Author: Charlie Croker

Stockmarket Eye – software for Portfolio Management

Business & Tools No Comments

Update 2024. SME has closed down. The new Owner realised that he had bitten off more than he could chew. I’ve moved to Airtable and Stockopedia (see elsewhere) so I have removed all links to the Software.

It’s a shame. It was a really useful and comprehensive package.

Prior to 2015 I used to use a spreadsheet to manage my Portfolios (didn’t we all). That is quite labour intensive if it’s not a ‘Buy and forget’ type of Portfolio. Even if it is, it is still a pain to update with current prices to see how your Returns compare to your chosen index.

I have also tried some of the online Portfolio facilities provided by, for example, ADVFN. ADVFN is a fantastic site for raw information on everything and I have been a user for decades. The Portfolio Management section is not as user-friendly as many packages. I still use it pretty much daily for that nerdy blow-by-blow share price tracking, however.

In 2015 I trialled the Stockmarket Eye package (SME). This is specifically designed around Portfolio Management. You get a 30 day trial and after that it’s currently just $75 a year (about £60 at current rates). Personally, I think that’s a bargain. I’ve been subscribed since about 2016.

You can see typical reports it can produce on these pages. All the stats I have created in my Blogs have come from the Reporting features of the package.

Features that I use regularly

  • Buy, sell shares. Spare splits
  • Dividend recording
  • Cash management recording – fees, commissions interest etc
  • Multiple Portfolios and Watchlists. I have set one up for my ISA, one for my SIPP and I also have a Watchlist one. Reporting can be separate or consolidated.
  • Charting. SME has live links to current and historic share prices so producing a share price chart is a doddle. You can have different styles such as Line, Candlestick etc and you can compare prices against other shares or indices.
  • Reporting. See the top of this Blog or my gain/loss calculations for a typical example. All I do is set the time period and it does the rest.
  • Cloud-based As long as I keep it synchronised I can access the software from my PC, my laptop or my phone (there is a free App).
  • Configurability. The main display is based around each share entry and all columns can be ordered or hidden. Here’s the example from their website:

This isn’t meant to be a massive review of SME, but if you are looking at setting up and Managing a Portfolio, do take advantage of their free trial and have a play.

Reasons to buy

  • Cheap at £75 a year. You can easily recoup that in time saved by not using a spreadsheet
  • Highly configurable
  • New ownership of the software with plenty of plans moving forwards
  • Free Trial anyway – nothing to lose!

Quirks

  • It would be nice if it was truly cloud-based rather than local copies that can be synchronised. Synchronisation is easy enough but it’s easy to forget to save if you make a change. A cloud-based version downloads the latest every time, and any changes get automatically saved back up to the cloud.
  • The Watchlists have a subset of the columns available to the Portfolios. It would be nice to have them all, no reason why this shouldn’t be the case.
  • All data are dependent on the source they are using. I have one share, for instance, where the historic data prices are a factor of 100 out where someone assumed the values were pence rather than pounds 9or vice versa). Make some charts look funny, but that is probably out of SME’s control.

Q1 2023 Review

Portfolio Reviews No Comments

The Ukraine War continues, a couple of Banks in the US and Switzerland show that there are still banks taking bets on the Economy – and coming horribly unstuck when interest rates rose sharply. This contagion then spread Internationally, tarring all banks with the same brush, whereas in reality UK banks are much more resilient to financial shocks than they were in 2008. Still, that created some opportunities for the brave. Outperformed the FTSE by 8.4%.

TLDR;

Sold a few, bought even more and topped up my ISA during the banking rout – and ahead of April 5th deadline for the 2022/3 financial year. Decent gain compared to the FTSE.

Sells

CEY: Sold at £1.24, (but subsequently bought back at £0.99). Currently £1.04

DLG: A little top up quickly sold for a small gain. Sold at £1.73. Currently £1.38

VSVS: Had a good run, so sold at £4.14 and back on watchlist. Currently £4.13

VOD: A little top up sold for a small gain. Sold at £0.93. Currently £0.89

HSBA: Sold as it had had a good run. One of those lucky flukes as the mini Banking crisis soon took hold. Sold at £6.37 and back on watchlist. Currently £5.49

ABF: Sold as it had had a good run. Back on watchlist. Sold for £19.46. Currently £19.40

Buys – see write up(s) for justification(s)

DLG: Top-up bought then sold. See above

LSL: Bought at £2.72

BLV: bought at £1.78

CRST: Top-up at £2.44

888: Small punt on this. Bought at £0.70

CEY: Bought back in at £0.99 – see above

DOM: Bought back in at £2.62

BATS: Bought for first time at £27.34

IGG: Bought at £6.64

IMB: Bought back in at £18.83

This quarter’s trading shows that you never know what is around the corner and it’s never wrong to take a profit. It also demonstrates the manic-depressive mood of Mr Market. A couple of dodgy banks were enough to make Traders push the ‘sell’ button on Stocks in general. As usual, those that sit tight will ride it out just fine. Those that sold in panic have crystallised a loss (or a smaller gain) and may be rueing it. Those that went against Mr Market and bought are now sitting on gains. I took a chance and topped up my ISA. That top-up went on a few purchases at better prices than a month or so beforehand. Just wish I have more as there are still some good Stocks at reasonable prices waiting for some cash.

Raw stats:

Q1 gain (adjusting for cash in and out)

Portfolio: 11.2%

FTSE: 2.6%

Quite a few shares have gone ex-dividend in this quarter. I don’t know how much my Software (StockmarketEye) adjusts for this in either my Portfolio or the index valuations, but that is still a decent gain over the index. Q2 will see a lot of income from these Dividends in April and May.

Imperial Brands (IMB – Buy)

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Back into this for similar reasons as my recent BATS purchase. It’s currently yielding 7.4% so a nice steady earner. It’s also even smaller than BATS – Philip Morris is 8x the size so arguably even more ripe for a takeover.

Buy price: £18.83

Dividend yield: 7.4%

Portfolio %: 2.7%

Total Portfolio holdings: 2.7%

IG Group (IGG – BUY)

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IG Group is a Business that facilitates the buying and selling of shares and other financial instruments by private investors (PIs). PIs cannot buy and sell directly, they have to go through a Regulated Broker (such as IGG).

It started off as a spread bet firm. Here investors don’t buy the underlying shares, but just bet whether they are going to go up or down.

The two main advantages of spread betting are firstly that it is classed as gambling, so there is no tax for PIs to pay on profits (you can’t reclaim taxes on losses either, obviously – and it’s estimated that 80% of private investors lose money. I’ve got better over the years, but early doors I can attest to that).

The second advantage is that you don’t have to pay all the money. If you buy (say) £10,000 of shares you have to spend £10,000 plus costs. If you are betting on £10,000 of shares you only have to put down (say) 20%, so £2,000. That way you can bet on more share value than you have in cash. This is known as gearing (or leverage in the US). If the price movement goes against you, you have to add to this cash to protect IG (or its equivalent).

A similar concept is when buying a house. If you want to buy a £500,000 house you have to spend £500,000. If you don’t have that you might put up £100,000 and borrow £400,000. If the house price rose 10% to £550,000, your £100,000 is worth £150,000 (on paper at least) – a 50% gain. On the other hand, if it dropped by 10% it is only worth £450,000 – your £100,000 is only worth half what it was. This could even be wiped out – in the 1980’s housing crash a lot of people bought overpriced (at the time) properties with high value mortgages, only to find the house worth less than the mortgage (negative equity) when house prices plummeted.

IGG won’t let that happen. They make you top up their investment to cover themselves. If that is not possible they ‘close your position’, realising any losses before you run out of buffer cash (you are still liable for any losses if they don’t close in time). This is why PIs lose money as they overextend themselves and don’t have the resources when they need to top up, and close out at a loss instead. Rinse and repeat.

Anyway, IGG takes a cut whether PIs bet on an increase or a decrease, so make a profit whatever the price is doing *. It’s a numbers game. The margins are small, so lots of investors trading more = more profit. Market volatility is good, and we certainly have that at the moment. I’ve bought some for the portfolio.

* If you have watched “Trading Places” this is exactly how Duke and Duke (IG Group equivalent) make all their money, then lose it when a massive bet (based on false insider information) goes horribly wrong. If they had stuck to taking a commission they would have been fine. Towards the beginning of the film Eddie Murphy’s character gets a schooling on how Brokers make their money.

Buy price: £6.64

Dividend Yield: 7%

British American Tobacco (BATS – Buy)

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One of the sinful Companies (Tobacco, gambling, Oil etc.). I’ve held Imperial Brands in the past.

BATS latest financial report was slightly gloomy and this has hit the shares a bit, however although tobacco is on the decline, there are plenty of smokers out there and all manufacturers are developing vaping products. The jury is out on whether or not these are harmful.

In the meantime, the cigarettes are being churned out in a highly efficient manner. With a sustainable Dividend yield of 8% this will be a nice steady earner.

Philip Morris, the largest cigarette manufacturer in the world is just under twice as big. A takeover / merger is not entirely out of the question, too.

Buy price: £30.08

Current yield: 8%

Associated British Foods (ABF – Sell)

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Owner of the Primark Brand. It’s had a good run and the dividend yield is not particularly appealing, so have sold for now. Bricks and mortar shops are still finding it tough, although Primark does seem to defy the odds with its rock-bottom prices. Held for approximately 1 year for a 17.5% gain.

Sell price: £19.45

Average Buy price: £16.80

Dividend income: Circa 2.5% total

Gain: 17.5% total (2.5% + 15%), 17.5%pa

HSBC (HSBA – Sell)

Portfolio No Comments

I’ve held HSBC since 2019. Since then, obviously, we’ve had the COVID crisis and at one point the shareholding had halved in price. It has now made that back, and then some. Whilst its latest report was very positive, there are headwinds with Russia and China. China’s intentions towards Taiwan may also be a concern.

At the moment, China is treading a fine line between trading with Europe, but also refusing to condemn Russia. If Putin decides to accelerate action, we might see China’s true colours forced out into the open.

After its recent run, the shares are looking a bit toppy with a ‘nothing special’ dividend yield. Sold for a 12% return over 3 years. Not planning on doing anything with the cash as yet but will keep an eye on markets, especially with the ongoing downbeat housing results (My Persimmon holdings took a 10% beating today after downbeat results).

Portfolio allocation report not yet updated so still shows HSBC.

Sell price: £6.37

Average Buy price: £6.18

Dividend income: Circa 10% total

Gain: 12% total (2% + 10%), 4%pa

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This Blog must in no way be construed as investment advice. I’m not an Advisor, I’m just a Private Investor that takes an interest in Stocks and Shares as a way of increasing my standard of Living & having a bit of fun. Feel free to comment. All comments are Moderated before publication, keep them relevant, short and interesting otherwise they won’t be published. My Blog, my Rules.

Don’t make me responsible for any decisions that you make off the back of anything I write here. Do Your Own Research. Capice?

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