Introduction
Not entirely a new(bie) investor, I have been picking up shares on and off over the last 4 or 5 years, without really doing that thing investors talk about, which I now understand is called 'actual proper research'. As an example previously I would presume that finding 3 positive articles online about a stock and the fact the price had taken a recent hit as a good buy opportunity (as long as I took a quick squiz at the books). So the contrarian mind-set was in place somewhat, but unfortunately laziness ensued.
About 7 months ago I decided enough was enough and committed to following better practices. This included offloading those 'investments' I held since I couldn't remember why I bought them in the first place! Instead, I would now keep an investment diary, in addition to learning the skills necessary to be a successful investor and putting them to practice. This is mainly by reading my way through the many great books and articles available focused on the subject.
This was also one of the reasons for subscribing to Stockopedia for the great resource of information. I'm sure as members the majority would agree the stock reports and readymade screens are invaluable for pointing out ticking time bombs, before investing too much of our precious time researching the company, or more importantly investing in it.
Purpose
The intention of this post is to help me remain accountable to these principles with the cash I have to drip feed into my account in 2017 and highlighting lessons learned along the way. By laying it out here for all to see and committing to re-posting later in the year. Fear of having to 'explain Myself' to the Stockopedia audience should hopefully keep me on the straight and narrow.
I have 9k already invested (see table below), 5k available to invest and about 10k currently invested in various tracker funds via a monthly direct debit, the idea is I can easily tinker with the asset allocation divest from these if needed.
The story so far
From the about mid 2016 I have built up a portfolio of 13 stocks, not including Joules (LON:JOUL) the one stock I have sold off so far. This one unfortunately hit my stop loss just prior to a big trend upwards, so that one is on the naughty…
