April 5,2018 - UK Tax year end

4 full years have now past since I started this portfolio.

Before I give you the facts, I have received the following dividends since my last investment.

£ 38.34 from SSE plc
£30.17 from RDSB
£46.52 from BP

The Facts: 
Total new money invest during the year:  £2,000.00
Total new money invested since starting the portfolio: £13,000.00
Total dividends for the year: £804.94 (2016-17 : £420.01)
Dividend Income : £67.08 per month (2016-17 : £35.00 per month)
Total dividends since starting the portfolio £1,566.89  (2016-17 : £761.95)

If I sold the shares on the 5th April 2018, I would have had £16,884.87  in cash in my SelfTrade dealing account. Overall a 19% profit still on my original cash. This is the same as last year, so I am happy.

 As I say each year, that is the thing about shares.  They can go up and they can go down.  My regular income is still increasing from year one of £13.33 pm, and this the 4th year year is is now up to £67.08pm.  I still have a long way to go, before it is enough to live on, but I have to start somewhere and "Rome was not built in Day"

March 2018 - Investment 22

Since my last investment I had also received the following dividends:

 £31.92 from GlaxoSmithKline
£30.51 from  National Grid Plc
£29.97 from BT

Additionally since the last investment I have been trying decide which my next investment should be.  The market has dropped generally, and I have quite a few existing holdings producing good dividend returns against the costs of my original investment. Some are showing capital losses, so it could be considered a good time to top up. Especially as the reason for investing is for long term dividend return over capital profit.  Generally the news from the companies I am watching have not been positive enough for me to be confident to choose one particular company over another, so I will just have to keep watching each one until I am either ready to invest or find something else which catches my eye.

By mid March 2018 the market was still very volatile, so I decided to take a look at a share I already had, which was not doing very well even thought it was producing a good dividend return.  So I decided to top on on National Grid.  I just used the balance of cash I had in my trading account to purchase another 137 shares, bringing my new holding to 334 shares.

https://www.nationalgrid.com

December 2017 - Investment No 21

The main issue with investing in shares is keeping up with developments of the companies which you hold as a shareholder.  Fortunately I am a long term member of a website called MoneyAm (www.moneyam.com) where I keep a Stockwatch portfolio list of my holdings so I can see at a glance if there is any news. I try to take a look at it at least once a day, ideally in the morning to make sure I don't miss something really important.

In mid December I noticed there was news on "Board Changes" with Persimmon, in which I held 78 shares. The announcement was that the Chairman was going to resign and on the previous day another senior member of the board had resigned. Also generally the announcement tried to put a positive spin on what had happened, but it was over the Long Term Incentive Plan in 2012 which did not include a CAP.  It was due to this omission they tendered their resignation.  I did wonder what the implication of this would be, but decided not to wait until the companies trading up date due at the beginning of January 2018. So I decided to sell my 78 shares in Persimmon for which I received £2,035.95.  This produced a profit of 63% on shares held for just under 18 months. Including the dividends received the overall profit was 66%.  So now I am sitting on over £2,000 in cash.  A very nice position to be in.

Since my last investment I had also received the following dividends:

Centrica  £16.20
Dyson Group £13.14
Royal Dutch Shell B £31.16
BP £48.30

I am not good at leaving money sitting in my dealing account, so I thought I need to make an investment while the market was quiet.  Looking at my portfolio I did think I should consider a bank, to have more diversification, but taking a look at the choice I just could not bring myself to invest in any of them.  So I decided to take a look again at my existing shares.  Centrica was languishing.  Currently down 40% but paying good dividends, although no more in the current financial year.  I noticed the CEO, Iain Conn had purchased 100,000 shares early in the previous week for more than the share was currently trading. In fact he had also purchased 100,000 shares back in October 2017, when the shares where a lot higher.

centrica.com

 Centrica has steadily been dropping in price.  The company was very much trying to be a one stop shop to for its customers and the company figures to year end Dec 2016 were pretty good, after a couple of questionable years.  I wondered in Iain Conn thought the year end Dec 2017 figures were going to be better and had purchased the shares? Of course I could be completely wrong so I would have to wait and see.

In the meantime I purchased 820 shares in Centrica for £1,148.89 leaving £1,000 in my dealing account towards my next purchase.

November 2017 - Investment No 20

I have watched my portfolio grow well now, and am disappointed that I have not been able to add as much new money into it as I had originally planned. On occasion it has been easier to sell and existing share which is in profit to finance the purchase of another share. 

So I have tighten my belt, and found another £1,075 to add to my Self trade accounts. This will bring the total money I have personally put into the account to £13,000 instead of the £15,000 as my original plan. I have no idea how I am going to catch up. 

Since my last investment in the previous quarter I have received the following dividends:

BT Group plc £65.19
Royal Dutch Shell "B" £32.28
BP plc £49.46
SSE plc £86.26
GlaxoSmithKline £13.68

My dividend income to date is already more than the amount I received for the whole of the previous year so I am looking forward to finding out the final figures for this financial year.

The market is quite high, so I have decided to top up by putting all the money I have in the account into a share which I already own and receive quarterly dividends each month - GSK.

The share price has dropped a bit - about 5% from my original purchase in June 2015 - Investment No 6, but I think this is because  because the market as a whole has dropped.  2016-17 I received a return of 7% on dividends, so for a long term investment I think I'd like to buy more. And they are also due to go ex-dividend next week, payable in January 2018 so that is an unexpected plus.

So I purchased an additional 96 shares in GlaxoSmithKline plc. This brings the number of shares held to 168.

 http://www.gsk.com

July 2017 - Investment No 19

Although I have been topping up on existing shares recently, I found I share which pays a dividend in August.  This is the only month in the year I currently do not receive any dividend.  I have actually missed out this year, as I found the share a little late. The shares paid a special dividend back in June, and the shares also went ex-dividend in June. But c'est la vie, there is another ex-dividend date in November with a payment in January and of course there is always August 2018 when the payment should also be paid.

However since my last investment a month ago, I have received the following dividends:

BP plc £50.33
Royal Dutch Shell "B" £15.96
Centrica £37.80
Persimmon £85.80
GlaxoSmithKline £ 13.68

I decided to sell the balance of my 184 shares in Antofagasta.  After dealing costs I received £1,873.49 This was a total of 23% on my original investment, 75% from the balance of shares purchased in July 2017 and 5% from the shares originally purchased in March 2014. The dividend income this was producing was disappointing and I had another share I wanted to purchase.

This share was in National Grid plc, in the Gas, Water & Multi-utilities sector and is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the world.

https://www.nationalgrid.com/

As the timeline of my posts are starting catching up on reality, I am going to space them out a little until they actually catch up.  Thereafter they will be soon after I each investment is made.

June 2017 - Investment No 18

I did quite a lot of buying and selling during 2016-17, and now I have left it to the end of the next quarter before doing another investments.  It has often been difficult finding extra cash to add to my portfolio, but as it grows and starts to become the portfolio I want, I just have to find the cash to keep it going.  Easier said than done, but I really just have to do it.

This month I add £925.00 to my dealing account.   Since the end of the UK tax year I have received the following dividends :

GlaxoSmithKline £16.56
Antofagasta £21.71

I can see my dividend income starting to grow, and I have 3 shares which paid over 5% last year.  These are GlaxoSmithKline; Royal Dutch Shell 'B' and Scottish and Southern.  I already topped up on Scottish and Southern, so I have decided to top on Royal Dutch Shell 'B'.  My existing 43 shares is showing a small loss of about 5%, so I am able to purchase and additional 46 shares, bring my total shares in Royal Dutch Shell 'B' to 89 shares.  Of course I have missed the last ex-dividend date in May, but that could also be a factor in why the shares are slightly lower than they could be.

http://www.shell.com/

April 5, 2017 - UK Tax year end

I have now reached the 3rd full year since this portfolio was started.  Despite Brexit, and all the bad news and negative reports about it, and I will not mention what happened in the US, I have seen a lot of changes in my share portfolio.

Before I give you the facts, I need to mention that before the tax year end I received 4 more dividends.

Royal Dutch Shell 'B £16.61
BP Plc £17.86
Persimmon Plc £19.50
and one that I have not mentioned before : Dyson Group  £8.03

Dyson Group (not to be confused by Dyson UK, which is a completely different company) was not mentioned previously because theses were shares I purchase a long, long, long time ago, which were subsequently de-listed and had not had any value and were no longer traded on any stock market. 
Receiving this dividend was a surprise, as it was greater than the actual value of the shares.
 

The Facts:
Total new money invest during the year:  £3,775.00
Total new money invested since starting the portfolio: £11,000.00
Total dividends for the year:  £420.01
Dividend Income : £35.00 per month
Total dividends since starting the portfolio £761.95

If I sold the shares on the 5th April 2017, I would have had £13,136.04 in cash in my SelfTrade dealing account. Overall a 19% profit on my original cash. This is quite a change from the previous financial year when I was showing a overall loss of 8%.  That is a total improvement of 27%.

 As I say each year, that is the thing about shares.  They can go up and they can go down.  My regular income is increasing as last year it was £15.17 pm, and this year is is now £35.00 pm.  I still have a long way to go, before it is enough to live on, but I have to start somewhere.

March 2017 - Investment No 17

I did not intend to purchase another share, but I am not very good at leaving cash in my dealing accounts as it does not pay any interest.  I do think putting it into a share which produces a regular dividend works better for me, and this is my long term aim.

Since the last investment the following things happened:

1.  BT Group Plc  paid a dividend of £13.53

2.  I sold my holding of  185 shares in HSBC for £1,225.91
- This produced a profit of 23%, and although the share had also given a dividend return of 7%, HSBC was in the news too often over being fined another 1.1bn due to not doing enough to stop Money Laundering

3. SSE paid a dividend of £36.99

4. I sold my ARRIS Intl Plc shares for £714.96 as they are in profit. The profit is only 7%, but this share is listed in the US, so not part of the profile of my existing portfolio, and a profit is still a profit.

This was what was left of my Pace plc shares originally purchased in April 2014 - Investment No 2, and then taken over in January 2016. Details of this can be found in my March 2016 - Investment No 9 post.

So I find I have just short of £2,000 to invest just before the financial year end. A lovely situation to find myself in.  My BP shares are showing a 7% loss, so I decided to purchase 430 shares in BP, so my holding is now 649 shares.

https://www.bp.com/

February 2017 - Investment No 16

I am in the next quarter and so decide I can add another £1,000 to my SelfTrade dealing account to purchase more shares.

Since my last purchase the following dividends were received:

HSBC Holdings Plc £14.87
BP Plc £17.36
Royal Dutch Shell 'B'   £15.97
GlaxoSmithKline  £13.68

My last purchase of BT shares are down about 15% so I decided to top up and buy another 339 shares in BT.  This will bring my holding up to 618 shares.

It is difficult sometime to purchase more shares in a company has dropped since purchasing them. My portfolio consists of FTSE100 shares, all currently paying dividends.  I do have one other share in the portfolio also down about 15%, Centrica.  This was my September 2015 - Investment No 7 purchase. However I hold shares also in SSE which is in the same sector so did not want to increase my holding. BT is in a different sector to my other shares, so this is why I decided on this company over Centrica.

       http://www.btplc.com/

 

https://www.centrica.com/

November 2016 - Investment No 15

The Antofagasta shares I purchased in July as Investment No 12, are showing a 35% increase in value.  When shares are sold they are done on a last in, first out basis.  This means that for Capital Gains tax purposes the most recent shares are always treated as sold before any shares purchase previously.  The dividend income the shares were producing was only 1%, so I decided to sell 145 shares in Antofagasta plc, which would reduce my holding to 184 shares.  The reason for this numbers was it realised £1,000.00 which I could invest into another companies shares. I may have already made a purchase this month, but cashing in for a profit can sometimes be a good idea.

Since my last investment Centrica plc paid a dividend of £13.68.

I was looking for a share which paid a dividend in either February or August each year.  I found BT plc.  They paid dividends in September and February, and were due to go ex-dividend immediately after Christmas.  So I purchased 279 shares.

In the UK, BT serves over 20 million business and residential customers, as well as providing network services to other operators.  Its principal activities include networked IT services, local, national and international telecommunications services, and higher-value broadband and internet products and services. 

http://www.btplc.com/

November 2016 - Investment No 14

Another month has passed since my last investment and so I decided to put another £1,000 into my SelfTrade dealing account. The portfolio is looking better, and I am looking forward to seing the year end results. Before I get ahead of myself,  I have only received 1 dividend, £13.68 from GlaxoSmithKline, but I am not complaining.  I am now receiving a least 1 dividend a month. The months I do not are currently February and August.  But I will have to do something about that eventually.

Playing safe, I decide to invest in a company I already hold, Scottish and Southern, also known as SSE. This share was producing dividend income of 5.7% on my original investment, but I was still making a small loss as the share price was about 10% under the price from 2014.  I am not going to repeat myself about this company, so you can read about it on the September 2014 - Investment No 3 post.
 

http://sse.com

October 2016 - Investment No 13

If you have been reading these posts from the first one, you will know originally my plan was to add £1,000 each quarter from my own sources, to invest into shares to provide long term dividend income.  By now I should have added £11,000, but I have only managed to add £8,000.00.  In an attempt to catch up, I decided to make sure I add the full £1,000 I should have been doing and added this amount to my account with SelfTrade.

Since the last investment I also received the following dividends:

GlaxoSmithKline £13.68
Royal Dutch Shell 'B' £15.16
SSE Plc £40.62
HSBC Holdings Plc £14.17
Antofagasta £7.72

Looking again for another share that was paying quarterly dividends, I decided on BP plc.   BP was a Intergrated Oil company and a leader in automotive and specialist lubricants, know in 15 countries worldwide.  2014 and 2015 had been really bad years, as they really !!***!!,  having a "near death" experience with the Gulf of Mexico.  I hoped I was not going to regret buying some shares in this company, but I did need to spread my risk a bit, so I hoped that this would be a good risk.

I purchased 219 shares in BP plc.

 https://www.bp.com/

July 2016 - Investment No 12

The London stock market was starting to settle down, and recover.  Things were better financially for me, so I decided to add £775 .00 to my share account with Selftrade, so I could make another investment.  

Since my last investment last month, I had received the following dividends:

Royal Dutch Shell 'B'  £14.18
HSBC Holdings Plc £13.95

The dividends together with the new money and the money I held back from last month meant I had £1,100 to invest.   My Antofagasta holding was performing badly. It has improved slightly over the previous  This was a very large mining company so long term should perform better. My attitude was, it had not recovered yet, so should be a good buy. I had received a dividend of 7% in 2014-15, but this had been reduced to 1% in 2015-16. For this reason I purchased another 213 shares bringing the number of shares now held in this company to 329.


The chart below is the FTSE daily charge over the previous 6 weeks.  The 2 dips are before and after the referendum. 

June 2016 - Investment No 11

We had the referendum and the results are out!  The UK voted to leave the EU.  Of course as predicted the market panicked and share prices dived! One of the comments made was "house prices would drop" as people sold up and left the UK.  Of course this meant the stock market prices of the  house builders dropped. And did they drop.

My old favourite Persimmon fell.  And boy did it fall. Just over a year ago I sold my 56 shares  in Persimmon for a  15% profit after holding them for 6 months, and the share price had actually gone up a little more in the following months. Now they were more than 30% down.  Now if you remember from my last investment I had used up the cash I had previously created by purchasing 229 Anglo American plc shares.  What I had not mentioned was 2 days before the referendum they were showing a 11% profit after dealing costs - so I sold them.

Additionally Centrica plc paid a dividend of £37.93 so I actually had over £1,500 in cash available in my dealing account.  However due to all the uncertainty about the future, I chickened out, and only used £1,250 of the cash to purchase 78 shares in Persimmon plc.  This was 22 more shares than I had purchased back in March 2015 so I was happy. At the back of mind I was trying to hedge my bets slightly. By holding back a little money, if the market did carry on down I could look at purchasing more, and if it stablised and went back up, well it did not matter as I would just find something else to purchase!  I think you could safely say I was an optimist.

https://www.persimmonhomes.com





I shall be taking a break over Christmas and the new year from posting the next installment about my share portfolio.  This means it will be 2 weeks before you will find out about my next investment.

May 2016 - Investment No 10

As the saying goes - hindsight is a wonderful thing.  I am writing this about my next investment and looking at what I had been doing, my initial thoughts were why did I do that? As I explain the history you will see what I mean.   The Referendum to decide if the UK should stay in the EU or not was just over a month away, and I knew things were going to be quite volatile in the run up to it.  So I decided to sell my 190 shares in Anglo American plc as I needed some cash to purchase shares as I felt the market may drop straight after the vote.  These shares  were showing a overall profit of about 27%  and I had only held them for 2 months.

Additionally since 6 April 2016, GlaxoSmithKline had paid a dividend of £30.96 and HSBC holdings had paid a dividend of £30.96

With the sale of Anglo American plc and the dividends I now had over £1,350 to invest in shares, but as I watched the market start to fall over the following 10 days I realised the Anglo American plc share price had dropped by nearly 15%, so I could not help myself - I purchased 229 shares.  My new holding was 39 shares more than the holding I had sold.  What can I say?  

http://www.angloamerican.com

April 5, 2016 - UK Tax year end

Finally it is the end of the 2nd full year since I started this portfolio. I was able to make a purchase every quarter.

Before the end of the tax year end I received 2 more dividends.  £17.48 from SSE and £14.09 from Royal Dutch Shell B.  This brought my monthly return for the year to £15.17 (2015 : £13.33)

The Facts:
Total new money invest during the year:  £2,325.00
Total new money invested since starting the portfolio: £7,225.00
Total dividends for the year:  £182.04
Total dividends since starting the portfolio £341.94

If I sold the shares on the 5th April 2016, I would have had £6,644.71in cash in the account. Overall a 8% loss on my original cash, so still not looking great.

But as I said last year, that is the thing about shares.  They can go up and they can go down.  I just hope the regular income increases and eventually the share prices may follow too.

March 2016 - Investment No 9

And so I arrived towards the end of the next quarter.  Things were still difficult for me financially, but I had about £350 sitting in the dealing account from dividends and partially from the Pace shares. So I only had to add £650 top up. 

In April 2015, Pace and Arris announced a Recommended Cash and Share offer for the share capital of Pace.  This meant there was a "Scheme of arrangement" for the shares I held.  My Pace shares were showing a small loss, so I decided to stick it out.  Finally, in January 2016 I received cash of £323.30 plus 36 Shares in Arris. Arris was quoted in one of the US stock markets, so this was a share I would be looking to sell if I could show a profit, even if small.

Since the last purchase I received the following dividends:

GlaxoSmithKline - £13.68
Pace - £9.69
Total dividend income since  6 April 2015 - £182.04

I already had shares in mining, which was not doing well, so I figured the sector was low so perhaps this was a good time to buy more but in another company in this sector.   

I choose to purchased shares in Anglo American (EPIC: AAL).   Mining Copper, Platinum, Diamonds, Coal, Iron ore and Manganese and Nickel, the company had been around since 1917.

Which at the time of this post - 100 years

http://www.angloamerican.com/

December 2015 - Investment No 8

Another quarter was arriving, and this was still difficult, but I have about £250 sitting in the dealing account from dividends so I just added £750 so I would have enough money for the next share purchase.  Since the last purchase I received the following dividends:

GlaxoSmithKline - £13.68
Antofagasta - £2.36
Centrica - £16.03
Royal Dutch Shell B - £13.36
Total dividend income since  6 April 2015 - £127.35

Looking around I decided I wanted shares in a company which paid quarterly, but in a different sector than I already in.  Before the Banking crisis that would have been banks, so I took a look at the banks which were not under government ownership.  

I choose to purchased shares in HSBC (EPIC: HSBA).  The parent company of the HSBC Group, was HSBC Holdings plc.  One of the world's largest banking and financial services organisations and although they had been effected by the banking crisis as did pretty well every bank, they had not needed a bail out.



http://www.hsbc.com

September 2015 - Investment No 7

Time was flying by and another quarter was arriving.  Since the last purchase I received the following dividends:

Pace plc - £7.54
SSE - £40.17
Royal Dutch Shell B - £13.29
Total dividend income since  6 April 2015 - £81.64

I did not have enough spare cash to use to purchase another share, so I decided to sell the Persimmon Plc shares, Investment No 5.  These shares actually cost me £1,011.66 including all charges, and I received £1,162.49 after charges.  A net profit of £150.83 (15%).  Including dividends, I received the profit totalled of £204.03 (20%) . I thought it was pretty good for a share held for just over 6 months, certainly better than leaving it sitting on deposit. 

So I purchased shares in Centrica (EPIC: CNA).   They were due to go ex-dividend on the 1 October so I would receive this in November.

Centrica was in the Gas, Water & Multiutilities sector. The were focused on energy and home related services.  Key markets were in Britain, Spain, Belgium, Canada and the USA. 

https://www.centrica.com

June 2015 - Investment No.6

The end of the next quarter was approaching so added £915 to my trading account.  Cash was a little tight, so I decided to make up the difference with the cash balance from dividends received since my last investment.

Antofagasta paid another £7.42 which was less than 1% on my original investment and Royal Dutch Shell B paid £13.22, the first of 4 dividends for the year I hoped.

Looking around at FTSE100 shares I decided to purchase 72 shares in GlaxoSmithKline. The stock mark epic was GSK and the company was in the  Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology sector.

This share paid 4 dividends each year, and I had already missed the first 2.  As I was in for the long haul, I decided not to miss out on anymore in the future.



I also liked the corporate partnerships they were involved with:
http://www.gsk.com/en-gb/about-us/corporate-partnerships








http://www.gsk.com