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2026-06-18 19:42:08 - Paul D. Foy -
Historically I've actually had four portfolios and I've reported on three of them and I've actually got another one. I may do a similar exercise on that one but it's yet again a smaller one still. Recently I've opened a fifth portfolio, predominantly because of the charges on the fourth portfolio. The financial services industry are fine but they're not shy of changing their terms and conditions and charging you more for example so as an investor you've got to be conscious of these things and act appropriately. Now my stocks are okay on the whole. They're in fairly good shape and most of them are tax sheltered. I've got a couple of portfolios. One or two I'm in the danger of paying a fair amount of capital gains tax in the future but that's perhaps something for the future. I might be able to manage that. I don't know. Having a tax problem is not a bad thing because it means you've earned money so it's not too bad really. Anyway all very well having a well sorted out portfolio of shares but even more difficult is the portfolio of young ladies. Now there's a real challenge in pruning some of those and sorting out the winners from the losers, the ones that are going to perform and those that are not such a good investment. One thinks this is really an area where you do need an asset manager. It's not for the faint-hearted on the whole. It's for the experienced investor certainly so I'll see how that goes on and see if I can put it all in order and set up for the future.

2026-06-17 06:46:28 - Paul D. Foy -
Right I've been working in the evening and early morning to have a look at one of my dabbling portfolios, the Halifax portfolio administered by the Halifax Bank. It's quite a well-organised portfolio. The banks are usually good. They're very conservatively run and they do things thoroughly so everything is itemised: all my trades, all my cash in and out. It's all itemised and it's all very good, very conservative, and you can trust the banks and financial services company. They're quite reliable and they don't mess about with your money. Anyway that's just an aside. It's only a small portfolio. There's only been about 70 trades over the 29 years and there's never been more than £50,000 in at any one time. There's been quite a bit of money in and out as needs arise when opportunities present themselves. It's much different to my main portfolios, which have had no money out whatsoever during the whole of the duration. The APR is much of a muchness. It's quite good. It's about, I think, 14% (edited to insert correct figure) actually. The AER is something like 13% over the duration of the whole portfolio, so that is cash in and current standing of the balance, which is about £35,000. It's ok. The figure for realised investments, capital realisations, is very good. It's, I think, 26%. Even though in the first ten years I had one which really dragged it down, the VIX index, I had other spectacular gains which managed to lift it up, some of them to the hundredth percent, short trades over a few weeks. That's trading for you. I've been a bit of a trader. Perhaps I could have been a fund manager. I don't know how well this all scales up with fund management when you've got tens of millions going on to billions under your wing. You pay a team to manage it and there are admin costs going out. I don't know how this scales up. Very few have very big returns over a long period of time. They're usually branded as star managers if they do that. That's it. That's all I have to say, I think, on this one.

2026-06-16 18:40:51 - Paul D. Foy -
Right I've done the analysis of my two main portfolios and you've heard all about that but I've got a couple of dabbling portfolios now, not main ones, just small amounts of money, more not so much investing, more a bit of gambling, with a bit of dabbling, bit of experiencing things, getting into this, getting into that, getting out of this, getting out of that. I think if you're into stocks and investing and this kind of dabbling portfolio is a bit like young ladies. It's good to have a look at quite a few of them. Some turn out okay, some are not so bad, some you get your fingers burnt but others come to fruition nicely and they're just what you're looking for so I'll see how these are getting on. So far this evening I've done, from right at the start of my investing, to tell the truth, from 1997 to 2012. Oh good grief, I was into all sorts of things: - Falklands oil and gas - San Jose Royalty Trust - oil field services - Delcam - you name it I've had a look at it. There's one lesson that comes out. Actually you'll notice in my main portfolios I've given the average realised gain, the average realised APR over the whole of the portfolio, and that is a positive number, that is about 10%, 20%, 19% that kind of figure. That shows that there's been no real losers; there's nothing to blame that badly dragged the portfolio down. That's a quite salient bit of advice: avoid the losers in investing if you can. For example in the first 13 years of my investing, 1997 to 2010, if I were to take all the realisations there and omit one, I would have a 30% average return. I was doing quite a bit of buying and selling actually but I had one. It was the VIX Volatility Index, which I bought once, made money out of, bought a second time, disastrous loss. It halved in a few weeks' time, which really drags the APR down because it's a lot of money lost in a short amount of time. That's a salient advice for you.

2026-06-15 18:00:12 - Paul D. Foy -
Right I'm back to what I enjoy doing now, speaking away and having it typed down for me. It's as though I've got my own secretary, not the type I told my psychiatrist I would like ideally but a perfectly good one at taking notes. Wispr Flow, first of all, a bit of an admission: there's been a slight mistake. I made an error in the inputting of the price of one of my funds and it actually lifts the return on the funds up to about 3. 5% over the duration. I think the behaviour of funds is a little more nuanced than I portrayed. I portrayed a bit of a bleak image for them. Well I don't think it's too bad because I had a couple of funds. I had one fund which was turned into an investment trust, a Japanese one, and that's performed very well. I've also had a couple of income funds so the capital performance of those funds is not very well but there's certainly quite a bit of income came out of them. Perhaps the recommendations of people like the ISA shop, which used to be the pet shop, are not too bad. I'm not sure they're for the novice investor either in that you've got all these accumulations and incomes going on. You've got to know whether they're paying out income or adding it to the capital. You've got to know all that kind of thing. Unless you come with a hot recommendation by an experienced and competent advisor, I'm not so sure they are for the novice or for the start, particularly now. What I said I would do is I would tell you how this fund, which was spewing out income to me, has actually performed. It was the BNY Mellon Equity Income Booster Fund and it has a phenomenal performance. It's been paying out over £200 a year. I invested just over £1,000 in it initially. It's been paying out £200 a year for the duration of my hold and the total return on that, the AER or the APR which I use, is about 30%. That's a phenomenal performer. I've had a look into it. It's a fund from the Bank of Mellon of New York so they're not really Mellon's according to the names. Apparently that particular fund was using options to get its return. That's a really high-risk, city-type of thing. That's not an obvious thing to do so you're getting a real real return there. They're the city with skids working for you there so not too bad. I'm not sure these funds are all that bad actually. I think the judgement is out. I exited them because I read about things like the lack of transparency, which is certainly true, and the fact that they can't borrow. Yes I went to investment trusts because they can do things like borrow money to invest to smooth out the cycles of an investment cycle but if a fund is using options, for goodness sake, good grief, that's far more risky than borrowing money so they're quite surprising when I found that out.

2026-06-15 09:34:31 - Paul D. Foy -
I've now completed the analysis of this portfolio and we have the figure which is the total return. That is the money in as opposed to the current value of the portfolio now. Times are fairly frothy at the moment and the market is quite good so the current value of the portfolio is quite good now. This figure is the one to be compared with the previous figure of, I think, 8. 6% for my iDealing portfolio, an AER, and 16% APR of the iDealing portfolio. This portfolio has done particularly well over the fourteen years. The APR is about 19% and the AER, the annual equivalent rate, the compound rate, is 12. 6% over the time period so that figure is comparable to a Rothschilds type of return. The portfolio has done particularly well recently because of a few investment trusts and in particular those that managed to capture the latest AI and technology boom. There have also been a few stocks that have done well and of course this has to be remembered: this is all unrealised at the moment so it's just money sitting electronically in my account because I haven't sold any of these shares. The realised returns, as you remember, were not too good, below 10%.

2026-06-15 06:55:55 - Paul D. Foy -
It's just before 8:00 AM on a Monday morning, the start of a working week, and I'm back to my little new pleasure, making comments. It's not just under 16-year-olds that sit about in the bedrooms making comments on social media but retired software engineers and mathematicians also. Admittedly on my own social media. Now what have we got to comment on this morning? Oh another point. I wonder how many chairmen and chief executives can speak freely like this and record what they say and put it onto the web and put it into the company reports just like that? Quite a challenge I would say. This is what we're getting into these days now. Now what do I have to comment on? Completed the inputting of my portfolio and I can report on the average capital returns of the investments, averaged out. Average realised returns. This has got to be compared with the 16% APR of my iDealing portfolio, which I've commented earlier on in this post and which is a very good one. This portfolio has not really got going in the same way until perhaps recently but these are unrealized and the current figure, the APR, is 8. 6% over that, which will be 14 years, and the AER is just over 10% so not as good. I think I benefited on my iDealing portfolio by the largesse of French and American banks who were giving away money quite nicely at one stage. Perhaps got a good prize from one of the drunk jobbers around Christmas time, it would appear. British institutions don't tend to do like that. You don't tend to find banks and insurance companies giving money away. Perhaps the odd engineering company, yes, but not the banks and the insurers, no, they're more conservative on the whole I've found.

2026-06-13 10:21:55 - Paul D. Foy -
There is going to be a bit of a break this weekend because the investment platform which I use, AJ Bell, which is a very good one, I can recommend it, is doing maintenance to its site and configuration over the weekend. It would appear that the financial services industry actively works at the weekend and out of hours. I'm not sure the same is true for engineers in my experience. Anyway I'm finding this exercise of analysing my returns, historical perspectives, seeing what occurred in the past, making comments on it, quite interesting. I think if I had my time again I'd start making records like this from the outset. Perhaps developing the software today to do it from the outset but there again I was working for somebody else at the time. Working for them I didn't have all the time to do this and also it was the early days of the internet and software things and things weren't as readily available perhaps as they are now. Anyway I can make further comments. I didn't sell a lot of things early on but in the first 10 years I did sell some things. My performance was dragged down by the funds, the open-ended investments, but it was lifted in the last 10 years up to 2022 by some stocks and some investment trusts which performed particularly well. Over the 10-year period, say from 2012 to 2022, the 10-year APR or AER (not too much difference) is just over 10% (edited from my speech - this is the capital performance on realized investments), depending upon which figure you use. I'm actually thinking that when I've done the full analysis over the whole term of the investment up to the present date, it's going to be better than that. I think the moral of that is that things take quite a long time to get going on the investment side. The investing in money and discovering how to do this and becoming experienced, so that's perhaps one point to note.

2026-06-12 19:24:11 - Paul D. Foy -
As I said I quickly moved away from funds for various reasons. They seem to have a rather opaque structure and they're constantly changing the configuration, from the price of the unit or the number of units, this kind of thing. They generally seem to come in two types: - Accumulation funds gather the proceeds of the investment and reinvest in the fund. - Income funds pay out the income. I fairly quickly moved out of funds. Most of my funds were sold by 2019. There's one fund which was converted to an investment trust, which I held until 2022. The capital return of these funds has been very poor. It's averaged at 1. 3% APR. There is one fund, which is an income fund, which has paid a lot of income and the total return of that fund will be much better but I don't have the figure at the moment. I'll get it in due course. These funds are supposed to be for novice investors and what novice seems to mean is that you don't get a very good return. The fund manager gets all the return. All this comment was EXACTLY as spoken - using WisprFlow to write it down - I am very impressed.

2026-06-12 08:54:52 - Paul D. Foy -
I am now dictating most of my comments because I find it quite a reasonable medium to do this. I am now embarking on the exercise of assessing one of my other investment portfolios. This is my pension fund, the Self-Invested Personal Pension. It was started around 2012, near to the time in which the company in which I was working abandoned its final salary scheme and encouraged us to manage our own pensions and investments. I decided to start a SIPP predominantly rather than investing most of my money in their suggested funds. Now this will be a little different to my other portfolio in that I have decided to trust more so other people to handle my money, investment managers, more so not exclusively just more so. Although I started out with Funds, open ended investments, I quickly moved away from them and went to investment trusts predominantly. I don't know what the results of this analysis are going to be. We'll see what turns up.

2026-05-23 10:07:27 - Paul D. Foy -
I've built up quite a bit of respect for and understanding of the financial services industry over the years. They seem to have an understanding of the important things. So - the Lloyds insurance building - it shows what makes up a modern office, for which everybody benefits for all to see - what you see is what you get; they still seem to have restaurants or cafeteria accesible in their offices which all can use (there doesn't seem to be a 'silver grill' as in one of my establishments); you can start and finish their services with transparent charges (it's not like if you use a different trademan it's like stealing his wife or something). The businesses are often run for the shareholders, the customers AND the employees (the third one is an anathema for some Companies I've worked for!); and they give good advice in my opinion, particulalry where I was facing difficulties at one of my Companies where a third party (a contact of my brother, who worked in financial services) thought the actions made no sense at all. So even though it is a service industry, it's not putting food on the table or fixing your boiler, it's a perfectly valid job, a worthwhile one, managing money (managing your labours). So although I probably was not that all that keen to work in the industry early on, thinking it was a number 2, perhaps I've turned out to be a number 1 as a number 2 anyway. And I didn't know any Chairmen either. Maybe.

2026-05-21 14:42:22 - Paul D. Foy -
I take my hat off to the Rothschild Investment Trust (the public investment vehicle of the Rothschild family) which declares an investment return, since inception in 1988, of 10. 7% (not quite clear what the metric here is). My metric is that single number which when applied to the sum of the seperate investments (deposits of money) according to the compound interest formula S(1 +_x)^time yields the final value. This is what I mean by AER.

2026-05-21 05:15:56 - Paul D. Foy -
The AER of this portfolio, based upon current value, and money in, over the 24 year period, is 8. 6%.

2026-05-20 09:55:31 - Paul D. Foy -
I've worked out another metric of my portfolio. The APR of the total return based on the current total value of the portfolio and the cash that was deposited into the portfolio over 24 years. This takes into account not just closed positions, but currently open positions, stocks that went bankrupt, divididens coming in, special dividends. Basicially taking account of the money out and money in. I do not think I have ever taken any money out of the portfolio but there has been a few transfers between ISA and non-ISA accounts, nulling of PEPs and mini-ISA (converting to the ISA) etc. The formula used for the API is (finalAmount - Sum(Contribution))/(Sum(Contribution * TimeContributionWasPresent)). This figure is 17%. I continue to work the money as I have worked the money. Anyonw want me as a fund manager? - because I elected to do what I (I) thought was how I could make a better contribution to society.

2026-05-10 10:34:36 - Paul D. Foy -
Perhaps a simpler term to understand is the APR (Annual Percentage Rate) of the investment. This is the formulae: 100 * (StartValue-EndValue)/(TimeInYears * StartValue) %. The AER tends to over egg short trades. My APR was 16%, weighted over all stocks for the 24 years, were I had sold them at some point. I think this is not too bad. I enjoyed the investment. The software is now available on my website. My advice (with hindsight) is to keep simple records of your investments (buy, sells, rights issues, splits, amalgamations, bankruptcies). You can do this with this software.

2026-05-08 13:21:30 - Paul D. Foy -
I'll make the software doing this available so the working man can do what I've done - managing my money whilst doing a completely different job. Anybody can do the same, just making judgements about what has potential and when that potential has run its course or is over hyped. Anybody can do it. Just start with one stock with about £1000. Of course if you are a professional investor, you are handling much bigger amounts and your actions can distort the market. You need to know the Chairman of the Companies in that case.

2026-05-08 10:33:00 - Paul D. Foy -
I have completed the inputting of the buy and sells of my ISA portfolio since 2002 (541 entries) and have computed the average weighted AER of the CAPITAL return (that is a good return of a large amount of money is more significant than a bad return of a small amount of money etc. ). No account of income or dividends is included. The trading involved both equities and gilts. I have ommited returns where I closed the position within about 10 days (these returns would have been enormous as they were inevitably gains (that is why I closed the position as I believed the behaviour was out of all kilter with any fundamental measure)). I have ommited instance of stock splits or amalgamations as I generally dont't have the record of it, and I would have to do a lot of research to find out what it was. These could be either positive or negative - for example F&C regularly does stock splits to keep the price reasonable for the private investor. There are about 50 un-closed positions to date, including one or two bankrupt or near bankrupt stocks. This is a working return - an AER. The return from 2002 to now (08-05-2026) is 25%.

2026-05-08 06:03:43 - Paul D. Foy -
Were I to include them the figures would be completely distorted to the positive by enormous returns from a few holdings that I bought and sold within a few days. I have also ommitted by a few results which are altered by stock splits, which I have not the records of. These may be positive or negative.

2026-05-07 17:14:34 - Paul D. Foy -
The figures of amazing AERs are squired by a few investments that were held for a short time that appreciated markedly in that short time and then sold. This is not my typical strategy - but if there are mugs about, then watch out!.

2026-05-07 11:34:23 - Paul D. Foy -
I'm feeling like Foreign & Colonial, the investment trust, and I should write a book on my 26 years of investing. There's some revealing experiences. How about a bond I bought from a French bank, Societie Generale that I held for a few weeks and then sold for about a 600% AER!. Now bonds are bought for their stable income (the coupon or interest rate) and this is what attracted me to these predominantly. Yet I sold this one, foregoing the interest because of the large capital appreciation. I remember they were marketed as 'autocorrelators' or something. Who is the loser to my gains!. Its not me, the community where I am, or those things I get involved in. It's probably a series of people that made bad decisions, the poor buyers and sellers. It's not the broker, there getting a steady income out of the trading. It's probably not the market maker, creating the buy/sell demand taking a small cut in the price spread - unless there is a buyers strike and he is left with the bonds, having bought them at a high price for them to redeem at par. I very much doubt it is the bank they have budgeted for paying a steady coupon over a time period (unless they run into trouble because of their capital ratios or something). So its a series of mugs as I said before. I remember conversations with my broker over these things at that time when he described the issuer as giving money away (it was a very good coupon, because the price was low) - but did he say that to all his clients buying one of those? What a laugh, investing fun!.

2026-05-06 17:26:12 - Paul D. Foy -
Today I made some enhancements to my 'Portfolio' software to enable it to calculate the AER of an individual investment and indeed the weighted average AER of a group of investments. The hard work was actually the data entry of the stocks in my portfolio into the software - I've still got some way to go. The calculation was a click of a button, once I had wired up the underlying Newton Raphson technique. It revealed some interesting phenomena of my strategy, my life, and my investing life. For the first 10 years of serious investing (there was much dabbling before, as a very young man and also intrusting myself to open ended funds), from 2002 to 2012 my portfolio investments, that I managed myself, retuned an average AER of about 36%!!. So I was a trader! And what does this mean I sold a share to some mug who thought it was undervalued at the high price and bought it back from another mug at a lower price, who thought it would go down. I am wealthy on the back of the (generally) other wealthy mugs. But as I said in the opening comment I generally ended up holding some shares of those I traded as I thought the investment was a good, sound, ethical ones. A salutory lesson in life. Hang about with people you agree with or share your values, and who are doing positive things - or you might get ripped off, if you disagree with them or are holding the contrary opinion. Hang about with positive people, buy when they buy and sell when they sell :). Perhaps, as I've said before, I should offer to manage the country's pension fund, or to be a fund manager (I tried that once, I think it was in about 1995). Also I didn't write all this software to monitor things, to keep records of my portfolio when I was younger, because I was too busy working, doing work for my Companies even in the evening sometimes(which I was called a mug for!).

2024-09-13 11:26:42 - Paul D. Foy -
As St. Ledger's day approaches the serious investor should by now be fully invested. For the gentry are returning from harvesting their crops, a flush with ready cash, and beginning to speculate on stocks and horses. There is a general adage sell in May and come back on St Ledger's day. But the wise will operate counter cyclically to this to better profit from this trend. The St Ledger event was initiated in the late 1700s in Doncaster (shortly after it's magnificent mansion house was completed), and is a race for thoroughbred colts and fillies. Notable participants early on were the Marquis of Rockingham and the 4th Earl FitzWilliam (of the imposing Wentworth Woodhouse estate).

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