Modest Gains – Up 0.93%

The British summer is not usually a good time for stocks, and in fact they will often head lower on lower volumes at this time of the year.

So I am relatively happy to have seen the value of my eToro portfolio rise by 0.93% this month, following on from slightly larger gains in both June and July.

Sadly the large falls actually occurred in May for me, but the portfolio is now looking much healthier, boosted by some nice dividends and improved share price performance for many of my holdings.

As you can see from the image below, my eToro trading account (account name = SteadyProfits) is now up 4.85% in 2019:

Dividends Received

August was a very good month in terms of dividends because three of my four main share holdings went ex-dividend this month, and because eToro pay dividends into your account on the ex-dividend date, I have already received all of these dividends.

The companies that went ex-dividend were Aviva (AV.L), GVC (GVC.L) and Imperial Brands (IMB.L).

Trading Performance / Current Portfolio

In terms of trading activity, it has again been quite a quiet month, mainly because I was fully invested most of the time, making it impossible to trade shorter term positions.

Nevertheless, at the very start of the month I did sell some of my Aviva shares that I had bought a few days previously for a profit of just over 2%, and after receiving dividends from GVC, I decided to sell a small portion of shares that I bought at 583.8p for 613.2p, for a profit of around 5%.

As a result of this, I am now going into September with around 12% in cash and around 88% invested in stocks. Ideally I would like to invest this cash into other stocks or sell some of my shares for a profit when the opportunity arises and then diversify more because I am too heavily invested in a small number of stocks right now.

At the moment I hold Aviva, GVC, Imperial Brands and International Airlines Group, and would be happy to buy more of any of these because they are all hugely undervalued at the moment.

However it is better to be more diversified and there are plenty of other stocks that are looking very cheap, such as Legal & General, Taylor Wimpey and Royal Dutch Shell, for example. So I shall be watching all of these other stocks very closely for an opportunity to buy.

Copiers

At the time of writing I still have no active copiers and I haven’t had any new followers in the last month, but I am not at all surprised by this.

I am not happy with the overall performance of my trading / investing account, even though it is up 4.85% this year, so I don’t expect others to be impressed by this either.

I am hopeful that the stocks that I am invested in will continue to recover throughout 2019, particularly once the Brexit mess is sorted out, and would like to see the portfolio up more than 10% before the end of the year, at which point people might be more inclined to copy and follow my account.

Final Thoughts

Anyone who is looking at my share portfolio may be alarmed to see some large falls of between 11.32% and 22.63%, but I am honestly not worried at all.

I have been an active share trader and investor for many years and have a long record of success with my significantly larger ISA account.

Furthermore, all of my stocks are undervalued and predicted to continue growing their profits in the coming years, and they all pay decent dividends in the meantime, so I am fully prepared to sit and wait for them all to recover no matter how long it takes.

If I have an opportunity to make some short-term trades with any leftover cash, I will try to do just that in order to boost the portfolio and give me some more money to reinvest.

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.

Solid Performance – Up 5.07%

After the heavy falls that I incurred back in May, June proved to be a good recovery month with the value of my eToro portfolio going up by 2.8%, and July has been an even better month so far with the value of my portfolio going up by 5.07% with just two trading days left.

As you can from the screenshot of my portfolio performance below, or by checking out my SteadyProfits account on eToro, this 5.07% gain combined with my previous monthly performance figures for 2019 means that my portfolio is now up 7.04% in 2019.

This is not really something to shout about because the portfolio fell 8.74% in the last two months of 2018 when I first started trading on eToro, but I’m still fairly happy that my portfolio is now heading in the right direction, particularly with additional dividends due to be paid for many of my stocks in the next few months.

Dividends Received

This month was helped a lot by the fact that one of my biggest holdings, International Airlines Group (IAG.L), went ex-dividend, and as you probably know, one of the main benefits of eToro is that the dividend is paid straight into your account on this ex-dividend date.

I didn’t receive any other dividends this month but IAG paid both an ordinary dividend and a special dividend, and so even after eToro deducted their fees, I still received a total dividend of around 4.91% from this one holding.

Trading Performance / Current Portfolio

July was a fairly busy month from a trading point of view. At the start of the month, I sold my shares in Aviva (AV.L) for a profit of 2.21%. I also sold a small tranche of my GVC (GVC.L) shares for a short-term gain of 2.62%.

In addition to this, I traded out of Barclays (BARC.L) for a small profit, and sold my newly acquired BP (BP.L) shares yesterday for a small profit of around 1% because I didn’t want to hold on to them on results day (which was today).

Apart from this, I ended up buying some more shares in Aviva (AV.L) because they are currently very undervalued and still pay a very generous dividend, and still have my long-term stocks, GVC and IAG, which haven’t performed too well of late but are still very cheap based on their long-term earnings forecasts.

My other holding is Imperial Brands (IMB.L), which has bounced back strongly this month, but is still below my initial entry price. So this is another stock that I am prepared to hold for the long-term and collect the quarterly dividends while I wait.

Talking of dividends, the next few months should be beneficial for my portfolio because Aviva and Imperial Brands are both due to go ex-dividend next month, and GVC is due to pay another strong dividend in September.

Copiers

As I seem to say every month, I still don’t actually have any active copiers on eToro, which is disappointing. However I am just going to keep trying to make money as usual, and hopefully the copiers and followers will eventually come if I can continue to grow my portfolio and achieve steady profits, as per my username.

Risk Score

The one thing I have noticed is that my risk score has recently dropped from 5 to 4, which has to be beneficial because most eToro users are interested in finding profitable traders that don’t take too many crazy risks and who generally trade sensibly.

Final Thoughts

I have become a little disillusioned with eToro if I’m being honest because of the lack of copiers and the need to document every trade and dividend received for tax purposes, unlike an ISA, for example, where all the gains and dividends are tax-free.

Indeed I did actually consider withdrawing all my money and adding it to my ISA account, but for now I think I am going to continue trading with eToro for the foreseeable future and see how well I can do.

I know that I am capable of growing a portfolio quite substantially because I have done just this with my ISA. I think it will just take time for the compounded dividends and gains to start to really take effect, and the whole mess surrounding Brexit isn’t exactly helping matters either right now as I only hold UK stocks at the moment. So let’s see how the rest of 2019 pans out.

Follow Me on eToro

If you would like to follow my journey on eToro, simply go to the eToro website 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.

A Nice Recovery – Up 2.81%

If you have been following my eToro updates for a while, you will know that May was my worst month so far. After being nicely in profit for the year, my portfolio ended up losing 12.84% in value in a single month after the FTSE fell sharply.

Well the good news is that my portfolio bounced back a little in June, finishing 2.81% higher at the end of the month.

There is obviously still a long way to go to get back to where I was, but I am still fairly happy with this overall performance.

Dividends Received

This was one of the few months where I didn’t actually receive any dividends, so unfortunately I do not have any excess cash to reinvest back into the markets at the current time.

However the biggest holding in my portfolio is International Consolidated Airlines (AIG.L), and this is due to pay a huge special dividend when it goes ex-dividend in a few days time. So this will give me a decent amount of cash to reinvest.

In addition to this, Aviva (AV.L), Barclays (BARC.L) and Imperial Brands (IMT.L) are all due to go ex-dividend in August, with GVC (GVC.L) going ex-dividend in September, so this will definitely boost my portfolio.

Trading Performance / Current Portfolio

I haven’t actually placed any trades in the last month, therefore my current portfolio is still the same as before.

My largest holding is still IAG, but I am also heavily invested in GVC, Barclays, Imperial Brands, and to a lesser extent, Aviva.

In terms of performance, all of these stocks are currently in the red, but they are all massively undervalued right now, and I’m not overly concerned going forward because I am sure that they will all move into profit over time. In the meantime I will just sit back and collect the dividends while I wait for them to recover.

I am particularly bullish about GVC and IAG because these could both be trading at twice their current share price and still be fairly valued, but I think Barclays and Aviva are both fairly safe long-term holdings as well.

The only holding that I am slightly concerned about is Imperial Brands because this has performed really badly in recent months with so much negativity surrounding the tobacco industry as a whole. If I can get out at break-even at some point, I will probably do so, and will probably avoid this sector going forward.

Copiers

As my trading account is still in the red overall, I still don’t have any active copiers, but I’m absolutely fine with that. This will only happen when my account is showing sustained profits over long periods of time.

Final Thoughts

Overall it has been a fairly subdued month with little trading activity and no dividends added to my account, but as always, I am still confident that the value of my portfolio will bounce back strongly in the future.

All five of my holdings are hugely undervalued and it should hopefully only be a matter of time before the share prices reflect their true value.

However the reality is that this will probably only happen once we get some clarity regarding Brexit because at the moment there is still no clear resolution to this problem with no leader in place and no real plan of action.

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.