I’ve been away from the blog lately, but that was because I was STUCK on Encore Oil and Rambler Metals… although I have much faith in both these prospects the share price isn’t reflecting that confidence. Rambler received some really decent news and there was a slight rally. I sold at a small profit because I just couldn’t see that the share price was going to recover any time soon. Sad too see these shares go, but a week later they have fallen considerably, so it was the right decision to make at the time.

Unfortunately since that point the market seems much more depressed and with it has come some trading errors in judgement. First error of judgement was probably to buy into Taylor Wimpy again. These have done nothing and I ended up selling for a loss yesterday… I could have reduced that loss considerably when I was hovering over the sell button in the morning, but I resisted the temptation and the shares fell much further. The prospects weren’t looking favourable so I high-tailed it out of there with my tail between my legs. I hate taking losses and this is actually my first since I started trading.

I am normally much more ‘bullish’ but I think I got a little bit scared when I saw that Woolworth’s shares falling through the floor, especially after I made a judgement call that at 3.5p they were a bargain. Luckily, being wrapped up in TW. and EO. I didn’t have the cash to splash and next morning the shares were suspended and they are now closer to 2p. TW is in trouble, BIG trouble, and when I saw the shares falling rapidly I figured it was time to cut my losses. Looking at the share price today, with another big drop I guess I made the right decision, although I don’t know if there will be another rally on the cards. At this point the shares were always a gamble.

After my loss on TW. I chucked all my remaining cash into EO… basically to average down my losses here. If there is a minor rally I’ll get out with a profit, if there’s another big fall I’m done for. At the moment there’s a minor drift down. I guess that is the game we play.

Rmm- stagnant, EO offered a big kick in the stomach today, down 15%… may as well hold on at this price, nothing else much to loose. Would like out ASAP though. Swings and roundabouts me old fruit.

Upgraded my share dealing account to level 2 access, primarily so I can see live prices, so I now have a (depressing) ticker rolling across the screen letting me know the very latest.

I can suddenly see how riding the stock market can be all consuming.

Bailed on WLW yesterday, as I got very bored of this stock hovering around the price I paid for it. Looking for faster money than that, and if it does recover I’m not sure it’s going to recover at the pace that I’m looking forward to.

RMM is a concern and in my case probably a poor choice for a short term punt as the Bid Price is much, much lower than the current Ask meaning that I’m well out of pocket here. Also there is virtually no movement in this share so people just aren’t interested in it. I think this could have been my first real mistake. Longer term I have faith in this share, but can I wait?

Waiting on RMM to perform is possibly an option as I re-invested the WLW cash (made a tiny 0.99% profit here) into EO (Encore Oil) which seemed cheap at the time, but again this could be a highly risky bet. I have faith, but in reality I’m a complete novice so what I know is not worth repeating!

The recent stock sells means that I have grown my initial investment, by around 7.5% in two weeks, which is well beyond anything a bank could equal, however I am aware that there are risks involved and I could simply use a ‘bookie’ to similar effect.

Putting negative thoughts like that aside, I’ve decided to take another random punt with virtually no ‘due diligence’. RMM- a copper mining stock that seems to be fairly cheap at the moment for no good reason looks like a good value buy. I’d love to explain why I like the look of this, but there’s nothing much to explain really. There’s a lot of guesswork being pushed in this direction. Anyway, I’m going ‘all in’ with this with the exclusion of the WLW stock I can’t/won’t shift yet so here’s hoping that this stock is simply following the general market depression that’s impacting everyone and will take a bounce in the ‘right’ direction. I’m expecting a short bounce fairly soon (hopefully) with a long term prospect of a big bounce, but the chances of me still owning this stock in a few years is slim. I’m looking for relatively short term gains initially before I start to look at ‘value’ investing prospects.

Fingers Crossed!

Been about two weeks since I bought my random stocks, and they have been running fairly low since then. From the start of the week the stocks seem to be re-bounding somewhat so I’ve been keeping watch, keen to trade early.

On Monday, WLW took a big leap forward and my second buy of this stock became very profitable, however my earlier buy was holding back overall profitability on this stock and I’d have only taken a measly £5 out of it. Fancy a little more than that. However this stock has fallen again so it’s a watcher for now.

TW. The beleaguered house builder leapt forward this morning so without further ado I sold my holding here at a 29.19% profit. It’s looking like this stock could rise much more over the coming days due to an interest rate cut in the base rate, but I’ve got itchy fingers and want to more on with a bit of a profit. I don’t really care what the price ends up at, as when I sell I sell and forget about what might have been etc. Anyway, perhaps a novice mistake getting out too early…

Also, I noticed that Inch was also up for the first time since acquisition of this share. I also bailed here with minimal profits with a return of 7.68% over two weeks. Not too shabby.

You’d have to be living in a cave to not have heard about the global credit crunch that’s going on right now. Here in the UK, the housing market, banking and investment sectors have been hit with a gigantic sledge hammer and shares have plunged on the stock market.

With that in mind, after seeing the markets crash I decided on a course of action to make my cash work a bit harder, so I took a measly £500 and bought a few random stocks.

Now, I know absolutely nothing about share dealing. Let me repeat, I know NOTHING about share dealing, but oddly enough I do have a share dealing account that I’d never used set up. So feeling brave I went for it.

Now most of the articles on share dealing I’ve read have stated that you should do your ‘due diligence’ on the companies you buy stocks in. Also, it said that in a ‘bear’ market it is very difficult to know when a stock has hit bottom, meaning you could get stung.

I can’t be bothered with this due diligence nonsense, mainly because I wouldn’t know a good stock one way or another, so initially I am going to cross my fingers, spin the wheel of fortune and just pick something.

Randomly I’ve gone for £150 each in:

Woolworths
Taylor Wimpy
Inchcape

Let the craziness begin!

I’m finding the rat-race fairly depressing at the moment, the constant travelling two and from work (two hours each way) is starting to get me down a little. Winter is coming and that means getting up in the dark and arriving back at home in the dark…  I guess we’d all like to escape from the humdrum and do something a little less mundane. However, once you get to a certain age you gather ‘anchors’ that stop you from just giving it all up, quitting the day job and escaping. Currently the big anchor that is weighing me down is the £200,000 mortgage outstanding on my house. Lately I’ve been thinking that one of the most important things that I can do right now is work towards paying that outstanding debt off as quickly as possible. I’m fairly sure that there aren’t any ‘real’ get rich quick schemes out there, so I’ll have to resort to wise financial investments and extra work on top of my day job to get myself into a positive financial position. There will be some risks involved, but in reality for the majority of us, there aren’t any quick fixes.