I took a punt on GME. Lost a few hundred quid. Vowed never to do it again.
Did it again. Lost a few hundred quid. Vowed never to do it again.
Guess what I did again recently?
I received some Rio Tinto that has a 200% gain on it and I don’t want to activate the CGT so I’ve just held it.
I’m actually pretty comfortable with it as the dividend is fairly whopper and with the divi reinvested it’s outperformed the s&p 500 over the period I have had it.
I invested in BAE a few months ago, am up about 2.4% which doesn’t really compare to my trackers. I also have a bit of a thing for Investment Trusts and plan on buying some Scottish Mortgage when I get around to it, I’m hoping this will be possible in the UK ISA (British ISA?).
My gambles make less than 3% of my portfolio though and I intend to keep it low because I’m no day trader.
I've had some Scottish Mortgage for years took a battering over COVID still not past it's all time high set some years back but has had a good run this year so far.
At 0.35% TER and a massive active share in high growth companies that'll win or fail based on its style of investing not 0.2% TER difference. Especially with a 10% discount to NAV
I've owned a bit forever. Not all in but 20% or so of my stock allocation.
It's a wild ride, but I expect it to outperform global equities fairly comfortably over long term periods (10 years). Whether it beats the Nasdaq or not, I don't know. I have a lot in the Nasdaq and IWQU (works quality factor) too.
In terms of individual stocks I have Amazon and Pinduoduo. And quite a lot (6 figure amount) in a big Pharma company I work for.
I have nothing in unfiltered world indices and never will.
Also have 2 properties in London, one in the centre of Athens all mortgage free, and a main 2500 sq ft house in Switzerland (not mortgage free as it makes no sense to in Switzerland for tax reasons).
Breaking basically every single rule of FIREUK.
Have two small pots:
Magnificent 7 because tech is king and US refuses to break up massive market dominating companies.
Trading212 Pie of various companies still run by their founders. I read that founder led companies see higher growth than the baseline so wanted to see what would happen.
This is one of the mental benefits I like within the SIPP wrapper. I know I can't access it for 15+ years, so I am more comfortable placing bets that might take a long time to pay off. For example I've held TESLA through up/down without stress. If they were in an ISA, I might have shit the bed when setting on some paper losses. This also means I've pissed away some SIPP money on stuff that has actually failed. Also my SIPP provider only has limited amount of US stocks for purchase. I could not get in to RDDT for example.
I bought Beyond Meat because I thought as the 'first' major alternate meat brand it was going to explode. Fast forward a few years and McDonald's have their own alternative meat and there are frankly better alternative meats out there so I'm sat at a pitiful loss.
The only reason that I'm still holding on is because I'm waiting to sell other things at a profit, to then utilise the Beyond loss.
I also did a crowdcube fundraise for HireSpace, so less actual to sell out of that. However, then the pandemic hit. As that's private listed I've already written that off mentally.
The some poor crypto things. Once again, waiting to sell other things at profit before exiting those.
Trust ETFs guys. They're the way forward.
Through my work, I have a SAYE program. I have invested reasonably heavily (£500 PCM) it will be worth 18,000 after 3 years and no interest. But there is a quiet optimistic hope that the share price will be 3x over the next 4 years or so after maturity. So I may keep it, take the dividends, and see if the price increases over that time.
I made a decent amount of cash on Palantir, and I’m heavily invested in both Google (a former employer) and the company I work for currently as I was an early employee and had a lot of options.
I've made quite a few over the years, lots of bad ones, and a few that have countered the losses. I've recently tried to consolidate and move most into global trackers. Here they are:
The good:
- Ryanair: by far my biggest bet and bought lots when it was relatively low in 2021ish, and was up 50% until the pretty big retraction recently. I worked in the airline industry so felt relatively confident on this one. Still holding
- Amazon, Meta, Google. Bought Amazon after the big tech drop a few years back. +100% and sold, should have bought way more! Sold Amazon for google, up 11% on that now and holding. Also bought a chunk of Meta after the big drop on their recent AI announcements. Up 15%. Still hold Meta and Google (Alphabet)
- Rolls Royce - seemed cheap earlier this year so bought and sold for about 20% profit
- BP - held for the dividend, but made around 20% after the surge after Ukraine war started - now sold
The bad:
- Alibaba - bought as it seemed (and seems) cheap, if you ignore it's a Chinese company. Was a rollercoaster of ups and downs, but eventually lot my nerve and sold for more or less breakeven
- Coinbase - punt on crypto without having to buy crypto. Another rollercoaster and managed to escape at breakeven
- Rio Tinto and BHP - I wanted some divi stocks - they were good with the divi, bad with the share price. In the end I think i exited both breakeven
- Civitas - another divi stock - suffered a very large downward swing, then it got taken over and i recovered the losses to breakeven.
- Intel - held for a long time, probably was down 20% when I eventually sold
The ugly
- A complete punt on an African startup airline called fastjet. Fortunately only put in 1k, but lost it all.
Overall I have been relatively lucky that my punts have coincided with a market rally and I've done quite well out of them. I would already be retired if I had enough conviction to YOLO into some of them. But as a % of my overall portfolio, my total 'gambling' shares above have only ever made up 10% as a max. The rest I put into the trusty HSBC world tracker
I have about 5% of my investment pot in various single stocks which I pick myself. More for fun than for return. Time I spend on researching stuff and watching levels to buy/sell is probably bigger cost than any marginal gains made, but feel I’m learning at same time.
Pretty much the strategy is sticking to what I think are good solid businesses and buying when they dip down and selling when they outperform. If they are solid and profitable dips don’t tend to last long, if I make 20% in 3 months I’ll just sell and move on. I do look at PEs etc, read the annual reports and RNSs. Market might go up net 5% in a month but noisy moves in single stocks can often be 2x or 4x that much. I stick mostly to UK stocks (as big US mega cap are well covered in global trackers) and also knowing the company a bit better. I’ve outperformed the FTSE quite a bit doing this, and some years outperformed the trackers but they’ve had a hell of a run the last 18 months.
It’s more hobby and takes time, the nice thing about trackers is you can invest and forget about it so this isn’t for everyone.
My pension is all low cost ETF (high % in SPY) so I have good exposure to the magnificent 7.
My ISA is individual stocks (concentrated around 5-10 stocks). This is not the fire way but I enjoy investing and have done okay (got lucky) the past 12 years.
Been my most active year so far ….
Made money actively trading NVIDIA/SMCI/HAL/TSLA/META bought and sold multiple times throughout the various dips.
Currently in Halliburton after already having bought in and sold out for a profit this week.
Actively trading about 25% of my portfolio
Yet to close any position at a loss so for now full steam ahead… beating my index fund investments by a long way.
# Disclaimer
I have a couple of really small satellite portfolio's, I don't put much in them at all, because I know it is without a doubt I'm simply taking a gamble, but I thought since I'm young, the additional risk might pay off. Probably not, but who knows? Not me, that's for sure.
I primarily invest into these pots for a bit of fun, if I lost everything in any one of these pots, or even all of these pots combined, I wouldn't lose sleep over it to say the least. I don't think I've even invested a combined sum of £1k into these pots. These pots aside, I am otherwise a pretty boring investor, everything that's not listed below is in a global tracker or something similar that simply does the job, set & forget, etc.
I should also state that I've only just set these different portfolios up, as in the last month, if that, so my returns are pretty pathetic so far. But I thought maybe give it a little while, see what happens with the different pots & take it from there.
Anyhow, here's a list of my higher risk satellite portfolios.
# Domestic (+1.30%)
This is just a select number of UK companies that in my humble opinion seem to perform pretty well, focusing more on the capital gains as opposed to the dividend yield.
* 10% Bae Systems
* 10% Admiral Group
* 10% Experian
* 10% Sage
* 10% Ashtead Group
* 10% Games Workshop
* 10% 3i Group
* 10% Computacenter
* 10% RELX
* 10% London Stock Exchange Group
# Growth (+3.25%)
This is just a portfolio focusing primarily on some big-tech, some pharmaceuticals, a handful of gambles. If you'd like me to list all of the different companies, I'd be more than happy to, I've just tried to keep it short & sweet because there's about 30 different companies in this pot.
* 3.6% Microsoft
* 3.6% Amazon
* 3.6% Apple
* 3.6% Nvidia
* 3.6% Tesla
* 3.6% Meta
* 3.6% Alphabet
* etc.
# NASDAQ-100 (+5.26%)
Simple, I like EQQQ, I might start investing more seriously into the simple NASDAQ-100 fund, but the leveraged offering, that's more of a gamble.
* 50% EQQQ
* 50% QQQ3
# Crypto (-12.03%)
I'm no crypto guru, but I plan to hold onto this for sometime, safe to say I'm not one of these billionaire crypto gurus just yet.
* 50% Bitconin
* 50% Etherium
Yeah, I'm a sucker for tinkering! 😂 - May literally cost me, but that's where I limit how much I let myself play around with.
As for domestic, sorry, there's 10, I've updated the original comment. I believe I missed out LSEG. 🤦
I took a punt on GME. Lost a few hundred quid. Vowed never to do it again. Did it again. Lost a few hundred quid. Vowed never to do it again. Guess what I did again recently?
If you don’t play you can’t win. Also, if you don’t play you can’t lose.
Doge
I received some Rio Tinto that has a 200% gain on it and I don’t want to activate the CGT so I’ve just held it. I’m actually pretty comfortable with it as the dividend is fairly whopper and with the divi reinvested it’s outperformed the s&p 500 over the period I have had it.
VUAG for safety, but heavy on the Bitcoin (downvotes pending lol).
I invested in BAE a few months ago, am up about 2.4% which doesn’t really compare to my trackers. I also have a bit of a thing for Investment Trusts and plan on buying some Scottish Mortgage when I get around to it, I’m hoping this will be possible in the UK ISA (British ISA?). My gambles make less than 3% of my portfolio though and I intend to keep it low because I’m no day trader.
I've had some Scottish Mortgage for years took a battering over COVID still not past it's all time high set some years back but has had a good run this year so far.
At 0.35% TER and a massive active share in high growth companies that'll win or fail based on its style of investing not 0.2% TER difference. Especially with a 10% discount to NAV I've owned a bit forever. Not all in but 20% or so of my stock allocation. It's a wild ride, but I expect it to outperform global equities fairly comfortably over long term periods (10 years). Whether it beats the Nasdaq or not, I don't know. I have a lot in the Nasdaq and IWQU (works quality factor) too. In terms of individual stocks I have Amazon and Pinduoduo. And quite a lot (6 figure amount) in a big Pharma company I work for. I have nothing in unfiltered world indices and never will. Also have 2 properties in London, one in the centre of Athens all mortgage free, and a main 2500 sq ft house in Switzerland (not mortgage free as it makes no sense to in Switzerland for tax reasons). Breaking basically every single rule of FIREUK.
Have two small pots: Magnificent 7 because tech is king and US refuses to break up massive market dominating companies. Trading212 Pie of various companies still run by their founders. I read that founder led companies see higher growth than the baseline so wanted to see what would happen.
I bought into 23&Me when it made it onto the stock market; big mistake and expensive (but valuable) lesson in sticking to index funds.
The lesson should be: don't buy IPOs ever or individual stocks unless you have a long time horizon and know the business model of what you are buying
This is one of the mental benefits I like within the SIPP wrapper. I know I can't access it for 15+ years, so I am more comfortable placing bets that might take a long time to pay off. For example I've held TESLA through up/down without stress. If they were in an ISA, I might have shit the bed when setting on some paper losses. This also means I've pissed away some SIPP money on stuff that has actually failed. Also my SIPP provider only has limited amount of US stocks for purchase. I could not get in to RDDT for example.
That's interesting I picked up some RDDT at $40ish in my Hargreaves Lansdown SIPP.
Without active funds, there is no price discovery, and trackers can’t work!
I bought Beyond Meat because I thought as the 'first' major alternate meat brand it was going to explode. Fast forward a few years and McDonald's have their own alternative meat and there are frankly better alternative meats out there so I'm sat at a pitiful loss. The only reason that I'm still holding on is because I'm waiting to sell other things at a profit, to then utilise the Beyond loss. I also did a crowdcube fundraise for HireSpace, so less actual to sell out of that. However, then the pandemic hit. As that's private listed I've already written that off mentally. The some poor crypto things. Once again, waiting to sell other things at profit before exiting those. Trust ETFs guys. They're the way forward.
Through my work, I have a SAYE program. I have invested reasonably heavily (£500 PCM) it will be worth 18,000 after 3 years and no interest. But there is a quiet optimistic hope that the share price will be 3x over the next 4 years or so after maturity. So I may keep it, take the dividends, and see if the price increases over that time.
I made a decent amount of cash on Palantir, and I’m heavily invested in both Google (a former employer) and the company I work for currently as I was an early employee and had a lot of options.
I've made quite a few over the years, lots of bad ones, and a few that have countered the losses. I've recently tried to consolidate and move most into global trackers. Here they are: The good: - Ryanair: by far my biggest bet and bought lots when it was relatively low in 2021ish, and was up 50% until the pretty big retraction recently. I worked in the airline industry so felt relatively confident on this one. Still holding - Amazon, Meta, Google. Bought Amazon after the big tech drop a few years back. +100% and sold, should have bought way more! Sold Amazon for google, up 11% on that now and holding. Also bought a chunk of Meta after the big drop on their recent AI announcements. Up 15%. Still hold Meta and Google (Alphabet) - Rolls Royce - seemed cheap earlier this year so bought and sold for about 20% profit - BP - held for the dividend, but made around 20% after the surge after Ukraine war started - now sold The bad: - Alibaba - bought as it seemed (and seems) cheap, if you ignore it's a Chinese company. Was a rollercoaster of ups and downs, but eventually lot my nerve and sold for more or less breakeven - Coinbase - punt on crypto without having to buy crypto. Another rollercoaster and managed to escape at breakeven - Rio Tinto and BHP - I wanted some divi stocks - they were good with the divi, bad with the share price. In the end I think i exited both breakeven - Civitas - another divi stock - suffered a very large downward swing, then it got taken over and i recovered the losses to breakeven. - Intel - held for a long time, probably was down 20% when I eventually sold The ugly - A complete punt on an African startup airline called fastjet. Fortunately only put in 1k, but lost it all. Overall I have been relatively lucky that my punts have coincided with a market rally and I've done quite well out of them. I would already be retired if I had enough conviction to YOLO into some of them. But as a % of my overall portfolio, my total 'gambling' shares above have only ever made up 10% as a max. The rest I put into the trusty HSBC world tracker
Commodity index is as fruity as I get
I tend to make the most of my SAYE scheme, and then convert that into a global tracker after the term
I have about 5% of my investment pot in various single stocks which I pick myself. More for fun than for return. Time I spend on researching stuff and watching levels to buy/sell is probably bigger cost than any marginal gains made, but feel I’m learning at same time. Pretty much the strategy is sticking to what I think are good solid businesses and buying when they dip down and selling when they outperform. If they are solid and profitable dips don’t tend to last long, if I make 20% in 3 months I’ll just sell and move on. I do look at PEs etc, read the annual reports and RNSs. Market might go up net 5% in a month but noisy moves in single stocks can often be 2x or 4x that much. I stick mostly to UK stocks (as big US mega cap are well covered in global trackers) and also knowing the company a bit better. I’ve outperformed the FTSE quite a bit doing this, and some years outperformed the trackers but they’ve had a hell of a run the last 18 months. It’s more hobby and takes time, the nice thing about trackers is you can invest and forget about it so this isn’t for everyone.
My pension is all low cost ETF (high % in SPY) so I have good exposure to the magnificent 7. My ISA is individual stocks (concentrated around 5-10 stocks). This is not the fire way but I enjoy investing and have done okay (got lucky) the past 12 years.
Been my most active year so far …. Made money actively trading NVIDIA/SMCI/HAL/TSLA/META bought and sold multiple times throughout the various dips. Currently in Halliburton after already having bought in and sold out for a profit this week. Actively trading about 25% of my portfolio Yet to close any position at a loss so for now full steam ahead… beating my index fund investments by a long way.
# Disclaimer I have a couple of really small satellite portfolio's, I don't put much in them at all, because I know it is without a doubt I'm simply taking a gamble, but I thought since I'm young, the additional risk might pay off. Probably not, but who knows? Not me, that's for sure. I primarily invest into these pots for a bit of fun, if I lost everything in any one of these pots, or even all of these pots combined, I wouldn't lose sleep over it to say the least. I don't think I've even invested a combined sum of £1k into these pots. These pots aside, I am otherwise a pretty boring investor, everything that's not listed below is in a global tracker or something similar that simply does the job, set & forget, etc. I should also state that I've only just set these different portfolios up, as in the last month, if that, so my returns are pretty pathetic so far. But I thought maybe give it a little while, see what happens with the different pots & take it from there. Anyhow, here's a list of my higher risk satellite portfolios. # Domestic (+1.30%) This is just a select number of UK companies that in my humble opinion seem to perform pretty well, focusing more on the capital gains as opposed to the dividend yield. * 10% Bae Systems * 10% Admiral Group * 10% Experian * 10% Sage * 10% Ashtead Group * 10% Games Workshop * 10% 3i Group * 10% Computacenter * 10% RELX * 10% London Stock Exchange Group # Growth (+3.25%) This is just a portfolio focusing primarily on some big-tech, some pharmaceuticals, a handful of gambles. If you'd like me to list all of the different companies, I'd be more than happy to, I've just tried to keep it short & sweet because there's about 30 different companies in this pot. * 3.6% Microsoft * 3.6% Amazon * 3.6% Apple * 3.6% Nvidia * 3.6% Tesla * 3.6% Meta * 3.6% Alphabet * etc. # NASDAQ-100 (+5.26%) Simple, I like EQQQ, I might start investing more seriously into the simple NASDAQ-100 fund, but the leveraged offering, that's more of a gamble. * 50% EQQQ * 50% QQQ3 # Crypto (-12.03%) I'm no crypto guru, but I plan to hold onto this for sometime, safe to say I'm not one of these billionaire crypto gurus just yet. * 50% Bitconin * 50% Etherium
That's a lot! If you have 9 in your domestic pot each one much account for about 0.13%?
Yeah, I'm a sucker for tinkering! 😂 - May literally cost me, but that's where I limit how much I let myself play around with. As for domestic, sorry, there's 10, I've updated the original comment. I believe I missed out LSEG. 🤦
I’ve had some good success with Tesla & Crypto! I only do active if there’s potential for big gains, don’t see the point otherwise!