LM portfolio as at 04/04/2025:
| Code | Sector | Date Bought | Cost | Value | Gain/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LM055 LM055-2 LM055-3 |
General Financial | 11/01/2023 02/05/2023 20/12/2023 |
£3850 | £7490 | 94.73% |
| LM079 LM079-2 LM079-3 |
No specific Industry | 22/02/2024 16/10/2024 03/12/2024 |
£4310 | £4160 | (3.38%) |
| LM084 | Food Producers | 21/10/2024 | £1520 | £1460 | (4.14%) |
| LM086 LM086-2 |
Banks | 02/12/2024 10/02/2025 |
£3040 | £2650 | (13.05%) |
| LM087 | Fixed Line Telecommunications | 02/12/2024 | £1520 | £1520 | 0.04% |
| LM089 | Investment Services | 06/01/2025 | £1530 | £1380 | (9.45%) |
| LM090 | Aerospace & Defense | 06/01/2025 | £1520 | £1570 | 3.11% |
Not looking forward to this one as I'm pretty sure that once I do the calculations I will find that the LISA decreased in value in 2024/2025.
Firstly, I took out a load of money from the LISA this year due to being out of work for several months between April and September. Net reduction from withdrawals was £8,038.07 which I will obviously need to take into account.
Secondly, the market started dropping last week. The FTSE 250 was down nearly 5% on Friday and that happened to also be the last trading day of the tax year. That index was down 6.90% over the tax year.
And so I plug all the numbers into my spreadsheet... value of portfolio from beginning of tax year, value as at close of business on Friday, amount "added" during the year (a big MINUS number)...
The spreadsheet formula spits out the answer, quick as a flash...
Portfolio change in the 2024/2025 tax year is: 2.17% UP
Now let's not get confused about this, that 2 percent gain takes into account the withdrawals. So the portfolio value went from just over £30k to just over £22k. Total actual profit was around £600 or roughly 2% on the original value.
I'm am still gutted about having to remove money from the LISA as I always said I would never, ever do that. The penalty charges on withdrawals are painful but I simply didn't have any choice at the time.
The way things have worked out I am confident there shouldn't need to be any further withdrawals, 2024/2025 was an outlier, a poor year, a low-point. I struggled, I turned to the LISA to survive rather than get into further debt.
As 2025/2026 starts I am in a new job that has given me a huge pay raise compared to my last job - the one that lasted from November to February. I've not far off doubled my wage so I'm optimistic for the future of the portfolio.
But first we need to get over this bump in the road with the markets taking a significant knock. The FTSE 250 is at 18,130 this morning, the FTSE 100 at 7,830.
One of my shares - LM090 - was down 12% at 0810 yesterday and I was sat at work staring at the screen in disbelief. It was like the world was ending. I closed the browser and ignored it for a few hours and when I looked again it was only - ONLY! - 5% down. By the close it was down three and a half percent.
Today it is currently up 5.5%.
Strange times.
Towards the end of March I wrote a short piece that I was going to use as part of an article but never got around to putting it together - hey, I'm often busy at work - but here it is in all its glory:
[The below was written 24/03/2025]
Although there have been some significant up days the FTSE 250 has been trickling down and knocked over the last barrier, falling under the 377 day simple moving average earlier this month.
You'd have to go back to December 2023 to see the last time it was under this level and it doesn't suggest a bullish market.
I keep track of the 250 versus its 50, 100, 200 and 377 day SMAs, updating a spreadsheet each week to show me exactly where the index sits. On Friday 21st March all four indicators were higher in value than the index itself which doesn't mean the stock market is due a fall but also doesn't suggest it's particularly strong either.
One of my early rules when I started the LM experiment was that I would not buy new positions when the FTSE 250 was under its 200 day moving average. It seems to be a sensible rule and has kept me out of the markets when they are falling for a sustained period. Unfortunately it is a "lagging" indicator so it also means I miss a lot of the gains which come from buying into a recovering market early into its rise.
Therefore there will be no new positions in the UK share market until we're back over around 20600. Current price is 19900 so not a million miles away.
As for pyramiding, that should be OK. I can see that LM090 is doing very well having risen a quarter in just over a month. That is crying out for a second unit to be added and so it is extremely likely that I will add that the next time I log in to my broker account.
Lucky I didn't pull the trigger on that second unit in LM090 as I'd be so dispirited right now. Pyramiding is great when the share goes up but it multiplies the anguish as the price falls.
Oh well, that's another tax year gone. Another opportunity for an easy £1,000 bonus lost.
But there's no point dwelling on it. This LISA Millionaire experiment has at least another 14 years to run and therefore plenty of opportunity to make some serious profit. I can't lie, it would be great if the bull run would hurry up and get here.