Sorted by % of Portfolio. Absolute values are not shown as they don’t serve any purpose other than flaunting, or otherwise my net worth.
Click on an image to get a larger version that you can actually read. Software has been ‘updated’, so displaying as a bar chart isn’t really going to work. Pie it is from now on.
9 March 2023
17th February 2023
OK, so from narrowing my choice down to four (Stockopedia, Sharesight, Yahoo Finance and Google Finance) I’ve immediately managed to rule out Yahoo and Google for a couple of reasons:
Very basic functionality. No obvious way to account for cash or dividends or transaction costs. These I’d class as essential to managing a Portfolio. I’ve done a quick Google (!) on both and cannot see any way of doing this, so have abandoned them, each with one test transaction.
So far:
I *think* I can produce a report showing each shareholding’s portion of the whole Portfolio, but it’s in the Premium section and I can’t actually see any examples in their Help section, or Online.
So far:
As I wasn’t happy, I did run another Google search and came up with:
Morningstar – very limited features
ThisIsMoney – ditto
Trustnet – Not a good User Interface (UI) and when I tried to add CEY it wasn’t on the list and therefore I couldn’t add it.
In the end I have plumped for Stockopedia in that it has decent functionality and I’m already paying for the subscription. It’s taken me a few hours to import my data from StockMarketEye – quirks at both end of the Export / Import process, but significantly quicker than manually typing in all those transactions again. reporting on this Blog may look a bit different. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it as, at the moment I have no spare cash for purchases and nothing looks worthy of being sold. Watch this space.
At the moment I use Stockmarket Eye which, when it is working, is great for my needs (live-ish prices, charting, historic data, multiple portfolios). However, it has not been working for one reason or another since May and there is no sign of a solution on the horizon.
I have subscribed to Stockopedia, which has Portfolio Management amongst its features. However it has nowhere near as many Portfolio features as Stockmarket Eye. The hunt is on for a new package.
Requirements for a Share Portfolio Manager package:
After a quick Google I’ve come up with the following:
This appears to be very akin to my current Stockopedia Subscription. Prices, charting, analysis, ratios and screens etc. Portfolio Management seems to be a very small subset. Parked for now. £32 / m or £347 / y
Touts itself just as a Portfolio tracker.
Automatically track price, performance and dividends from 240,000+ global stocks, crypto, ETFs and funds. Add cash accounts and property to get the full picture of your portfolio – all in one place.
Pricing plans: There are 4, starting at Free forever
(pricing is monthly or monthly equivalent if you pay annually)
There are other features, too such as custom groups, so you can group your holdings by (say) Industry, country, investment type etc.
As I run two Portfolios, that means it will be the ‘investor’ package anyway, but actually I am currently on 30 holdings. If they count the same holdings in both portfolios as double then I’m above the 30 limit as well, anyway.
I’m going to subscribe to the free version just to have a play and report back.
Interestingly (or not), Yahoo Finance is the source of the data for Stockmarket Eye and is also the source of its current angst as it has changed the way SME can extract data.
Either way, Yahoo Finance is a pretty comprehensive source of financial data so I’ll set up a parallel Portfolio to Sharesight and see how they compare.
Google also offers Portfolio services, so I’ll give that a try, too.
I’ll report back in Part II, but if anyone knows of any other UK-supporting share Portfolio management software, do let me know in the comments, below. Please don’t suggest anything Excel-based, however good as I really don’t trust the data capabilities. I would much rather pay for dedicated software.
Dominos leapt after a smashing set of results and it seemed rude to not take a 50%+ profit after just 6 months. I just think it’s got a bit ahead of itself now and hopefully it might sink back later in the year to buy back in again.
Sell price: @ £4.02
Buy price: £2.62
Dividend income: 2.5%
Gain: 55.5% total (2.5% + 53%) 130% pa (not compounded)
With the Dominos money burning a hole in my pocket I’ve been playing with the Stock Screening tool on Stockopedia. I’m looking for companies within 20% of their 52 week low, with a reasonable PER and PEG. Minimum size £20M although in practise I’m more comfortable with the £50M + Organisations. I also filtered out certain sectors as they are not for me. Pure exploration and Biotech for instance.
This threw up a list of about 120 and I trawled through the figures this weekend. This narrowed it down to a shortlist of about 40, which I then ranked, then had enough cash to purchase three of the top ones. Plenty more to purchase, just no cash to do so… ones that didn’t make the cut, for instance, include the Banks Barclays and tarnished NatWest.
Brickability Group PLC is a United Kingdom-based construction materials distributor. The Company supplies facing bricks, blocks, rainscreen cladding systems, architectural masonry, paving, roof tiles and slates to the construction industry (Stockopedia)
Does what it says on the tin. Makes bricks. Income has grown rapidly in its 3 years of trading from £11m to £600m with profits of about 5-10%. Positive trading update and cost pressures are abating. Taken a modest stake as it’s a smaller than my normal size Organisation.
Buy @ 54.47p with a Dividend yield of 6% and PER of 5.4
Portfolio %: 2.2%
Total Portfolio Holdings: 2.2%
Vp plc is a United Kingdom-based equipment rental specialist company. The Company provides specialist products and services to a diverse range of end markets, including infrastructure, construction, housebuilding, and energy (Stockopedia)
More steadily rising turnover and profit, but positive noises from the Management team. Brisk are not yet going out of fashion, especially with the drive for more affordable housing, whatever the colour of the Government over the next 5 years.
Buy @ £5.79 with a Dividend yield of 6.5% and a PER of 7
Portfolio %: 2.8%
Total Portfolio Holdings: 2.8%
Epwin Group Plc is a manufacturer and supplier of energy efficient and low-maintenance building products, including windows, doors, and fascia systems. (Stockopedia)
Energy efficient”, “low maintenance”. Nice.
Trading Update end July:
Trading ahead of a strong 2022 comparative; confident of achieving full year expectations
and
Trading during the first half of 2023 was in line with the Board’s expectations. Revenues increased to approximately £180 million, with the Group continuing to trade ahead of a strong 2022 comparative.
Buy @ 72.3p with a Dividend yield of 6.2% and a PER of 7.3
Portfolio %: 2.2%
Total Portfolio Holdings: 2.2%
888 Reports next week (15th). It’s bounced back strongly and quickly since the sell-off after I sold, so it will be interesting to see whet the effects of interest rate rises have had on both its costs and the ability of its customers to place bets. I’m still cautious and, so far, it’s about 10% below my selling price.
I’ll update the Portfolio later this month.
The Ukraine War continues, interest rates are still climbing, with more to come – but US inflation might already have peaked. Quite a few dividends received, which is nice (approximately 2% of my Portfolio this quarter from all that Reporting March / April time). Outperformed the FTSE by 3.2%.
Review written 15 July due to other demands for my time.
CEY: One of those that I just ride the cheap / expensive cycle.
888: Out of these currently. Never say never again, though but read my recent Report.
888: several tranches, now all sold. Got Lucky. See separate Posts
VOD: Top-up. C’mon, it’s got to stop dropping soon and is sitting on a great yield.
TEP: Great share at a reasonable, slightly depressed price.
IGG: High margin, online-only offering at a reasonable price for tucking away.
BATS: Top-up. Smokers gonna keep smoking and the vape Market is interesting.
SMDS: Topped up on a dip on good results. Amazon isn’t going anywhere, so packaging will be needed for a while yet.
Fewer buys and sells than the last quarter. Perhaps I am getting the hang of this Buy and Hold lark.
This quarter’s trading again shows that you never know what is around the corner and it’s never wrong to take a profit (888). Sentiment is still weighing quite heavily on the Market and if I had more cash there are certainly some very interesting shares such as JMAT, 888, IWG, PRU, PIER amongst others.
I’ve subscribed to Stockopedia this quarter, which is a great store of raw data. The discussion Boards Signal to Noise ratio compared to certain Bulletin Boards (looking at you, ADVFN) is in a different league. This is already throwing up some stocks I need to examine more closely. I’m hoping to post on a few of these in the near future.
Q2 gain (adjusting for cash in and out)
Portfolio: 2%
FTSE: -1.2%
I’m more than happy with this, especially considering I have quite a few Property stocks currently weighing on it. About 4% of the gain can be attributed to the trading of 888, so. I would have made a loss otherwise – but that’s what having a Portfolio is about!
888 Holdings (LON:888) is a Betting and Gaming Company. It recently (July 2022) purchased William Hill, that it is struggling to digest (debt based purchase, so currently owes £1.4B). As well as William Hill, it also owns other big name gambling sites such as 888casino, 888sport, 888poker and Mr Green.
Whilst the debt is massive and will hold back growth, a lot (70%) of its interest payable is fixed rate and therefore not affected by recent rate rises. 30% is, however, and also a lot of its customers will also be affected with increasing mortgage rates. Will this affect turnover and Profit after interest? Undoubtedly.
The debt is, however, covered easily by net income from its activities (as of its last Report).
A couple of months ago, another Gaming Company, FS Gaming bought a 6% stake in 888 with a view (as it later transpires) to install its Directors onto the Board of 888. Longer term, perhaps the idea was to engineer a takeover from the inside. Who knows? Anyway, it put a rocket under the share price and it jumped by about 50% over the next month or so.
I held a significant number at the time and took the decision to take my money and run. Always good to take a profit. It then retreated back a fair way (about 40%) and I was pondering on a re-entry at some point. Luckily (as it turned out) the price started to climb back again, so I held off, knowing the Results were out fairly soon. I wanted a bit more certainty about current trading vs debt repayments before committing.
On Friday, out of the blue, 888 announced that it had been in discussion with FS Gaming about installing its Directors on to the Board, but it has come to light that one of the previous Businesses the Directors had been involved with was under investigation. Gaming Company Directors need to be whiter than white and the UK’s Gaming Commission was investigating this other Company, oh and at the same time it was reviewing 888’s Gaming licences. This is not good news. If 888’s licences are revoked, that’s 60% of its revenues gone in a flash, it will be unable to service its interest payments, the game will be up. 888 announced that it was immediately terminating all discussion as it sought to distance itself from FS Gaming staff.
Unsurprisingly the share price tanked 25%.
Who knows?
If the Gaming Commission finds issue and revokes 888’s licence, it is toast
If FS Gaming increases its stake to over 10%, this will trigger a review, the licence will probably get revoked and 888 is toast.
If another Organisation takes a 10%+ stake and the Commission deems it unsafe, 888 is toast.
If FS maintains or sells off its stake and 888’s review is clean it will probably rocket again.
Personally I’m sitting it out until Results Day to see what that holds. I don’t have any spare cash currently anyway. I would have had to sell something else to buy in. If the results are not a disaster because of the interest rate double whammy, it might be worth a punt on 888 being given a clean Bill of Health.
In summary: It’s never wrong to take a profit and unexpected news, good or bad can come out of the blue. These can create buying and selling opportunities when Mr Market gets the pricing wrong. I got lucky in my buying and selling. I’m trying to not let that go to my head and am considering carefully whether to get back into 888.
Aand we’re back in with a modest investment. This is one I’ve been in and out of, trying to ride the waves. So far that has paid off. Not a recommended investment method on its own, but small amounts of speculative money on top of the main Buy and Hold strategy.
All cash is now committed so will need a sale to add anything new anywhere.
I have a mental note to complete the Portfolio Q2 summary. A few things have been going on in the background, which has delayed this, but it was another quarter of outperformance.
Buy @ £0.90 with a 3-4% Dividend yield whilst I wait for the value to climb.
Portfolio %: 1.8%
Total Portfolio holdings: 1.8%
SMDS top up after 8% fall on very positive trading update
888 cash burning a hole in my pocket.
Sometimes you cannot look a Gift Horse in the mouth, as they say.
Earlier on this month a couple of Gambling Companies declared a stake in 888. This has put a rocket under the share price, taking it from about 70p to about £1.20 today.
888 is a high risk stock since it bought William Hill for massive amounts of debt. Whilst a lot of it (70%) is fixed debt for a couple of years, the rest is not. In their April Trading Statement, 888 highlighted debt being a possible issue, restraining investment. Since then, inflation remains stubbornly high and rates have climbed, with more to come.
Whilst I don’t follow Sports (so take my thoughts with a pinch of salt) , I’m not aware of any significant events in 2023 that could lead to a surge in betting. Similarly, a lot of fixed rate Mortgages are coming to an end and money is going to be tighter for the remainder of 2023.
This is a Business with a high level of debt that means that any dip in earnings will put the Business into the Red. Debt payments will have a disproportionate effect on profitability. With a half-year Report due any day now, there is a not insignificant chance that earnings will be down and possibly even some sort of money raising to pay down debt.
For me the downsides currently outweigh the upsides, so I have sold all my holdings. I’ll have a muse as to what to do with the cash. TEP, IHC, CEY and ULVR are under consideration.
Sell price (ave): £1.195
Buy price (ave): £0.79
Dividend income: 0
Gain: 50% total (0% + 50%) 250% pa (I wish….)
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?