lightningtiger

700 club gold member. Anniversary yesterday 1/10/2013. Recently returned from New York with a wish to see Wall Street for myself as a bit of a satisfying accomplishment. I first got interested in investments when I was a financial advisor for 14 years. I learned a lot & went to quite a few investment seminars. The one I remember particularly was with Fidelity. They visited the companies that they invested in and held them for a long duration in their portfolios. The other thing was with different currencies that they could buy a particular stock with and of course sell it if it was favourable with another currency. This was potentially more risky of course. It was not long before I realised that all the money from the insurance premiums had to be invested and who was doing it. We used to sell investment bonds where 5% was allowed to be taken tax free once a year on the anniversary of the policy which could run for 20 years.There was a choice of Managed, Property, or Equity to invest into. It was at this point of time that the Property fund went up 40% in less than a year. A simple comparison with the Managed and Equity funds showed the difference. I was soon taking a keen interest in unit trusts and shares, looking for things that were going up and the highest that they had been and bought them. I bought a software package with Up-data which enabled me to be much more efficient, putting stop losses in. Drummed into my head was cut your losses and sell when a stock breached the stop loss and let the profits run. Another stepping stone was to buy myself a Rolls Royce silver shadow that was chestnut brown in colour. The reasons were threefold.

1. That I could afford it.
2. The two managers for the insurance company that I was working for were called Douglas & Rolls.
3. I was still single. As well as doing the insurance business I joined an investment club in Basingstoke and became their chairman. We closed it this year sadly because of ill health with some of the members. Now I have a portfolio that I am able to take out (if & when I want to some cash) just like the insurance bonds but much more flexible. I enjoy the technology stocks and have taken profits several times from Arm Holdings which is the only share that I have held for many years now. Having just got this Stockopedia yesterday (first saw it at an investment seminar in London earlier this year) when I noticed Dart Group (DTG) so that is now in my portfolio too. I suppose you could say I am an analyst & a chartist. It was good to see my portfolio already has Globo, , Blinks, Clingen ,Dart, Wanddisco, opay,Easyjet ,LLoyds Arm Telicom Plus(which has doubled and a bit more but then started to drop so I have just sold almost half and re invested the proceeds into ASOS.)

In conclusion I hold about 20 shares, and have just INCREASED my holdings in Globo about two weeks ago, and noticed someone has reduced their holding with Globo to 3%.I hope they are not still holding the poor pawnbroker shares (guess who) -40% in one day followed by further catastrophic drop. A good case for a stoploss . Join the 700 club and put some money to work I say.