Investing mid-long term Journal!

So I just started my business a few months ago and I've been running ok, after a first few hectic months where a lot more control was needed and where trading was tottaly forgotten.

After reading some books again on the topic and going through a lot o magazines on anything from FHM to Shares Magazine (34 flights in the last month is a lot of time on airports and plains), I decided to grab 100,000 GBP and put them on an account, for some mid-long term investment, being the target a 20% annual profit.

I put some rules into this and this has nothing to do with spreadbetting. I am going to have no more than 5-6% of my account in one share and before I commit myself into something, I will have to write here why and how!

11 August 2012

Just filled the saturday with loads of boring things...woken up way past 12 and still with a headache from friday's long night around figures.

Two key points on the day:

1 Sporting B-team began its campaign this year and with a lost against more stuctured Oliveirense...boring game, 1-0 result, spent more time doing other things than actually concentrating on the tv...

2 My girlfriend had to help a friend getting some extra books on a Bimby machine order, so we had to have a demonstration of the machine here at home. I just sat back on my office room and listen to the two hours instructions and cheap marketing technics...extraordinarily enough at the price of +900 euros, it still quite popular in Portugal.


So the two companies I was looking at investing this past week was alchohol beverage giants Diageo and small identity solutions company BG

From Diageo this were my notes:

- Premium drink business, brands like Johnie Walker, J&B, Bushmills, Smirnoff, Bailey's, Captain Morgan, Guiness
- Owns 34% of Möet Hennessy, with brand Möet & Chandon among others...


- Market cap 42,9 Bn
- PE high at 22,467
- Revenue 13,3 Bn
- Dividend last year 40,40p
- Profit 1,9 Bn
- Yeald last year 3,25%
- Next dividend ?
- Ex-dividend date 5 Sept to be paid in 22 Oct
- Debt 8,3Bn a bit to high at 4,5x profit


- Strategy: Expanding to emerging markets and innovative premium drinks




- Steady climbing since Mar 2009, valuation of 120%
- Looking to buy along the 1700 mark and before the end of next week to catch the ex-dividend slope, with the objective of reching 2100-2200 on a 6m to 1y date.
- Stop-loss if lower tha 1550

My personal comments:
- In depression times more liquid is sold and in growing regions Diageo already has a foot
- Strategy based on premium drinks may contradict the first comment
- Crysis in emerging markets is a definite threat
- Hope they try to expand more into Asia and not in the wine and beer business where they would find hard to get a share of a market with too many players...



Any comments from you would be ver helpful!

13 August 2012

I just bought 3 shares of Diageo at 1693,50, tryng to get at a cheap price when they began to rebound....

So resume is after stamp tax and commissions:

Portfolio
- Diageo 3 shares - 5080,50p (5,08%)
- Cash 94881,60p (94,92%)

Yesterday just had a sick day, completly exhausted, so just watched some movies and read some internet nonsense...only time to get out of the house was after dinner with a stroll down the avenue...

14 August 2012

So, tomorrow flying agains, this time to München and Amsterdam, actually I will take the opportunity to spend the weekend in Holland...cant just be work, can it?

I have loads of documentation on BG and hope to decide on weather this would be a good investment or not. Anyway I would be glad to find someone that has any info on the company to exchange some views!

Anyway, there is a recent portuguese start-up that managed to be exchanged in NYSE Alternext, providing some very nice solution and expanding to middle-east and central Asia...I will be looking at this ISA - Intelligent Sensing Anywhere, (NYSE Alternext: ALISA)

How can France still finance itself on a zero rate is a mystery to me

20 August 2012

Back from München-Amsterdam trip and a few considerations after having seen some very interesting trends in both contries:

- Germany shows a bit more spending on "new things", at least in comparison to what I saw 15 years ago. I visit Germany at least once every 3 months and I've noticed a lot of acceptance from the new youth that hasnt felt the war necessity of older generation. Another noticable thing is that construction is high, mainly on highways been renovated, a sector to look into for sure.

- Holland a vast fast food market showed to me a healthy food company existing only in Holland and Belgium as a very interesting and accepted concept, La Place (further investigation needed)

- Both countries along with an FT article on 15th see a trend on cheap supermakets, mainly Lidl and Aldi (both unfortunatly not AG)



Interesting readings along the trip:

- A publication on Shares magazine says that 3 factors are still proof that economy is a long way from recovery: dow jones transport is not doing better that the whole index, coper is down and Korea index is not recovering...obvious reasons behind this semi-flawed article if anyone wants to discuss it

- Mining companies are not my cup of tea - their shares move correlated to comodity prices and desviations are caused by new discoveries or failures...

A nice strategy:
- Contaning loses is 90% of any good strategy;
- Buy if »MA;
- Dont take tips, do research yourself
- Poker is a good practice
- Always have a plan
- It doesnt matter if you have more than 50% correct buys/sells, what matters is than the winning trades make more than you lose on the bad ones


Companies to look into next weeks:
- Telit Communications (TCM: AIM)
- Micro Focus (MCRO)
- Tribal (TRB) - maybe too big of a spread....
- Driver's (DRV:AIM)
- Tracsis (TRCS) - just follow
- Iomart (IOM:AIM)
- Tavan Tolgoi
- Mongolia index companies

er, 3 shares - they are only £16:97 atm

sorry didnt understand what you mean with that comment...can you rephrase please?

Well, you say you bought 3 shares in Diageo @ 1693:50 cost £5080:50 leaving you with £94,881:60 left from your £100,000 starting pot.

All fine except that Diageo shares were priced at £16:935 and 3 shares would have cost £50 odd, not £5080.

You seem to have mistaken the quoted price as £ rather than pence, so you will either get a bit of a shock when your contract note arrives, or you are just working a pretend portfolio.