I’m typing this starting text on Sunday afternoon after writing all of the Charts bit on Saturday night. I’m well pleased that I did it this way because I was feeling pretty good last night, but today it is not too bad but definitely worse than I would like.
If you are a bit behind, I have had some sort of problem in my abdomen area for 6 months and 4 Doctors have been baffled as to what the problem is; until finally a trip to A&E when I felt extremely bad a week or so ago, came up with the idea that it could be down to excess Stomach Acid burning my Stomach Wall. Sounds horrible.
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I am starting this on Saturday Night, as is my tradition these days because it is easier to break the task of writing these blogs into two bits. I am utterly trashed because I thought I would take advantage of the pleasant weather and go for a long push around my locality. Of course, as is always my way, I never know what my limits are and I ended up going probably much further than I should have, and as a result my health problems are really irritating me and I feel utterly exhausted and drained.
With all this Lockdown stuff I have felt that I have had very little exercise and in recent weeks I have been getting out and pushing around to try to get my heart rate going and stuff. This is probably a good idea but I tend to make the error of coming to a particular road and thinking, “Oh, I wonder where that road leads to?” and of course I am far too stupid than to actually take my Fone with me and to use Google Maps (where’s the fun in that?).
It’s been a stunning start to 2020 with only a shade over 2 weeks done my Portfolio is flying and I am pretty sure many other Private Investors are stacking up the gains. I am probably right in saying that this has been the best start to a year ever for me - although neither week so far has been as good as the first week of 2018 which was my largest week ever. Unfortunately back then it was totally a false dawn and the Markets were pretty miserable for the rest of the year !!
Of course we could get a repeat of 2018 but my hunch is that we won’t – there are lots of signs that Markets are in very good shape and although I expect some sort of Consolidation, either in the form of a bit of a Pullback or by going sideways and grinding out the over-bought conditions, but once we get through this, I suspect we will see Markets go higher. The normal seasonal pattern is that January and February are good months and that as we get more into March and April things can go a bit smelly - that has to be likely this year as well.
Firstly some annoying aggravation I need to write about which will no doubt affect you long-suffering Readers and myself for a few days. I have had a problem with my Fone for several weeks now where it gets extremely hot whenever I talk using it and clearly something was not right so I bought a new Battery from Amazon. Anyway, I thought that might fix the problem and determine whether or not there was a fault with the Fone (it is a fairly old Samsung S5 and in all honesty I could do with something a bit more modern), but in recent days as a result of what the title of this blog refers to, I have made a lot of Fone calls and inevitably the Fone got silly hot (it was literally burning my ear) and it has destroyed the new Battery.
I am sure many of us are bewildered at how we can have reached December 2019 (and worst still, we are now in the ‘Meteorological Winter’ apparently) and the final weeks of the year. Historically, December is the strongest month and assuming that we don’t get a crazy Marxist in Number 10 on the 13th December, then chances are we can keep the strength going in the Markets; but I suspect we face some sort of Reckoning soon – maybe early January will inject a dose of reality.
We might also get a ‘Santa Rally’ which tends to be quite late – I think it is something like the 17th December up to the first few days of January and if the situation looks right, then I might be tempted to place a Small Long Spreadbet on some sort of Index to try and get a bit of gain out of this historically very reliable occurrence. The S&P500 might be a good one because it is so strong anyway but I will see how things look at the time.
I’m starting this blog much later than I usually do on a Sunday night simply because I just seem to have been chasing my tail all day and getting nowhere. I guess watching hours and hours of MotoGP from Valencia didn’t help but it was the last race of the season and the final race for the legend Jorge Lorenzo who is retiring at the ripe old age of 32 after 5 world championships. I have several subjects etc. I want to cover and I also want to shove some Stock Charts in so I need to attack it with much gusto.
Last Tuesday I went up to Chiswick for the Mello Event and had a really fun and useful day out. I ended up leaving after 10pm and totally lost track of time although of course the big advantage was that traffic was very light on my way home to Windsor. It was great to meet up with loads of people that I have met over the last 5 years of doing the WD thing and these Events are increasingly a big social occasion where loads of us meet up from all over the country – the Company Presentations and stuff are much appreciated from what I can tell but the social side is also a huge attraction and a good reason to take advantage of these opportunities to meet up with like minded people and to bounce ideas off them and suchlike.
I really don’t get on with tech and IT in particular. This was highlighted this week when Peter @Conkers3 and myself recorded another TPI Podcast and we thought it was all in the can, only to find that nothing had recorded and we had to do it again. Exasperating.
The sad thing was that the original recording (that wasn’t actually a recording !!) was utterly brilliant and without doubt the best thing we have ever created. In fact, I would say it was the best Podcast in the history of Financial Podcasts and it was incredible as it contained loads of future multi-bagger ideas and now we can’t remember what they were !!
It just seems such a strange market at the moment. We are up near All Time Highs across many Indexes (ok, that is more in the US and not so much in Europe), yet the stack of Macro issues just seems to get ever larger and the potential impact of each new factor just seems to get worse.
Of course in the UK the big story is Brexit and we are getting down to the final weeks and it is still not clear how this will play out although there does seem to be a sense that a Deal with the EU is going to happen but this is not certain and even if it does occur there are no guarantees it can get through Parliament. We also have the new issues where the Iran / Saudi rivalry has gone up a notch and there are lots of fears of potential military action but it is probably an outside chance still as the US is unlikely to get involved with a Presidential Election soon and Iran lacks the capabilities to fight on a large scale and it is more likely that they will continue with proxy wars using the likes of Hezbollah etc. I can’t imagine the Saudis starting another Front when they are rather busy in Yemen and we can be fairly sure they will be defending their Oil facilities a lot better from now on.
Last week I finally bit hard on the lead bullet and Closed (bought back) a large part of the FTSE100 Short Position that I have been battling with all year. If you skip over to the ‘Trades’ page which sits on the WD1 website then you can see more gory details and I have put some reasoning there with regards to why I have taken the action.
I will get on to the Charts later in this Blog as per normal but the key driver for my decision to reduce the Shorts is because most of the Major Indexes and now the FTSE100 as well have done ‘Bull Crosses’ on the 13/21 Day Exponential Moving Averages and I find that this is a hugely reliable and predictive Indicator that suggests weeks of gains ahead. It has been obvious to me for most of 2019 that Autumn would be my best chance to reduce the Shorts if we did not see a significant drop before then (I was expecting some drama around the original Brexit date of 31st March but of course the Government and Parliament bottled it and gained an Extension which they then went on to waste with their constant bickering).
THIS IS NOT A TIP OR RECOMMENDATION. I AM NOT A TIPSTER. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH. PLEASE READ THE DISCLAIMER ON THE HOME PAGE OF MY WEBSITE. IF YOU COPY MY TRADES, YOU WILL PROBABLY LOSE MONEY. I HAVE A LARGE PORTFOLIO AND I USE DIVERSIFICATION TO SPREAD RISK ALONG WITH TRICKS LIKE HEDGING AND OCCASIONALLY BY THE USE OF STOPLOSSES - IF YOU BUY ANY STOCK YOU REALLY SHOULD FOCUS ON HOW IT FITS IN WITH THE REST OF YOUR PORTFOLIO AND KEEP RISK MANAGEMENT AT THE FOREFRONT OF EVERYTHING YOU DO. BE AWARE THAT ALL INVESTORS/TRADERS GET THINGS WRONG AND MANY STOCK SELECTIONS WILL WORK OUT BADLY.
I don’t intend to make this too long a Blog as I am sure most Readers are rather aware of who or what Vodafone VOD is and in many ways over-analysing megacap Stocks like this is rather a waste of time. If you nip over to the ‘Trades’ page of my Website (that sits on the main WD site) then you should see the specific details of my recent VOD buy on there and it is worth noting that this is merely a ‘Starter Position’ which gives me a ‘Foot in the door’ because if I do not do this I tend to forget about the Stock and my attention gets dragged off to something else. |
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