Financial Goal
10/10
2017 has been yet another successful year financially for me. Some of my biggest winners in shares have been Next and Easyjet but there have been many others that have performed well such as HSBC, BP, Shell, Barratt...
I actually sold shares of my own volition in 2017... mostly at the right time. I sold Sainsbury’s in May which was certainly the right move. EasyJet was also sold in May after buying in around September 2016 for a big profit in a short space of time... I sold at around the same time Chris Bailey reduced. That was a pretty good sale although I could have bought back in August and they are higher now than the time I sold them. I sold Next in October after buying in January for a big profit, the timing of that sale was fine too.
If you spend a lot of time looking at a share you know when it’s cheap or ‘sellable’... this principle can also be used for spreadbetting.
Here’s some writing on share investing which can help you...
The fundamentals of a good investment remain a low PE ratio good dividend yield and strong dividend cover. The last point is important and for some of my investing career I have not paid enough attention to it. Ideally the dividend cover should be 1.8... there are sometimes opportunities to get it quite a lot higher than that.
The important thing to add to that is new newsflow or sentiment because this can effect even fundamentally sound shares. BT is a good example of this in 2017... share price collapsed because some actual newsflow/genuine reasons but also poor sentiment. Even before that the fundamentals were good... but they turned out to be great at 245p and its risen since then.
And that’s the secret of share investing... or spreadbetting. You have to get a fundamentally good or bad share... then pounce at the time of maximum good or bad sentiment.
Interestingly the same is true of shorting shares, although I have quite a lot more to learn about this. You want a fundamentally weak share, like Boohoo or Ocado, then pounce at the time of maximum optimism. Then watch it fall... I’ve done it with Ocado and Boohoo this year and will do it again with other shares. Ideally you want a share with quite a big market cap and a low spread for spreadbetting... even if a share is good or bad (for shorting) it’s bad to have a big spread. If you can get a spread of around 0.25% that’s decent...
I’ve done spreadbetting for 9 months in 2017 and have learnt quite a lot... you can potentially lose or make a lot of money. I’ve made very nice amounts on Next, Revolution Bar Group, Petrofac, Royal Mail, William Hill... but also lost too on things like SSE. Stop losses are important... hard stop losses and ‘soft targets’ which can be moved up.
So I feel I have the potential to make quite a lot more money in spreadbetting... to do that I just have to be more per point and win. Easy to say but it can be done.
Overall Chris Bailey has rated me a B plus for shares this year... thinking about it I would rate myself slightly below that but it’s been good overall and room to make more money in 2018!
Poker has gone fairly well in 2017... won some pretty big tournaments and won at a higher level in cash games. However the easiest and quickest way to make money in poker is just to take advantage of weak players in cash games. When there aren’t enough weak players it can be better to do other things. So I will probably spend less time in poker in 2018.
I now have over 150,000 views on my share writing worldwide. There have been a good number of share articles out this year and I’m happy with my content overall. However I was not well paid for the time spent share writing- that effected the quality to an extent but people who followed my ideas still would be QUIDS IN! Please understand that some of them were poorly edited. The unedited version of all articles will be released eventually. I am not associated with any site currently so understand that only articles appearing on this site are authentic- don’t view my articles on the site I wrote for this year. Those close to me will have seen a more ‘punchy’ version of this...
I worked and am working for three companies in 2017. Two of them were massive companies that I put a lot of hours into and were pretty interesting- I’m still working for one of them and it’s actually a nice atmosphere.
One company that I worked for was surreally great though. At many times it was more like being in a surreal dream than a job. Since 2011 when I started writing my goals for the world to see I haven’t had a job as fulfilling as this. Being an Analyst Manager at Newgen Renewables was a great experience and I learnt a lot more about shares and spreadbetting. Some of this will go in the mutual fulfilment with high value people section yet I am thankful for the money I earned working there. Of course I will be a share investor for the rest of my life so I am happy to help Dean Staveley earn yet more money too!
Mutual Fulfilment With High Value People 8.1/10
So let’s get right into this...
The person in 2017 who has been the ‘highest value’ to me is Dean Staveley, my boss at Newgen Renewables. I’ve never been even close to saying that for anyone else I have ever been employed by.
Spending time being an Analyst Manager at Newgen Renewables often was more like being in a surreal dream than ‘going to work’. I have looked at shares every market day practically since 2005 yet this was the first official ‘share job’ I’ve had. On the first day of my contract I dragged my unclean laptop into the office and bought EasyJet. Dean could have bought it too, and I showed him all the shares I owned and money I had... it turned out to be a very good start.
Dean has had a childhood ambition to be a share investor/trader and I saw my role as doing everything I could to help him fulfil that ambition. My share buys of Easyjet, Next and Bovis could have been great for him... and every day I worked there I aimed to give great ideas. I learnt about spreadbetting too and my very first ever spread bet on Next was up £480 in 24 hours at a pound a point. Other ideas I showed him like Petrofac, William Hill and Royal Mail worked a treat too. In fact such is the nature of spreadbetting that I myself should have held William Hill and Royal Mail longer- it would have made me a lot more money...
Because all that matters in shares is how much money you make. You have to be present in each moment to make the decisions which will make you the most money. I am thirty four years old now and if you count the time I picked Manchester United out of a share magazine at fifteen to buy I have been a share investor for nineteen years now. I knew nothing about shares then but still bagged a big profit on that one. Since I was twenty one years old I started to study and understand shares more which has brought me to this point...
So I urge Dean Staveley to make the decisions in 2017 and 2018 which will make him the most money. He has the financial power to make a hell of a lot of money- in 2017 he could have earned WAY more than my salary by following my ideas. Dean, start as soon as you see a strong idea! The best way to learn anything is by doing it.
Looking back as my time as Analyst Manager at Newgen there are only a few things I would have done differently. I actually came back for two days after my contract to discuss shares with Dean more- in effect for free as it currently stands. I still chat to Dean and he is quite persistent in ringing me up for a chat- again something I have never had from an employer before. I am not in the position to put in lots of hours for free at the moment yet I still hope and believe Dean can make a lot of money from shares- and potentially other things like foreign currency and commodity trading. Thank you Dean Staveley for our time in 2017!
A close second in the mutual fulfilment with high value people stakes is Chris Bailey.
I have known many smart and driven people in my lifetime yet I have never known someone put as many hours into something as Chris does into shares. Just shows that when something is a passion it’s not really work. Sometimes Chris will stay up for over twenty four hours just investing, writing about and teaching shares. No sleep. Companies fly him all over the world (on EasyJet!) to teach them about shares. Practically any company I talk to him about he will probably instantly have an interesting angle on it.
I have been privileged enough to meet Chris Bailey twice in person to learn about shares in 2017. Such is his cost per day that the saving we at Newgen Renewables made from one day teaching at the favourable rates was almost one week’s salary for me! Yet there is certainly a lot he can teach both Dean and me. In a nutshell the way Chris invests is similar to me, but more complex. The methods led us both to buy EasyJet and Next for example- although he didn’t buy Bovis when I did. Overall Chris has done very well with shares in 2017!
We have talked practically every single day since September 2015, after both writing in ShareProphets in 2014. Such is Chris’ urge to help me with my goals he even feels qualified to be my love/seduction guru... I have tried to teach him a bit more about my philosophy on that! Chris really does have an urge to teach the world about shares and has helped many people. Make sure you check out Financial Orbit in all its forms to learn about shares.
2017 marks over 14 years of knowing Stevie PUA. I am glad he has made the great investment of buying a house in the UK after me urging him to do this for years. Our phone chats have had me crying with laughter and he is a great guy with probably the best verbal and social intelligence of anyone I know. We need to meetup in person again in 2018!
Quick mention must also go to Tim Fraser who I did some one on one coaching with. Tim didn’t know much about shares when I first visited him so I spent my time quickly teaching him as much as I could. I mentioned cheap shares like Next and fundamentally why they were cheap. Of course I didn’t mention to him to buy shares right away as he didn’t have massive amounts of available cash- most of his cash was tied up in his businesses...
A few days later he spreadbet Next and made way more than the cost of my coaching. In 2017 he has jumped on the Crypto currency train and as far as I know has made a LOT doing that... just shows the power of being proactive. Hopefully I can do more sessions with Tim in future as he can obviously make a lot of money in investing...
My time is quite in demand at the moment but feel free to contact me if you want to learn more about share investing. Best way to do that is probably to become part of my great network in LinkedIn and contact me there. I am open to contact with any positive goal focused people.
I’m officially single and could have done better with girls in 2017. However I still met a lot of interesting ones! I feel like I provide a decent amount of value and want girls to provide that too. I should probably be more assertive and chat to more girls. Improving my fitness will help in this area.
Health and Fitness
6/10
There is room for improvement in this area. Again I get points for no alcohol, smoking or drugs of any kind... but my fitness and diet could and should be better. I am going to reduce my weight in 2018 and will exercise more. Investing money in quality food will happen too!
Thanks for reading and let me know how your 2017 went and your goals for 2018.
