Second pin stuck in the newspaper

As announced in the previous blog it was time to put another pin in the newspaper in order to select another holding for the monkey portfolio. We used a blue colour pen instead of a pin and here is where the pen landed in the FT (Financial Times) newspaper…

We needed a holding with the main listing outside of US in order to diversify globally and Lloyds Bank ticked that box. In the first holding in the monkey portfolio we added a position value of about $5000 or about 4% of the intended start portfolio. Since the first holding Cisco is under water/down we are allowed to select a position value of about $7500 or 6% of the intended start portfolio according to the “no capital gain taxes growth investment plan” in the book “beat the stock market casino”. Have you bought the book yet on Amazon? So we do not market time, but portfolio time if that makes sense. It is a good thing we do not market time. The S&P 500 is at a record high as the FED is basically conducting QE4 (quantitative easing round 4). The FED got scared after the overnight repo rate spiked to as high as 10% in September 2019. The FED has also lowered interest rates in 2019. With their actions in 2019 the FED basically admitted that Mr. Trump was right on this one and that the FED had killed the global economy by hiking rates faster than the US economy could handle in 2017 and in 2018. Anyway we do not market time, so we do not need to worry about any of that nonsense. 

So since the cray on portfolio follows where the monkey portfolio leads, we added a holding with the main listing in the UK for the cray on portfolio as well. This second holding for the cray on portfolio had a target of about $7500 position value. The first choice to add to the cray on portfolio was Greggs (the UK’s favourite “restaurant”). Sadly the Stockrover website does not know the stock Greggs and we needed a stock that could be tracked on a portfolio tracking website and the best portfolio tracking websites are (still) in the US. So the cray on portfolio added the stock Ashtead Group instead. To keep the tracking easy in $ we added the US ADR line of both Lloyds (LYG) and Ashtead (ASHTY). In round 1 we could not invest the entire $5000 into the stock MSCI, because it was trading at a high price and we rounded down the full number of shares we could buy and put the balance of the $5000 into cash. Cash skewed the results in the stockrover website a little so we will forget about cash from now on and just round down the full number of shares we can buy per position.  In round two in the cray on portfolio we emptied cash and added it to the $7500 so we could buy 60 shares of Ashtead. So the paper cray on portfolio added 60 shares of ASHTY at $126.20 yesterday for a value of $7572. The paper monkey portfolio added 2403 shares of LYG at $3.12 yesterday for a value of $7497. May the force be with Lloyds and Ashtead! Stay classy dear reader. Thanks for reading this blog. 

This blog is not a tip sheer or advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any investment. The purpose of this blog is to sell the book “Beat the stock market casino” and expand on the book and is a marketing communication. Investors should form their own view and ideally talk about their view with an independent financial adviser before doing anything.

Update after 6 months of running the experiment....

First of all let’s be very clear about the purpose of these blogs. Clearly the aim is to promote and sell more of the book “Beat the stock market casino”. The tiny book is now available on Amazon. These blogs are not a tip sheet. The blogs are intended to dig deeper into the core of the book and show how one can build a retirement stock portfolio along the guidelines mentioned in the book without much difficulty and hopefully perfectly acceptable returns. As mentioned in the book evaluating performance takes a long time so only after about 7 years we can start drawing some conclusions on which of the paper trade portfolio’s has held its own versus the good old S&P 500 index. We are about 6 months after we started the experiment. 

What has happened in the last 6 months? 

The race to zero for commission rates when trading stocks continues. In the US Charles Schwab was the first big retail broker to copy paste Robin Hoods zero commission policy. In the UK Revolut entered the wonderful world of equities as well with a zero commission product. Another topic apparently is no FOMO (Fear of Missing out). Recession fears of no recession fears the recent new all time high by the S&P 500 has punished professional investors that were short or holding too much cash. FOMO only means your plan was stupid to start with so we have no interest in this concept. Much more interesting in our opinion is the FIRE (Financially Independent, Retire Early) concept.  Financial independence is having enough wealth such that you no longer have to work for money. Sign me up! One can get an income from labour, but in most places creating an income from capital is less hard work and the income can be subject to lower taxes on top of that. That is not to be sniffed at. 

Enough side tracking for now, let’s get back to the status of our experiment. One rule was; “One position will be added to both portfolios every 6 months on the basis of the "No Capital Gain Taxes growth investment plan" as described in the book.” So it is time to buy a newspaper tomorrow and put a pin in the stock prices page of the paper again and select an addition to the monkey portfolio. How has the monkey portfolio done in the last 6 months? Not great to be honest. Early days as mentioned to evaluate, but the dangers of a 1 stock portfolio have become clear in the monkey portfolio. Cisco has lost about 14.6% since the Monkey portfolio added the stock in May. Luckily Cisco pays dividends so the damage at portfolio level is less as the portfolio lost about 13.3%. Meanwhile the good old S&P 500 index is on fire and up 10.1% since May. So far the monkey is left behind in the dust. The tracking of the portfolio and the pictures below are courtesy of the StockRover website. 

How about the Cray On portfolio?

The Cray On portfolio has only one holding so far and the paper holding MSCI has done much better than Cisco. MSCI is up 16.8% since May. Inclusive of the tiny dividend MSCI is up about 17.4% since May. The Cray On portfolio also had $116 of un-invested cash so that will drag the performance down a little. Still the Cray On portfolio is nicely ahead of the S&P 500 index so far. Long may that continue….

The individual shares mentioned are just part of the experiment to dig deeper into how to implement the book “Beat the stock market casino” in the real world. Those stocks are not investment recommendations and these blogs are not a tip-sheet. If you want to play in the stock market, please talk to an investment adviser to find out what suits your personal situation.