“Second Wave” Dogs of the FTSE + Random Shares

Posted on 22nd October 2020 by weenie

My latest Dogs of the FTSE experimental portfolio was set up in June, so it’s time for an update on its progress – a shame I wasn’t able to time it when everything hit rock bottom in March.

Bad timing or not, I continue to follow the strategy as an experiment and will be documenting the bad times as well as the good (mostly bad, these days!).

Here’s a reminder of the Dogs of the FTSE strategy:

Choose the ten FTSE 100 shares with the highest yield (subject to my criteria*)
Invest equal amounts in all ten shares
Hold for a year (give or take a week)
At the end of the year, sell the ones no longer in the top ten, replace with new shares with highest yield
Repeat from step 3

[*criteria being that shares already in my portfolio are not included, nor any where a dividend cut has been announced]

Note that this is part of my ‘fun’ portfolio and represents less than 1.5% of my Future Fund – it is not what I do as a main investing strategy. All dividends received are reinvested.

Wobbles

The stock market has been wobbling a little these past couple of months, reacting (or not) to world events, and my Dogs don’t appear to have done too well. Only 3 are in positive territory, the others are looking quite sorry for themselves:

Over the same period, the FTSE 100 Total Return was -6.22% so the Dogs are doing slightly worse at -6.76%.

However, if I include dividends received, it’s a loss of -4.09%, which is marginally better but still rather rubbish.

Well, the mangy mutts still have around 9 months to turn themselves around – I’ll do another update in a few months’ time.

Random Shares

My Random Share Portfolio is made up of free shares awarded to me whenever someone signs up to Freetrade* via my affiliate link, bagging us both a random free share (worth between £3 and £200) in the process.

A couple of recent free random shares I received

Here’s the full portfolio – it’s gotten a bit too big to do a full copy and paste.

I’ve kept most of the shares, occasionally selling when the odd one gains by >20%.

The money from sales of such shares have been invested into my Winter Rock Associates Fund 😉

Thanks to all who have signed up via my link in the past – hope you all got a decent free share!

September 2020 Savings, plus other updates

Posted on 3rd October 2020 by weenie

Compared to last month’s ‘activity-filled’ calendar, September was on the quiet side.

The only things of any note were:

My nephew went back to school and all was well until during the second week when he came home with the lurgy and we had to self-isolate. Fortunately, he was able to get tested within a day and his results (negative) 48 hours later so there was little disruption to the household.

I had a little homegrown ‘harvest’:

I finally found some time to update my blogroll and have added a few new FIRE blogs to my list, notably South Wales FI , Sassenach Saving and The Frugalist.

And did I mention that I managed to hit a little milestone this month? More on that later…

Work had my brain fried most evenings so all I’ve felt like doing after logging off was slumping on the sofa watching ‘comfort’ TV – I rewatched/binged all 4 seasons of ‘Heroes‘ (“Save the cheerleader, save the world!“) and have just started to rewatch ‘Battlestar Galactica‘ (the remake, not the original camp 70s show).

I did however keep up my gym sessions so haven’t been entirely unhealthy!

Me and Sis have slowly started to add more to our shopping – an extra packet here, a couple more tins there – in anticipation of a second lockdown and in case people start going mad again stockpiling like they did in March and April (which seems a lifetime ago).

Restrictions haven’t eased off in Greater Manchester, with cases continuing to rise. Life (as we know it now) will just go on.

So, how did I get on with my savings in September?

I saved 56% of my net salary – very good, but considering it was a month of doing pretty much nothing, I was surprised I didn’t save more.

The above savings includes top ups from £60 Matched Betting profits (from last month) and £72.72 from affiliate income from OddsMonkey* (thank you to all who signed up via my links!).

Shares and Investment Trusts

I sold my holding in Murray International Investment Trust (MYI) for a small profit (reason being that MYI hasn’t done so well compared to other global ITs and while the yield of >5% is tempting, I’m not sure it will be maintained). I swapped it for SPDR S&P Global Dividend Aristocrats ETF (GBDV). I topped up other existing investments.

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund

After reaching my £200k milestone, the stock markets went all jittery and did their best to spoil my little celebration.

By the end of the month, my Future Fund had dropped to £199,167 – it could have been worse so I’m ok with that, although it seems I wasn’t the only one who ‘flirted’ with £200k, only for it to skip out of reach again!

Dividends and Other Income

An average month for dividends:

Continue reading →

Invest in this Fund!

Posted on 29th September 2020 by weenie

The pandemic and resulting lockdown, combined with falling or non-existent savings interest rates has turned thousands of people into armchair investors, dipping their toes into the stock markets for the first time and potentially risking their money due to their lack of experience and knowledge.

With Winter Rock Associates, you will benefit from years of expertise, knowledge and time spent by the fund manager, researching and picking the best opportunities to produce the best performance for your money (capital at risk etc).

Investing in our fund means your money is spread across multiple assets. As some investments will perform better and some worse over time, diversifying will, fingers crossed, help spread the risk and smooth returns over time.

Our management fees are very competitive, which you will find in the small print hidden in our website but you will be benefitting from significant returns on your investment so it will be money well spent in the long term.

Investments

Here are some of the assets the Winter Rock Associates Fund has invested in:

The fund is showing an overall return of 10.9% (since March 2020) so would be a great addition to those saving for the future.

Note that the fund is only open exclusively to new investors for a short period of time so don’t delay – contact me now for more details! Don’t miss out on profits!

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I’m joking of course, so please don’t contact me! 🙂

It seems anyone can create a fund these days – thanks to Average Money Man for pointing me to Hedge Fund Name Generator and I had some fun designing the logo at Free Logo Design.

What is real, however, are the assets/companies I mention above – I do have these actual investments in a portfolio.

I didn’t use any expertise, knowledge or time to select those companies I’m invested in – my criteria was that they were a well known brand/I’d heard of them before or I used their products/services.

Using Freetrade*, I bought £10 fractional shares in each of those companies (plus others) and when they make a decent profit (eg 50%+), I sell.

Of course, I don’t recommend this ‘strategy’ to anyone – I’m just saying this is the strategy I’ve followed and I’ve had a bit of success recently (with a large dose of luck!).

This is my ‘fun portfolio‘, which allows me to do daft things like pretend I’m a hotshot trader, buying and selling with impunity, and giving in to FOMO! I even follow some ‘experts’ on YouTube for latest buys and sells!

The main thing is that I leave my core investments (my ETFs and investment trusts) ticking along (untampered with) in a sensible but boring way, as long term investments should.

Yes, it was very exciting last month when I sold my £10 piece in Tesla for £20! But that’s as much excitement or risk I would like or need investment-wise.

Anyway, if anyone fancies getting us both a free share worth up to £200, sign up via my link – good luck and perhaps you too can enjoy creating your own Winter Rock Associates Fund! 😉

[*referral link]

August 2020 Savings, plus other updates

Posted on 4th September 2020 by weenie

Another month has passed in this strange year.

Some ‘interesting’ things which happened in August:

- I ate in a restaurant (thanks for the 50% discount, Rishi!). It was nice to dress up and enjoy a pleasant evening outside of the house. Something I’ve missed a lot.
- I put petrol in my car! I filled up the day before lockdown and haven’t really driven anywhere so it’s taken this long to use up my petrol.
- I grew something edible and ate it! So excited as I’ve never had green fingers!

My runner beans!

- I baked! I don’t normally do baking – I reckon the last time I baked anything was in school during one of my disastrous Home Economics classes! Anyway, I baked some healthy breakfast biscuits, which even my sis and nephew enjoyed!
- I bought some books! I don’t tend to buy books because I use the library. Although I’ve enjoyed reading ebooks on my Kindle, I really miss holding a physical book in my hands so not knowing when my library is going to reopen, I succumbed to buying some books which I’ve been wanting to read in a while.

Can’t wait to get my teeth into these (not literally!)

- I tried a couple of recipes with Gousto* (50% off your first box and then 30% off your first month’s subscription if you sign up via my link – while offer lasts). My sis does most of the cooking duties and we didn’t want to start getting takeaways for variety so I’ve subscribed to Gousto on my friend’s recommendation to cook some different meals. These have worked out really well – I’ve cooked some meals I never would have dreamt of cooking (all delicious so far!) and at a decent price (cheaper and healthier than takeaways for definite). I’m on a fortnightly subscription but weekly or monthly are available.
- I was Employee of the Month – who needs to be in the office to put in a good shift and be recognised? 🙂

As there’s been no change to the lockdown requirements in Greater Manchester, I’m still only leaving the house as necessary, still not been back into the office yet although I am actually looking forward to when I do eventually go back in, just to see some different faces.

Anyway, how did I get on with my savings in August?

I was able to save 47.1% of my net salary – there was quite a bit of spending, including gifts for a couple of special birthdays, some bits and pieces for the garden and some purchases I made the back end of July on my credit card.

The above savings includes top ups from a £75 premium bond win (woo hoo!), £50 Matched Betting profits (from last month), £57.69 from affiliate income from OddsMonkey* (thank you to all who signed up via my links!) and £20.20 from TopCashback*.

Shares and Investment Trusts

No new investments, I just topped up existing investments.

Current share/IT portfolio can be found here.

(Entire portfolio here)

Future Fund

Big rises in the stock markets meant that my Future Fund jumped up to £197,334, but with some market wobbles this week, I’ll be lucky if I finish as high, come end of September.