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.

A Steady Month – Up 1.83%

I would think most people would be delighted if they could grow their trading account by 1.83% per month, but despite this, I am still left a little disappointed that my eToro account (aptly named SteadyProfits) only grew by this amount in the month of November.

That’s because at times my portfolio was significantly higher than this, and the gains that I had made in previously weeks simply tailed off towards the end of the month as certain shares saw their share prices fall.

Nevertheless, any growth should be welcomed and as a result of this latest gain, my overall trading account is now up 15.79% for the year, as you can see below:

It is now looking unlikely that I will finish 2019 up 20%, which would have been a fantastic outcome, but you never know. If we get a strong Christmas rally, which we missed out on last year, my portfolio is well-positioned to get close to this magical 20% figure.

Before that, though, I want to give you a run-down of what happened to my portfolio last month, outlining some of the trades that I placed and the dividends that I received.

Trading Performance / Portfolio Update

I started the month off by making a badly timed trade on GVC. This has long been a favourite stock of mine, and after it fell to 848p, I decided to buy some for my portfolio, only to see it fall a lot more, which encouraged me to buy more at 809.2p.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I got scared by the possible threat of increased UK gambling regulations, and sold out for a small loss at around 827.2p. Sometimes you have to take a loss and accept that you made a bad call, and that’s exactly what I did when the share price started to bounce back to a more reasonable level.

I did, however, make three decent trades that made up for this loss. I am a big fan of the FTSE 100 tracker ISF.L because of its high dividend yield of around 4.5% and its long-term growth potential, and traded this on three separate occasions.

First of all I bought at 717.40p at the end of October and sold at 730.1p the following week, and after the FTSE 100 fell back again on two later occasions, I then bought and sold this tracker two more times for gains of over 2% each time.

With regards to my portfolio, I now hold shares in six individual companies, all of which are large-cap FTSE 100 stocks that pay generous dividends and appeared undervalued at the time of purchase, and these are Royal Dutch Shell, BP, HSBC, Aviva, Imperial Brands and International Airlines Group.

IAG has been the best performer this month and is now close to my initial entry price, whilst Imperial Brands is still the weakest performer in my portfolio, although the yield of over 10% somewhat compensates for any running losses.

I recently made a new purchase of Aviva shares, which I am confident of in the long-term and will gladly take the 8% yield that is on offer right now. The other three shares – Shell, BP and HSBC – all traded lower towards the end of November, but once again I am happy to hold these for the long-term and collect the 6%+ annual dividends, payable every three months.

Dividends Received

Considering how low companies such as BP, Shell, HSBC and Imperial Brands have fallen, the value of my portfolio has held up pretty well with an overall gain of 1.83%, and this is because of my trading activity to some extent, but more so because of the dividends that I received last month.

November was actually a bumper month for dividends because BP, Shell, HSBC, Imperial Brands and IAG all went ex-dividend during this month, and because eToro pay their dividends on the ex-dividend date, there were lots of additional funds added to the account ready to be reinvested.

Copiers

Although I need a total of 10 copiers to advance to the next level and start earning a regular payment from eToro, I am actually delighted that I now have four people copying my trades on this social trading platform because this is twice as many as I had at the end of last month.

As always, it is all about results, so I will just keep plugging away and keep trying to make gains, both for myself and my current copiers, and hopefully this will be enough to attract more copiers in the future.

Final Thoughts

The goal of this account is to grow profits slowly and steadily, and so an overall gain of 1.83% is more than satisfactory with all things considered.

There were some good trading profits and plenty of dividend payments to keep the account balance heading in the right balance, and it was only really some significant falls in the two oil giants BP and Shell that prevented the portfolio from making some significant gains in November.

So with just one month left in 2019, let’s hope we get a Christmas rally to finish the year on a high and bank some healthy profits.

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.

Steady Gains – Up 2.21%

October was turning out to be another excellent month for my eToro trading account (account ID = SteadyProfits) as I was up over 4% at one point, but unfortunately some of my share holdings dropped back towards the end of the month after reporting their latest Q3 figures.

As a result of this, my account only finished 2.21% up for the month of October, which is still fairly good, but obviously not as good as it could have been.

The end of October also brought me to a significant milestone because as you can see from the stats page above, I have now been trading on eToro for 12 months.

I actually picked the worst possible time to start trading and investing in stocks because November and December 2018 were terrible months for the world stock markets, but things have picked up in 2019 and after ending 2018 down 8.74%, my account is up 13.71% so far in 2019, giving me a fairly healthy gain overall.

My aim now is to finish 2019 up more than 15% in total, and I am fairly confident of doing so because I think November and December could be a lot more profitable this year.

Trading Performance / Portfolio Update

In terms of trading, October was quite a busy month. I started off by banking a profit of just over 5% when I sold my Barclays shares, and a few days later I sold my GVC shares that I bought at just under 750p for 820.8p, for a profit of 9.61%.

In addition, I also sold some of my longer-term holds that have finally moved into profit after trading significantly lower in previous months, including Aviva and a portion of my IAG shares.

Finally, I managed to generate an excellent short-term gain by trading GlaxoSmithKline. Having bought at 1631p and 1652.4p a few weeks ago, I closed out both trades when the price moved to 1702.4p just over a week later.

With regards to new trades, I have mainly been buying some of the large-cap giants of the FTSE 100, such as BP, Shell and HSBC, because these have all been pushed down to bargain prices in recent weeks, largely because of weaker Q3 performance, but they all pay a dividend of more than 6% per year and are unlikely to drop much further.

I have also started scaling into the iShares FTSE 100 tracker (ISF), making my first purchase when the FTSE 100 dropped to around 7250, and will add more if it drops back towards the 7000 level.

The only share that continues to disappoint and act as a drag on my portfolio is Imperial Brands, but I’m not going to sell at such a crazy low price, and will simply bank the 10%+ dividend while I wait for it to recover.

Dividends Received

There were no dividend payments this month, but the trading profits more than compensated for this, and the good news is that there are some significant dividends due in November.

BP, Shell, Imperial Brands and IAG are all going ex-dividend this month, and as you may be aware, eToro pay their dividends on these ex-dividend dates instead of the official payment date.

Copiers

In the month of October I had one more person choose to copy all of my trades, which means that I now have a grand total of two copiers on eToro.

This has added an extra level of responsibility, but is one that I am relishing because it is a great feeling to know that my trading is potentially helping other people make money from the markets.

Final Thoughts

Overall it ended up being a slightly disappointing month with my profits tailing off in the last few days of the month, but I’m still fairly happy with my trading performance overall.

I managed to close out some very profitable trades on GVC and GlaxoSmithKline, and bought some excellent stocks at knock-down prices in the form of BP, Shell and HSBC.

Plus to cap it all off, I gained one more copier, and have some juicy dividends to look forward to in November, as well as a potential Christmas rally towards the end of the year, which we didn’t really benefit from last year. So 2019 could turn out to be a very profitable 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.

A Very Good Month – Up 6.11%

September turned out to be an excellent month for me because my eToro trading account finished the month up 6.11%, making it the second most profitable month so far since I first opened an account back in November 2018.

It could actually have been a lot better because at one point I was up around 8.5% for the month, but one of the shares in my portfolio issued a profits warning towards the end of the month (more about that later).

I don’t necessarily aim to make huge profits every month. I am quite content to see my account tick along with 1 or 2% gains every month, which is why I chose SteadyProfits as my username, but it’s obviously still nice to see your portfolio grow in value quite substantially in a short space of time.

Popular Investor

Another reason why September was a really good month from a personal point of view is because I was finally accepted into eToro’s Popular Investor program.

This basically means that I can start to be rewarded with a small monetary payment each month if I continue to be profitable in the future and have many people copying my trades.

Trading Performance / Portfolio Update

With regards to my trading, I didn’t place a great deal of trades in September. However there were some significant transactions.

For example, I made the tough decision to sell all of my holdings in GVC. I kind of regret doing this now because I still feel that these shares will be back above 1000p in the not too distant future, but after buying at an average of around 717p and seeing the price fall to around 500p at one point, I took the decision to take a small profit and hopefully buy back below 700p.

Unfortunately this hasn’t gone to plan because the price is now trading close to 750p, but that’s the risk you take sometimes.

Earlier in the month I did manage to bank a more significant profit of 6.2% when I sold a portion of my IAG shares that I bought for 419.7p at 445.1p.

I still have many IAG shares in my portfolio and these have performed well this month, up to around 480p at the time of writing, and pay very generous dividends, so I’m happy to continue holding while I wait for them to hopefully move into profit.

Finally, as mentioned earlier, my other stock, Imperial Brands, issued a profits warning towards the end of the month. This reduced some of my profits as there was quite a big fall, but it did at least allow me to make a quick in and out trade for around 2%.

It wasn’t actually that bad a warning. Profits are expected to be flat this year, but they are still paying a dividend of more than 10%, so again I’m happy to hold on to my remaining shares.

The one other stock is my portfolio is Aviva. This is also down slightly on my purchase price, but has risen sharply this month and also pays a very generous dividend, so I am happy to continue holding for now.

Dividends Received

Unfortunately I didn’t receive any dividend payments this month. The portfolio was boosted entirely by capital gains and trading profits.

However the good news is that two out of the three shares currently in my portfolio, IAG and Imperial Brands, are both scheduled to go ex-dividend in November.

So the portfolio will be boosted once again in the near future, particularly in the case of Imperial Brands because the two final quarterly payments, this being the first one, are the biggest of the year.

Copiers

In this section of this update I normally state that I still don’t have any active copiers, but I’m pleased to report that I now have my first copier.

It’s been such a long wait but I finally have someone actively copying my trades, and it really is a great feeling knowing that I can potentially help someone else make some money from the markets.

Final Thoughts

Overall, September was a fantastic month, and hopefully it will continue for the rest of the year and beyond.

I currently hold three stocks in my portfolio, Aviva, IAG and Imperial Brands, but I am still 33.89% in cash, so I’m patiently waiting for the markets to fall so I can pick up some bargains.

As I mentioned on my eToro feed, I was eyeing up BP, Shell and GlaxoSmithKline but none of them fell far enough, and I was also hoping that the FTSE would fall to around 7000-7200 so that I could buy the FTSE 100 tracker for the long-term but sadly the markets kept going up.

I can’t really complain though because I can’t really lose at the moment. If the markets continue going up, my current portfolio should grow in value, and if they fall I have enough cash in reserve to pick up some undervalued stocks for the long-term and make some potentially profitable short-term trades.

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.

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.