LM portfolio as at 27/02/2026:
| 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 | £6260 | 45.23% |
| LM086 LM086-2 LM086-3 LM086-4 |
Banks | 02/12/2024 10/02/2025 10/09/2025 02/01/2026 |
£6090 | £8000 | 31.47% |
| LM090 LM090-2 LM090-3 LM090-4 |
Aerospace & Defense | 06/01/2025 23/04/2025 10/09/2025 12/01/2026 |
£6090 | £9520 | 56.27% |
| LM095 | Travel & Leisure | 01/12/2025 | £1520 | £1520 | 0.15% |
| LM096 | Investment Banking and Brokerage Services |
22/12/2025 | £1520 | £1680 | 10.45% |
| LM097 | Gas, Water and Multi-utilities | 09/02/2026 | £1520 | £1640 | 7.49% |
| LM098 | Chemicals | 09/02/2026 | £1540 | £1620 | 3.42% |
| LM099 | Food Producers | 09/02/2026 | £1530 | £1580 | 3.19% |
| LM101 | Electronic and Electrical Equipment | 09/02/2026 | £1530 | £1530 | (0.47%) |
LM100 is gone. It was an investment that didn't stay in the portfolio very long and ended up being a small loss.
It's not something I can complain about as I know there will be lots and lots of losing trades over the course of this experiment. The trick is to limit the size of the loss.
Just this weekend there was an article in the Financial Times where the writer was talking about his biggest investment mistakes and one of them was buying a share and then not selling when it started to fall.
The way I see it - rightly or wrongly - is if I've bought something it's usually because I expect the price to rise so that in the future I can sell it to make a profit. If it doesn't increase in price pretty quickly then that tells me I was obviously wrong.
And the man in the FT confirmed that I was right to think this way. His words: "when shares you own sink, assume that you're wrong rather than looking for reasons why you're right".
When I've determined that I've made an incorrect decision then I need to correct that decision i.e. I need to sell this share that's in a losing postion to prevent the loss from getting any worse.
In this case the share was Goodwin PLC (GDWN) and it had already boomed in price in the last 6 months, going from around £100 in September 2025 to its current position of £242.
Sadly I bought it at a higher price than £242 only a couple of weeks ago.
As a pure coincidence, this week I learned of a neat little trick in ShareScope where you can add a trailing stop-loss line to a share chart. I created a new "portfolio" (an ordered list) in my ShareScope account and added all the shares I have in the LISA Millionaire portfolio as well as all the shares in my SIPP and those I'm trading in IG. Then I added a 10% trailing stop-loss line running from when I last purchased each one.
Adding this line to the Goodwin graph highlighted that it had already dropped back through my 10% stop on the 20th February so I sold it this Friday just gone (27th Feb) resulting in a £205.11 loss.
Easy come, easy go.
The fella in the Weekend FT article elaborated to mention that he compounded his mistake by adding more to his position in the losing share, a process commonly known as "averaging down". It's a method that many people use to lower their average purchase price of a share. The problem is if you do this you are still losing money, just on a higher number of shares. And if the share continues to drop then you lose money at a faster rate because you have more invested.
It's not a method I would ever use as it always reminds me of the Paul Tudor Jones quote "losers average losers".
The Portfolio
Only after posting the last update to the web did I spot the large error with the portfolio summary table - I'd not listed the fourth purchase of LM090.
I fixed it but I'm not going to go back and edit other updates because life is simply too short.
Perhaps there are further errors here and there on this site but they will just have to remain. I did notice that I spelt "lose" wrong on one update, performing the same error that winds me up when others do it and putting "loose" instead. I don't have the patience to go trawling through all the updates to find it and fix it again. Maybe one day when I'm at a PC and checking through the site I'll stumble across the spelling mistake and have the opportunity to fix it but until that day it'll have to stay in place.
This week saw some great new stock market highs being achieved. The FTSE 100 made brand new all-time highs on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, therefore closing the week at the highest close price EVER.
And if the market is going up in general then it's very likely that many individual shares will also be making new all-time highs.
And, funnily enough, that's what happened.
In the LISA Millionaire portfolio, LM090 reached its all-time high price on Thursday and LM097 did so on Friday. In my SIPP I also have a share with two units invested that has hit an all-time high just last week.
This is precisely why I buy new 52 week highs - because I know that in order for a share to reach its highest ever price, it must first hit a 52 week high. Hitting the highest price for a year is a decent sign of strength and when you combine it will a rampant bull run in the overall stock market, as we are SURELY seeing at the moment, prices are very likely to continue growing.
Of course it could all stop at any point but we'll only know about that after it has happened.
For now we just need to invest (making sure to use a good money management plan) and then sit back and watch the market go up, always ready to act if it starts to tumble again.
I read a theory somewhere that the market often goes in 20 year cycles (or thereabouts). Makes sense, it's about the time interval for one generation. We had a big boom in shares running up to the end of the century then the UK stock market did pretty much nothing for a long, long time.
Come 2020 it started to move upwards and perhaps that was the 20 year cycle theory coming true. Unfortunately, the pandemic put paid to that. Covid completely derailed any bull market and here we are 6 years later with the FTSE 100 finally making good gains. We are lagging well behind other countries but it may just, finally, be the UK's turn again.
Thank goodness I'm fully invested so I can take full advantage.