LM portfolio as at 31/10/2025:
| Code | Sector | Date Bought | Cost | Value | Gain/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LM079 LM079-2 LM079-3 |
No specific Industry | 22/02/2024 16/10/2024 03/12/2024 |
£4310 | £5830 | 35.35% |
| LM086 LM086-2 LM086-3 |
Banks | 02/12/2024 10/02/2025 10/09/2025 |
£4570 | £5950 | 30.36% |
| LM087 LM087-2 |
Fixed Line Telecommunications | 02/12/2024 22/07/2025 |
£3040 | £3100 | 1.92% |
| LM089 | Investment Services | 06/01/2025 | £1530 | £1680 | 10.25% |
| LM090 LM090-2 LM090-3 |
Aerospace & Defense | 06/01/2025 23/04/2025 10/09/2025 |
£4560 | £6770 | 48.25% |
| LM091 | Basic Materials | 12/09/2025 | £1520 | £1550 | 7.08% |
| LM093 | Services | 29/09/2025 | £1520 | £1530 | 0.58% |
| LM094 | Energy | 06/10/2025 | £1510 | £1550 | 2.68% |
LM092 lasted a grand total of 39 days before I had to sell it off when it hit my self-assigned 20% stop loss. The share was SDI and my purchase price on the 12th September was 101.7p. Come the 21st October it had dropped to 82.03p so I closed off the trade and accepted the loss.
Closing price this Friday just gone was 83.50p which means at least it didn't rocket upwards the moment my sell order was accepted. Even if it had it wouldn't be the end of the world. I closed it off to take a 20% loss because it fell too far from the price I bought at. I thought the share was going to go up in value and I was wrong; simple as that.
It certainly isn't the first loss I've taken and it won't be the last. Check out the last three trades closed in the portfolio:
| Code | Date Bought | Date Sold | Ticker | Days in Trade | Profit/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LM085 | 21/10/2024 | 30/12/2024 | MOON | 70 | (£309.10) |
| LM088 | 06/01/2025 | 11/03/2025 | WISE | 64 | (£315.70) |
| LM092 | 12/09/2025 | 21/10/2025 | SDI | 39 | (£314.04) |
All three didn't last long. I bought them, they fell in price quickly, I sold them to limit my loss at twenty percent or thereabouts.
The problem you have when a share you've invested in drops 20% is that you need it to rise by 25% just to get you back to break-even.
Look at the one I've just sold - SDI. I bought at 101.7 and sold at 82.03 which is a difference of 19.67p. Doing a little calculation I can quickly determine that that is 23.97% of the sale price - thus from the price I sold it at, the share would need to rise 24% to get back to the price I bought at - which I don't think is going to happen any time soon.
The share is showing a lot of weakness and does not fill me with any confidence that it will suddenly start romping upwards to get above 100p.
If the prospect of having to will your share on to rise by a quarter just to get your money back doesn't edge you towards the sell button then another little trick is to ask yourself "if I didn't own this share, would I buy it now?"
For me, with all three shares shown above my thoughts were along the same lines each time... no... great goodness NO.
Result - the position gets closed off and the loss is swallowed.
Though I don't tend to go back and check how my old shares have fared after I sold them, this process and manual stop loss of 20% has served me well and I am going to stick with it going forward. Had I been a bit more strict with it I would have got out of a couple of shares earlier and saved quite a bit of money. Lesson learned.
Selling out of SDI freed up some capital and the LM portfolio now has a single unit ready to go when an opportunity presents itself.
In the last update I mentioned that I'd purchased LM094 and it had rewarded me by immediately dropping 13%. Well as you can see it has crept back up again into profit and saved itself from being culled. I'm once again in the fortunate position of having a portfolio full of shares that are in profit.
But it gets better... last week we ended up at an all-time high (adjusted for withdrawals) and this week is another all-time high.
After all the studying, reading, watching seminar videos and DVDs, listening to podcasts - all the effort for the last 22 or so years - I'm finally doing what I always wanted to do. At long last I find myself heavily invested in the stockmarket with a decent amount of capital and benefiting from a very bullish market.
This is exactly the situation I wish I'd been in back during the dot com boom. I heard the stories years later. In the run up to the year 2000 any fool could pick a share, plunge all their money into it and through pure market momentum they would make a great profit. It was a licence to print money... until it wasn't anymore.
You see I only started looking at the markets seriously back in around 2003. I read an article in the Sunday Observer about spread-betting the financial markets and how some people were making a fortune from it. From there I bought a home study course and became obsessed with trading financial markets for a living.
Of course, it all went wrong. I overtraded and lost my tiny amount of money pretty quickly. I did what everyone tends to do and tried to rush the process so that I could quit my job and make money from the market instead.
Why bother going to work when you can just sit at home and click a few buttons?
I went through phases of trading the markets then quitting again, or becoming interested in something else which distracted me for a while. But I always wanted to become a sucessful investor so I always came back to it.
And luckily I started investing into a LISA because here was a product that would help me fulfill my goals (compounding my money tax-free) whilst helping me on the way (the 25% bonus) whilst also twisting my arm to keep me invested (the penalty for withdrawing before you turn 60).
Yes, I've been forced to withdraw and yes, I've missed out on the bonus these last couple of years. That's all in the past. I can't do anything about that, only the days to come.