An Eventful But Flat Month – Down 0.66%

March was the month when the markets really plummeted around the world, with my own eToro portfolio falling in value by 15%, but April also turned out to be quite an eventful month.

The stock market falls continued and I was experiencing more losses at the start of the month, before the markets picked up again towards the end and at one point I was up just under 5% at the close of play on Wednesday.

However all of Wednesday’s gains were wiped out on the last day of the month, and I ultimately ended down 0.66% for the month.

Trading Performance / Portfolio Update

The fallout from the coronavirus has undoubtedly had a massive impact on my portfolio, however the fallout from the oil price collapse has been just as damaging.

In addition to all of my UK banks scrapping their dividends for the remainder of 2020, Royal Dutch Shell announced on Thursday that they are cutting their dividend payouts by around two thirds.

As a result of all this, I will now have significantly less dividend income coming in during the rest of the year. BP have said they will retain their dividend (for now), but apart from that healthy payment, it is only ISF, SPY, Visa and SHV that are providing any kind of income.

My three largest holdings are still BP, Royal Dutch Shell and HSBC, and I remain invested in Aviva, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Visa, and although they are all likely to remain low in the coming months, they should all recover over time.

I am also invested in ETFs that track the FTSE 100 and the S&P 500, and these will be held for years and years. I also have the short-term bond ETF SHV to provide a little income and protect my portfolio.

While I wait for my portfolio to recover, I am still actively trading in and out of stocks to generate some short-term gains for myself and my copiers.

This month I traded in and out of Barclays, BP, Google, Investec and Visa, and sold my Google shares for a small profit, but my best trade was American Express, which I bought at $82.34 and sold just one week later at $92.11 for a profit of 11.87%.

So it wasn’t a bad month overall with regards to my trading.

Dividends Received

As alluded to above, many dividends have been cut, but we did at least receive a dividend from SPY at the end of the month, although this is really small compared to many of our UK dividend stock payouts.

Copiers

Despite the poor performance of my trading portfolio, I still have 4 copiers as of the end of April, who I am very grateful for for sticking with me. I am working hard to ensure that all of them will see healthy profits in the future.

Risk Score

The volatility of the markets has meant that nearly all stocks have been assigned a higher risk score, which in turn has left me with a higher risk score of 7, despite the fact that I haven’t really made any major changes to my portfolio.

I think BP and Royal Dutch Shell are the two main culprits, particularly as they make up such a large part of my portfolio, but I am not going to sell either of them at these levels just to bring my risk score down.

Final Thoughts

After being up nearly 5% with one trading day left, I am obviously very disappointed to finish the month down 0.66%.

However moving forward I am fairly happy with the make-up of my portfolio, and remain confident that it will rise to previous highs once again once the worst of the coronavirus is behind us.

This is still some way off in my opinion, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the S&P 500 makes new highs as early as next year.

In the meantime I will continue to trade in and out of stocks to capitalize on the market volatility right now, and pick up any bargains for the long-term with any leftover cash.

Follow Me on eToro

If you would like to follow my journey on eToro, simply open an eToro account and search for SteadyProfits to view my live trading results and to see my latest trades.

Past performance is not an indication of future results. This content is for information and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment or portfolio management advice. 81% of retail investors accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.

Worst Month So Far – Down 15.69%

First of all, I would like to apologise for not continuing to post monthly updates about my eToro progress in recent months.

As many of you will know, March has been a terrible month for stock market investors, so I thought now would be the perfect time to write a new update.

The impact of COVID-19 around the world has had a devastating impact on many countries’ economies and has decimated many people’s portfolios as a result, including highly respected fund managers such as Ray Dalio.

I have suffered as well because after the final day of trading, my account was down 15.69% in March, following on from a fall of 9.07% in February and a 2.99% fall in January.

Trading Performance / Portfolio Update

Many people assume that the coronavirus is responsible for most of these losses, but in my case, the ongoing dispute between Saudi Arabia and Russia has also had a major impact because this has driven the price of oil down to just $22 in the case of WTI Crude.

Subsequently, I have seen the share price of two of my largest holdings, BP and Royal Dutch Shell, fall by as much as 50% before bouncing back to a slightly more respectable level.

Other companies in my portfolio have performed equally as badly thanks to the enforced lockdown in the UK and elsewhere.

For example, HSBC is down over 20%, Aviva is down over 30% and RBS and Barclays are both down around 34%. Even my FTSE 100 tracker is down nearly 22%.

My US stocks and ETF have performed a little better because I purchased these a little later using the proceeds from my bond ETF sales.

Visa is down around 19%, Google 11% and SPY (a popular S&P 500 tracker) around 16%.

In short, everything is down a lot but I am not currently selling anything for a loss because these are all good quality companies / ETFs that should all go back into profit over time once we start to eradicate COVID-19.

Most of them pay very generous dividends in the meantime, although I am just hearing that UK banks are all cancelling any future dividends for the remainder of 2020, which is obviously a big blow.

It should be noted that it hasn’t all been doom and gloom because as mentioned above, I sold three of my bond ETFs for decent profits last month, and I also made a profit of over 15% on a short-term trade in Barclays.

Dividends Received

eToro have recently changed the way that payments are received so that they are now in line with most other brokers. Instead of paying out dividends on the ex-dividend date, they now pay the dividends on the official payment date for each company.

As a result of this, I received dividends last month from a few companies that went ex-dividend in February, including Visa, ISF, BP and Royal Dutch Shell, so this provided a decent income to mitigate some of the heavy losses.

This month there are more dividends due to be paid out from SPY, but the anticipated dividends from Barclays and HSBC have now been cancelled.

Copiers

At the start of the year I had as many as 8 copiers copying my trades at one point, but with the global stock market collapse, I now only have 3 copiers, which is perfectly understandable.

I am invested for the long-term with short-term trades boosting profits in the meantime and am fully prepared to ride out any storms, but everyone has their reasons to stop copying someone.

Risk Score

As a result of some wild fluctuations in the value of my portfolio, my risk score has gone up from 4 to 6, which is obviously not ideal. Hopefully this will fall once the markets settle down a little bit and stop moving several percentage points in one day. If not, I may have to trim some of my larger holdings.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I am not too unhappy with the overall loss of 15.69% in March, as crazy as that may sound. I was actually down a lot more at one point when the FTSE and S&P 500 were down significantly more than they are today.

The key thing you have to do during a crisis is to avoid panic selling. As long as you are invested in good quality stocks and ETFs, you should be OK in the long run, however long that may take, and I believe I have a good mixture of both.

So for now I am just continuing to bank any dividends and waiting for this coronavirus nightmare to be over. Stay inside, stay healthy and keep buying at low prices is my philosophy for the immediate future.

Follow Me on eToro

If you would like to follow my journey on eToro, simply open an eToro account and search for SteadyProfits to view my live trading results and to see my latest trades.

Past performance is not an indication of future results. This content is for information and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment or portfolio management advice. 81% of retail investors accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.

An Excellent Month – Up 5.52%

There are still a few trading sessions left in 2019, but I wanted to write this update now so that I can enjoy the New Year celebrations.

December is often an excellent month for the markets, and thankfully after we saw big losses in November and December of 2018, normal service was resumed this year and my eToro trading account has grown by 5.52% (following on from a 1.83% gain in November).

This has brought an end to my first full year as a trader on eToro, and as things stand, I am currently 22.18% up for the year, which is an excellent performance that I am absolutely delighted about.

I said last month that it was looking unlikely that I was going to finish the year 20% up, but the portfolio really pushed higher after this month’s General Election, and ended up smashing through this figure.

Trading Performance / Portfolio Update

One of the big success stories from this month was IAG (International Airlines Group).

I was still holding on to two lots of shares that I bought back in March at 564.11p and 576.52p, and after seeing the share price continually beaten down during the last three years of Brexit uncertainty, it finally surged higher to a more realistic level after the General Election result, and I was automatically closed out at 617.04p for an average gain of around 8.3%.

I also made the decision to sell my FTSE 100 tracker (ISF.L) after the FTSE 100 surged through the 7500 level. This was only a small position, and I was tempted to hold on to it for the long-term, but I felt this was a good chance to bank a nice profit and reinvest the proceeds into something else.

Finally, there was one other sale. With Imperial Brands continuing to stage a recovery, I took the opportunity to reduce my exposure slightly and sell off some of the shares that I bought at 1733.4 p for 1864.8p.

As a result of all this, I am now just over 22% in cash, and have a portfolio of just five stocks – Aviva, BP, Shell, HSBC and Imperial Brands. Three of these are currently in profit, but they all pay really high dividends, making them solid long-term holds.

Dividends Received

It was a quiet month with regards to dividends because there was only one holding that went ex-dividend, namely ISF.L.

The FTSE 100 tracker paid a dividend of less than 1% this quarter, but when you add on the capital gain as well, this was a good overall return when you consider that I only bought it at the start of the month.

Copiers

Last month I had four people copying my trades, and I am pleased to report that I am now ending December with a total of five copiers.

It was actually up to six earlier in the month but one person decided to stop copying my trades for whatever reason, even though he was already in profit.

Anyway I am still happy that I have five copiers, particularly as they are all now in profit at the time of writing this article, with my very first copier now up 5.24%.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I couldn’t be happier with my total gain of 22.18% for 2019. Of course it should be pointed out that it has been a very good year for the markets with the S&P 500 going up by a similar amount, but as a predominantly UK trader, I have definitely outperformed the FTSE 100 index, which is a more applicable benchmark.

I have also been very pleased with the eToro platform because although it does have its faults and limitations (it would be nice to be able to trade a lot more small and medium-cap stocks and have even more ETFs to trade), it’s generally been very reliable and it’s been fun interacting with the community there.

Looking ahead to 2020, I am confident in all my current holdings and believe that they will move higher in the coming year, and if there is a market correction, I have plenty of cash waiting on the sidelines ready to reinvest.

I never set myself any profit targets, but with the markets trading at very high levels, I think I would be happy with a total return of 10 – 20% next year.

I will finish by wishing you all a healthy and prosperous new year.

Follow Me on eToro

If you would like to follow my journey on eToro, simply open an eToro account and search for SteadyProfits to view my live trading results and to see my latest trades.

Past performance is not an indication of future results. This content is for information and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment or portfolio management advice. 81% of retail investors accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.