LM portfolio as at 02/08/2024:
| Code | Sector | Date Bought | Cost | Value | Gain/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LM055 LM055-2 LM055-3 |
General Financial | 11/01/2023 02/05/2023 20/12/2023 |
£3850 | £6140 | 59.63% |
| LM058 LM058-2 LM058-3 |
Support Services | 17/01/2023 20/07/2023 23/04/2024 |
£4060 | £4760 | 17.33% |
| LM061 LM061-2 LM061-3 |
Aerospace & Defense | 20/02/2023 13/10/2023 08/02/2024 |
£3820 | £4620 | 20.86% |
| LM071 LM071-2 LM071-3 |
Construction & Materials | 24/07/2023 22/09/2023 29/01/2024 |
£3840 | £5440 | 41.52% |
| LM078 | Banks | 03/01/2024 | £1270 | £1450 | 14.70% |
| LM079 | No specific Industry | 22/02/2024 | £1270 | £1590 | 25.18% |
| LM080 | Media | 27/02/2024 | £1290 | £1290 | (0.11%) |
I'm putting this page together at 0900 and as I "speak" the crypto markets are plummeting - Bitcoin down 12.58%, Ethereum down 18.26%, Ripple down 13.98%. The UK stock market has opened around an hour ago and the FTSE 100 is down 2% and looking like it may drop below 8,000. Something is going on... but I've no idea what.
The UK job market is very weak at the moment, if you hadn't already heard.
For those of you who are gainfully employed and well paid, please do realise how lucky you are. It's no fun being out of work for four months with no realistic job opportunities on the horizon.
There's a massive hiring freeze and many companies and organisations are taking part whether they have officially announced it or not.
On my last day in my NHS contract role back in March I took a peek at the incident queue that I would no longer be looking after and wondered what kind of state it would be in in the near future - say one month down the line.
Three of us were leaving that day and while my two colleagues had "quietly quit" a few week before, I had steadily carried on doing my best to clear up what I could before I finally logged off and posted the laptop back.
The department I worked for - IT - was a cost and the word had come down from above; costs must be reduced by 30% across the board, immediately. Now that didn't mean that 30% of people would be made redundant and as far as I am aware no-one was let go but things were about to change drastically in order to make those savings.
First of all every proposed project that wasn't absolutely necessary was cancelled. So those 3 new members of staff on one year fixed term contracts were now surplus to requirements. Thanks for your time, we are sorry but goodbye.
Next, the service provided by IT would have to change if it can't charge as much going forward. Service Level Agreements will need to be revisited... timescales for incident resolution will have to be increased... users will have no choice but to adapt. Issues will take much longer to be resolved. Cutbacks will be required - that software you use daily is very expensive and it might be that we need to change to something cheaper or get rid of it altogether.
We won't be able to afford that on-site server anymore so processes may take a little longer as there is a round-trip to a datacentre to take into account. Those new service desk vacancies have been removed from the website as there isn't anything in the budget for them so it will take longer for someone to answer the phone.
If I could see the ticket queue now I imagine there are dozens if not hundreds of unassigned, unviewed and breached tickets, long out of SLA. Of course, those SLAs will have changed remarkably to accommodate the cut in costs. You get what you pay for afterall.
Many months ago I talked about the concept of "passive income" and a monthly newsletter I used to receive on the subject. I browsed through the 12 issues I had but wasn't blown away by much of it.
Take, for example, issue number 7 from July 2006. Here's a gist of what's inside the 12 page newsletter:
- Invest in buy-to-let residential properties in areas which "look promising" like Walsall, Accrington and Middlesborough.
- 19% per annum returns investing in fine wines
- Uncover "buy-low bargains" on eBay
- Find value bets on Australian football matches
- HOT SHARE BUY: "Buy Flying Brands"
- Get paid for your opinions - join an online survey site
- Profit from ads on the sides of your car
- The truth about those red-hot penny shares and how to profit from them
- Why Mothercare is a good steady-eddy investment for any share portfolio
- Consider investing in guaranteed income bonds instead of equities
Whilst the newsletter was an interesting read, there was a lack of any innovative ideas about how you could make a great deal of passive income.
Buying items on the cheap and selling for more on eBay isn't "passive" - neither is betting on Aussie football or filling in online surveys.
Of course, investing in shares that pay a dividend can often provide good passive income but not so much investing in fine wines as there is no income, only potential gains if the value of the wine increases over time.
As for filling in online surveys - that's a long, drawn out process that pays out very poorly - and that's only if you actually qualify to take the survey. I wouldn't bother.
One of the most lucrative methods I once used for true "passive income" was to set up pay per click adverts to point to affiliate links. A good example was a spread-betting company who would pay £100 in commission if you referred a customer who opened a real-money account (as opposed to a "virtual" or practise account - which they paid £5 to you for).
I would target good keywords and run adverts on Google and a site that existed back 15+ years ago called "Overture" to send people through my affiliate link. Provided my advertising cost was less than the amount I received in commission then I made a monthly passive income from the adverts I ran.
There was a little work to do in research at the beginning and then some more work in setting up the adverts but once you got that right, it was a case of just leaving the adverts to run and monitoring it weekly or monthly to make sure it was still profitable.
That was a very good method of creating true "no effort" income.
The Google PPC landscape is completely different nowadays and also the world wide web looks completely different to how it was in 2005/2006 so I very much doubt it would work in the same format anymore.
However, I imagine there is a way of tweaking this for 2024 that likely involves social media websites and/or videos. I do see a lot of extremely annoying video adverts on YouTube where some cheesy presenter starts immediately chirping his/her nonsense into the camera whilst desperately trying to keep you from clicking "Skip Ad". There's a little workaround so you don't have to wait the 6 seconds or so for the skip option to appear: look for a little "i" button, click on that and then click on "Block Ad". Once you have blocked the ad and closed the window, the YouTube video should play immediately.
So, in short, when I did this in 2005 and 2006 it went like: Google Adwords Ad > Affiliate Link > Commission.
That worked well for a couple of years and for the enterprising person who is willing to risk a bit of time and money then I'm sure there is a similar process you can use here in 2024.
1043 now and the FTSE 100 is down at 7994...