LM portfolio as at 06/02/2026:
| Code | Sector | Date Bought | Cost | Value | Gain/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LM079 LM079-2 LM079-3 |
Investment Banking and Brokerage Services |
22/02/2024 16/10/2024 03/12/2024 |
£4310 | £6060 | 40.77% |
| LM086 LM086-2 LM086-3 LM086-4 |
Banks | 02/12/2024 10/02/2025 10/09/2025 02/01/2026 |
£6090 | £8500 | 39.63% |
| LM090 LM090-2 LM090-3 |
Aerospace & Defense | 06/01/2025 23/04/2025 10/09/2025 |
£6090 | £8550 | 40.29% |
| LM095 | Travel & Leisure | 01/12/2025 | £1520 | £1540 | 1.33% |
| LM096 | Investment Banking and Brokerage Services |
22/12/2025 | £1520 | £1640 | 7.87% |
Due to a number of factors I decided to sign up for ShareScope. It's a monthly charge that will need to come out of my day-to-day spends - as opposed to it being paid from my trading profits, I can't touch those until 2049 - but I feel that it is very likely to provide a great deal of value when it comes to my trading decisions.
Part of it came from watching a load of financial trading seminar DVDs and getting fired up about using software to find new opportunities. An idea gleaned from the seminar footage was to look at smaller US shares and Sharescope has the means (a large up-to-date database of stocks) and the tools (the ability to filter on various criteria) to delve through the thousands of listed companies over there. Perhaps I could find a way to do this through free websites but that seems a false economy when you take into account having to put up with all the ridiculous adverts that those sites insist on plastering everywhere.
I also need to think about the position I find myself in now. My portfolio value has grown - great! - and the market is going great guns - brilliant! - so it seems foolish not to be fully invested in order to take advantage of these favourable conditions. I don't want to spend hours looking for the best opportunities and the methods I use to find trades aren't particularly complex so anything that makes it quicker to find new shares, especially at just £30 or so a month, is surely worth a try.
In addition to running this LISA portfolio I now have a SIPP and also a small spread-betting account for which I need to find trades, or analyse shares and commodities that come along. I should get more than enough value from a ShareScope membership.
And if not, it's only a monthly direct debit so I can just cancel.
We've moved our 4 year old to a new school that's pretty much right next door to her previous one only this one is a Catholic school.
She's, obviously, far too young to know anything about religion. Her last school was a county school so they taught a little bit about lots of different religions and then relayed the Jesus story at Christmas but that was about it.
At this new one there's daily Jesus-stuff.
So it was quite amusing last week when she mentioned to her mum on the walk home from school that "God is coming to school tomorrow".
On hearing this I said to my wife that we should immediately tell the world's media - this would be the first time in history that God had appeared and humanity would have the chance to record this monumental happening. Finally there would be conclusive proof.
After lots of laughing we forgot about it and then the next day the photos came up on the class app - of the local priest sat at the front of the class talking to the children.
Oh well, guess we will have to continue waiting for that proof...
The Portfolio
I sold off LM091 last Monday (2nd February 2026) to lock in a profit of £1,575.50. The share was Pan African Resources PLC (PAF) and, according to ShareScope, is in the Precious Metals and Mining sector.
I knew it was in the mining sector and I figured when I purchased the first unit that its price rise was likely something to do with the sharp rise of precious metal prices - I even mentioned this in a previous update, specifically stating that this share was likely to be volatile and highly influenced by commodity prices. Also that I would be watching it closely and would close quickly if I got spooked.
Well the time came for some volatility and on the previous Friday the price of silver dropped 31% in one day. I've been watching the markets since around 2003 and I can't remember ever seeing a one-day drop of that magnitude. It spooked me good and I immediately sold on the Monday to lock in my gains.
This was a 3 unit investment that built up quickly. The trade lasted a total of 143 days and became only the 2nd investment in the LISA Millionaire experiment to make a four figure profit.
There's still some volatility in silver and gold prices and the PAF price has risen a little bit again but I'm very happy to be out now. I am well aware that I will never get in at the bottom and get out at the top, there will always be some potential profit given away in both these places.
Had I done this differently, I may well have ended up invested in a silver or gold ETF. That would've been far more painful as the price would've mirrored the spot price of the metal and my portfolio would've taken the full 31% drop on Friday.
But this wasn't the only commodity play I made because I also have my spread-betting account with IG...
Within that account I spotted the silver price run up quite early, getting in at the beginning of December when the price was $58. I added some more at $63 and then closed both positions out just below $71 to bank a decent profit and congratulate myself on being an investment genius.
Of course, silver then continued up to get as high as $121 and I cursed my premature exit. Today it's back at $79 after some large up and down moves. It's far too volatile for my liking - I made a couple of day trades which I should've known is never a good idea and ended up giving back a little bit of profit but all-in-all I did well out of the great silver boom of 2025/2026.
Where it goes from here I've no idea. Reading Reddit threads the silver bugs have all kinds of theories about how 'this time it's different' and silver prices are going to rocket.
However, for every investor that got in early and is sitting on lots of paper profit there are likely another 10 who bought in at $110 or higher and are now praying that this time it really is different.
Then there are the Bitcoin bulls who are sure that this drop from $125k down to $69k in 4 months is just "a good opportunity to buy more at a cheap price".
Not me, thanks. I've taken some profit from the middle bit of both booms and I'll leave it there. I'll keep watching though...
Today shall be forever known as "Mega Monday" following a large buying session this morning where the remaining cash in the LM portfolio was invested into 5 new trades.
Signing up for ShareScope resulted in my gaining a very simple way to discover which sector any particular share is in. Previously I had just looked on my broker's website but this sometimes threw up "No Specific Industry". Now I've got a ShareScope login I can just bring up the share and then click on the "single page summary" button and it gives me the sector, as well as lots of other information.
You will notice in the table above that I have inadvertantly ended up with two shares in the same sector. This is technically against the rules but I'm not going to take any action at the moment. If I wanted to get it back down to just one share in the "Investment Banking and Brokerage Services" sector then I can tell you straight away it won't be LM079 that I sell.
Late last week I took full advantage of my new software subscription to filter down all the UK shares, under a list called 'FTSE all share', to a handful of potential investments.
The first one on the list that I was going to buy was ruled out because it was in the "Investment Banking and Brokerage Services" sector but then, happily, the next 5 were all in different sectors.
Accordingly, in the next update you will hopefully see LM097 to LM101 listed in the table with nice, positive values in the Gain/Loss column.
Word to the wise; always check the spread on your broker's website before you buy... I realised far too late that one of my purchases had a £4 spread between buy and sell prices. FOUR POUNDS!
Wasn't too bad in reality as the share price was £273 so it's 1.5%. Still a lot of money and means the share will have to rise quite a bit just to overcome the spread. Had I paid better attention I might not have bought it and now I'm worrying that my standard 7% mental stop loss level might be a little too tight for this one.
Lucky it's only a "mental" stop so I can give it some room to breathe.