't even being visited on a PC via Internet Explorer anymore but via apps on smartphones.
The majority of traffic is going to a handful of sites so it's easy to see why new businesses don't set up a website but go straight to social media and set up some kind of free page.
However, it's very short-sighted.
There isn't just the problem of people not being able to contact them, or even read their content, unless they have an account on the same site. There's also a huge looming issue in that if you run your business on Facebook then Facebook ultimately decides whether your business remains online or not.
At any moment they could pull the plug.
You're banned, your page is closed down and all your content is gone. Just like that.
It is absolute madness that any business would rely on another website for its online presence.
The only way I would ever consider using social media in relation to a business is to make social media posts which all point back to a website that I owned and controlled.
Use these "social media" sites to forward traffic to yourself and an online website that you control. Take the traffic and immediately move it to your site. Take advantage of the popularity of Facebook/Twitter/Instagram and then at least when they ban you, you will still have something to show for all your effort.
I'm not saying it's a good idea to have your real personal details spread all over social media sites, it's not, it's a terrible idea.
But if you can find a way to syphon off visitors from their websites and take them to yours without releasing a lot of your identifiable data then it may make sense.
Go back to 2000 and tell a web surfer that in the future people would put all their data on to a site like Facebook and they would think you were mad.
But people do put all kinds of very important personal data onto Facebook and don't even think twice about it.
And it is completely mad.
The LM portfolio
No change in the holdings of the portfolio this week but we did see a decent increase in the FTSE 100 to take it to the highest level since all the pandemic silliness kicked off.
This affects the LM fund as it is almost all UK shares so if the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 increase then the portfolio value should increase.
As we come towards the end of the year we can sometimes see the stock market gaining in value. Let's hope 2021 is no exception.