LM portfolio as at 11/10/2024:
| 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 | £6900 | 79.21% |
| LM058 LM058-2 LM058-3 |
Support Services | 17/01/2023 20/07/2023 23/04/2024 |
£4060 | £4740 | 16.74% |
| LM071 LM071-2 LM071-3 |
Construction & Materials | 24/07/2023 22/09/2023 29/01/2024 |
£3840 | £4820 | 25.37% |
| LM079 | No specific Industry | 22/02/2024 | £1270 | £1650 | 29.93% |
At the point of the last update back in September 2024 I had seven open trades. Today that is down to just 4.
As I previously covered, unfortunately I was forced to sell some positions and make withdrawals from the LISA in order to pay the mortgage and bills as I am still without full-time permanent employment.
The situation isn't completely dire though as for the last few weeks I have been able to work with a local company to perform a large scale data migration that has been very successful and has also paid very well.
So this temporary day-rate work has been plugging the gap until I start my new permanent role I accepted in September.
You can see from the above table that the remaining trades are all in splendid form.
The three positions that I sold were LM061, LM078 and LM080. Those codes corresponded to British Aerospace, Lloyds and Informa:
| LM061 LM061-2 LM061-3 |
20/02/2023 13/10/2023 08/02/2024 |
30/09/2024 | BA. | 588 | £595.02 |
| LM078 | 03/01/2024 | 03/09/2024 | LLOY | 244 | £235.27 |
| LM080 | 27/02/2024 | 03/09/2024 | INF | 189 | (£7.58) |
Consequently I made a small loss of £7.58 on Informa, on the Lloyds Trade I managed to make £235.27 and on the British Aerospace trade I made just short of 600 pounds at £595.02.
Whilst it's disappointing to have to cull the portfolio yet again due to money issues the remaining positions do look very strong - LM055 especially is in an extremely positive position.
As far as work goes the permanent position which I spoke about in the last update, that I felt I had a good chance of capturing, went to the internal candidate... quelle surprise.
It was tremendously disappointing to lose out to an internal candidate. The interviews had gone so well that I really thought I was likely to be successful. According to the feedback I received, the interviewers felt I stumbled on a question about what I would see as the "biggest challenge" on starting a new role with them.
This kind of question really is a nonsense to me as for the prior almost decade I have walked into contracts at different companies and never really had any problems because I'm quick to acclimatise to new companies and work environments.
Therefore trying to sit there and think of any perceived challenges that I might face was pretty much impossible because with the experience I have I know how to hit the ground running in any new role very quickly and bed into a team without any real issues.
That may sound conceited to some, fair enough, but I'm no spring chicken; I have over two decades' experience in my field, with two degrees and plenty of certs plus I've worked in so many different places with so many different people that I'm not fazed in the slightest by starting a new position.
I suppose this kind of thing is part of the game I need to play in order to secure a full time permanent position and I really need to think up some kind of canned response that I can use as an answer in the future. Yes, it'll be fake and, well, meaningless really but this is the game they want to play.
It's very frustrating.
These employers expect you to almost worship the company you're going to work for and be overly eager but let's face it - we all go to work to earn money to pay bills, not because we are in love with any particular company.
My bank won't take kind words and promises, they want cold hard cash.
"Buddy, I'll come work for you and do a great job as long as you pay me every month. Once I find a better job I'll be gone without even looking back. That's how it works, no matter what daft questions I need to answer in order to get the job..."
If only...
This week I had an interview for a role which sounds very exciting. I was keen to show how eager I was to secure the position and hopefully it came across. In this case there were no internal candidates, it was me against two other external applicants and part of the interview was a presentation over Teams.
The task they gave in the interview was quite broad and generic and I did worry that I'd got the subject matter wrong or perhaps gone at it at the wrong angle. At first I felt like cancelling the interview because I was of the thought that I really couldn't be bothered to spend the time and do the work to create a 15 minute presentation.
Especially seeing as though I've never done anything like that before.
But after speaking with my wife, I decided to just give it a go and see what happened.
And funnily enough I did actually enjoy doing the presentation and one of the first comments out of the mouths of one of the interviewers as soon as I'd finished was "good - very confident presentation".
Even if I don't get the role I'm quite happy that I was able to seemingly impress three people that I've never met before and maybe will never meet again, although I'm still hopeful to be in with a chance of this role.
It makes life a lot easier to know that I already have a job offer that I have accepted... and I hold out a hope that perhaps at some point they may get around to actually providing me with a starting date.
There seems to be a huge issue with gaining references from a previous employer who has been insisting that I didn't work for them even though I was definitely on the payroll. It has been over a month and a half since I was offered the position and the background checks which should be very straightforward are taking an age.
I also did receive clarification about this role and found that their attitude is quite old fashioned in that it appears to be a largely on-site role. Being someone who has been working remotely from home for three years, this wasn't a very welcome discovery.
However until I am actually sat at a desk and logging into a machine in a new job, I will continue to look for other roles. Anything can happen in this job market; roles disappear or get cut or people leave or you get ghosted. It's certainly a buyer's market. Candidates are plentiful and employers know this hence the drop off in wages and the ridiculous demands for seemingly lowly positions.
On the plus side the portfolio has plenty of available cash and it looks like one of the larger positions will be closed very shortly as its price is hovering around the 200 day simple moving average. This will be, unless there's a huge stock market crash, one of the larger profits that we've seen in the LM portfolio.
The British Aerospace position ended up being very profitable. In fact, from what I can gather just having a quick look at all completed trades, it was possibly in the top five of all-time profitable trades in the LM experiment.
Of course, when I finally get the nod to sell LM055 that should smash all records previously set. Fingers crossed there are no issues in the underlying company.
I was a little perturbed to read that one of the major short-sellings funds - one the media tends to listen to - had decided to target this particular company. In the back of my mind I thought; do they know something I don't and should I sell now?
After all, these short-selling firms have identified overvalued companies in the past and made a great deal of money shorting them. In this case, I see no need to sell LM055 just yet. The chart is telling me everything is OK and we're yet to see a breach of that all important 200 day simple moving average so as far as I'm concerned this company can short away all it likes.
I will continue to do my weekly checks and await any further signals from the system that I follow.
That simple system has served me quite well so far. I can't think of any times when it steered me too far wrong.
Perhaps sometimes it has got me out of a position too early, but other times it has saved me from losing a great deal of money on shares which have fallen after I sold them. It's a trend following system and I have said before that this means I will never get in at the bottom of the market and I will never get out at the top, I will always be leaving something on the table at both ends.
Unless of course I get supremely lucky as I did on that one Palladium trade back in 2020 when the price dropped 20% just an hour or so after I sold it (Link).
Sometimes the cards just fall your way.