My Worst Month Yet – Down 11.32%

I started last month’s update by saying that this had been my best month yet because I was up 9.61% at that time, and I actually ended the month up 9.31% in the end.

However I’m sad to say that all of those gains have been wiped out because May has been my worst month yet.

At the time of writing I am currently down 11.32% this month, and am now only up 0.83% for the year, which is a poor performance.

Reasons for the Heavy Losses

The main reason for my heavy losses is because of the whole mess surrounding Brexit. With Theresa May resigning and the threat of a no-deal Brexit coming back once again, my portfolio has taken quite a beating because I am only holding UK stocks right now, and most of these are heavily susceptible to any adverse news regarding Britain’s exit from the EU.

The markets hate uncertainty, and unfortunately there has never been so much uncertainty in the British economy. At the moment we even don’t have a prime minister, and we still don’t know if there will be a soft Brexit, a no-deal Brexit, or even a second referendum.

In addition to this, we have also had the trade war between the US and China, which has weighed heavily on the markets.

As a result of this, the stock markets have fallen, with the FTSE 100 going from over 7500 to around 7140, before recovering to its current level of 7270.

I’m not going to make any excuses though. Shares go up and down in the short-term but good quality companies generally grow their earnings and their dividends every year, and so I’m not overly concerned.

Dividends Received

I haven’t been actively trading that much this month, choosing instead to sit on my portfolio of stocks and wait for my stocks to recover, and it has also been fairly quiet on the dividend front as well.

This month I just had one stock going ex-dividend – Imperial Brands (IMT.L) – and thanks to eToro’s dividend policy, this has already been added to my account.

Copiers

Unsurprisingly, after having such a poor month, I still don’t have any new copiers, and I wouldn’t expect to either.

However I am taking a long-term approach and am hopeful that I will soon have some active copiers once my portfolio is looking a lot healthier.

Final Thoughts

With my portfolio down 11.32% for the month, it would have been very easy for me to avoid doing a trading update this month, but I promised to document my journey as a trader on eToro, and so for completely transparency, I have to talk about both the highs and the lows.

It is never nice to see your portfolio go down so much in such a short space of time, but I am not at all worried because I am almost certain that every single stock in my portfolio will move into profit at some stage, and in the meantime I am happy to collect the dividends while I wait.

Indeed as soon as there is some clarity regarding Brexit, many of these stocks should surge higher almost immediately, but even if they don’t, I am confident of a recovery because I bought them all at a good price when they were on a very low P/E ratio, and they are all predicted to continue to grow their profits in the coming years.

My current portfolio includes GVC (GVC.L), Imperial Brands (IMT.L), International Consolidated Airlines (IAG.L), Barclays (BARC.L) and Aviva (AV.), and I would be happy to buy them all at today’s prices if I had some additional trading capital.

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.

My Best Month Yet – Up 9.61%

It’s Bank Holiday Monday here in the UK and the markets will remain closed for one more day, so I thought this would be a good time to discuss my latest trading performance on eToro for the month of April (trader profile = SteadyProfits).

If you read last month’s update, you will know that my portfolio took a big dip after the share price of GVC (my largest holding) fell sharply from 700p to just over 500p.

This panic selling was all caused by both the chairman and the CEO selling a large amount of shares, but after a positive trading update earlier this month, it would appear that nothing is fundamentally wrong with the company, and they are still on course to continue growing their profits, which has helped to reassure investors.

This has resulted in the share price bouncing back to around 648p, and I’m sure that it will continue creeping back up towards the 700p level in due course.

Furthermore, it has also meant that my portfolio is now in great shape once again. After falling 2.65% in March, the portfolio is currently up 9.61% so far this month (and is up 14.02% in 2019), which I am obviously delighted about.

Trading Summary / Dividends

As mentioned above, one of the main reasons why my portfolio is up so much is because GVC has bounced back so strongly, but other stocks have contributed to this gain as well.

I currently have three other stocks in my portfolio – International Airlines Group (IAG.L), Barclays (BARC.L) and Aviva (AV.L), and these are all in profit at the moment, helped by a positive overall stock market performance, because they are up 0.24%, 5.07% and 1.87% respectively.

In addition to this, I also sold my two holdings in HSBC (HSBA.L) for a profit of around 1% in the hope that I will be able to get back in lower, and banked a nice dividend of around 4% (after fees) from my Aviva (AV.L) shares.

Apart from this, there hasn’t been much trading activity because I can’t really find a lot of undervalued stocks right now, but I have some capital ready to invest should the markets fall in the near future.

Copiers

Despite being up over 14% up this year, and over 5% up overall, I still don’t have any people actively copying my trades on eToro, which is a little disappointing.

It seems to be quite hard to get noticed on eToro, and I understand that many people are reluctant to copy traders who don’t have a long trading history.

However it would still be nice to have just one or two people copying my trades because I want to help other people make some extra money as well.

Closing Comments

As you can imagine, I am still very happy with my overall trading performance, particularly after seeing the portfolio fall in value last month.

In the future I would like to reduce my exposure to GVC a little, despite being very bullish about their future prospects, and diversify a little more into other stocks if the opportunities present themselves.

However I am still very happy with my overall portfolio because I bought some undervalued high-dividend stocks at some decent prices, and am content to collect the dividends whilst waiting for their respective share prices to rise.

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 investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.

Not A Good Month

There was a time at the start of the month when the portfolio was in really excellent shape. I banked some small short-term profits on various stocks, sold a few of my longer-term holdings for a decent profit, such as Apple, for example, and my largest holding, GVC, was now nicely into profit when it was trading above 700p.

However the trouble is that if you invest too much into one stock, and that company announces some bad news that sends the share price tumbling, your portfolio can take a big hit, and that’s exactly what happened.

After a positive trading update from GVC, there was an RNS shortly afterwards announcing that both the chairman and the CEO sold a large number of their shares at a discount, which caused many investors to sell their shares in the fear that there was some bad news on the horizon, and encouraged traders to open short positions.

Subsequently the price has gone from over 700p to just over 500p, but the good news is that the CEO has announced that he won’t be selling any more shares, and has hinted that the company is still in good shape, which has helped the price recover to around 550p.

To be fair, I have a few other stocks in my portfolio that are down a little since I bought them, so this too has contributed to a fall in the overall value of my portfolio.

The net result of all this is that the portfolio is now down 3.73% for the month of March with two full trading days left.

Trading Summary / Dividends

With regards to my trading activity this month, I sold both of my holdings in Barclays (BARC.L) that I bought last month for a decent profit (plus I also received the dividend as well during this time).

I also took the opportunity to sell about 30% of my GVC (GVC.L) shares when the price got to 722p. With the benefit of hindsight, I wished I had sold all of my GVC shares because the price subsequently fell sharply, but I am still a firm believer in this company and based on future forecasts, it should still be trading around 700-800p at the very least in the future.

For that reason, I ended up buying some more shares at 587p, and received a healthy dividend when the shares went ex-dividend on 14 March.

In addition to this, I sold my shares in Domino’s Pizza (DOM.L) for a very small profit when the opportunity arose because I wasn’t really comfortable with my initial entry price, and then traded it again when the price dropped for a bigger profit.

I also sold my shares in Apple (AAPL) for an excellent profit at around $181.63. I was intending to hold on to them in the hope that they would reach $200, but I decided to bank some profits instead.

Finally, I also managed to bank a profit of around 3.73% trading Aviva (AV.L), so in terms of trading it was a good month, but GVC and a few long-term investments have pushed the overall value lower this month.

Current Portfolio

At this moment in time, GVC is still my largest holding, closely followed by International Airlines Group (IAG.L), which is ridiculously undervalued based on future forecasts and is due to pay a massive dividend later this year.

The rest of my portfolio is made up of financial stocks, similar to Warren Buffet, and includes Aviva (AV.L), Barclays (BARC.L) and HSBC (HSBA.L), all of which are very cheap based on fundamentals and pay an excellent dividend.

Closing Comments

Overall I am obviously disappointed with the whole GVC situation (I don’t think the directors realised how much of an affect their share sales would have on the share price) and the overall performance of my portfolio this month, but as my eToro username (SteadyProfits) suggests, my goal is to make steady profits over time, and I am 100% confident that the GVC share price will slowly recover and the other stocks in my portfolio will start to come good.

In the meantime I am more than happy to keep on accumulating dividends and reinvesting them into good quality high-dividend stocks. It’s all about being patient and reinvesting both profits and dividends, and if I keep on doing this, I’m sure that my portfolio will eventually be in really good shape.

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 investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.