What was your Best Buy in the chaos?

[Wuffle]

Scale seems to me as important as numerical percentage.
A 'clear the decks' for complex personal reasons 18 months ago and an inheritance early this year left me heavily in cash across the Covid dip. I could have dropped my life savings on March 23rd. I got 2 grand of MYl at 8.60.
The brevity of the episode took me entirely by surprise.

W.

[FanciThat]

MNG my best buy, up 60% inc divi re-investement
RDSB up 37%
GLEN up by 41.6%
AV up by 26.6.%
.
.
.
LLOY back at break even (bought too early)
BT still showing a loss ...

Cheers, FT

[OLTB]

AVCT (Avacta) - bought at 67.50p on 23rd April - current price is 141.50p which is a 101.71% increase when I include charges.

As it's an AIM stock and I was jumping on the coronavirus bandwagon, I only bought a small amount

Cheers, OLTB.

[Lootman]

Glad this topic doesn’t ask about worst sells. As that’s the case, I shan’t mention British Land. Which I’d intended to repurchase but now feel I may have missed the boat.

That would have been a harder topic for people to answer, but probably more instructive. You learn more from mistakes than from making money merely because the market goes up.

The real winners were those who added money in late March and early April. Those who raised cash missed out. Easy to say after the fact of course.

I took the opportunity to sell a few winners in my taxable account for a lower amount of capital gains tax. And the timing of the fall was such that it made a bed-and-ISA transaction possible. Net, I put more money in but only about 1% of portfolio value. I was pretty scared back then along with everyone else.

But to answer the question, Chevron (CVX), bought at $53, currently at $103. Worst, Broadcom (AVGO), sold below $200 and now at $317.

[Regdragon]

“Glad this topic doesn’t ask about worst sells.”

“That would have been a harder topic for people to answer, but probably more instructive.”

I’ve got the impression from this thread that, generally, people lucky enough to have money in the right account at the right time were, like me, quietly topping up at reduced prices. That said, I sold three times.

1. Part of my holding in Abcam (£12.69 on 30 April, now £13.66) from my taxable account to part-fund my ISA and use up my CGT allowance.

2. (Purists look away now.) I also top-sliced National Grid in my SIPP on 19 Mar for £9.25 for more cash to top-up both Standard Life Aberdeen - the deal mentioned at the top of the thread - and Polar Capital Holdings. SLA and Polar were just too tempting. SLA had temporarily fallen so far it was on a yield of 12.6% from memory and I thought the 14.3p dividend, announced on 10 March, was safe.

3. Also sold 50% of my holding in HSBC for £3.84 on 28 May - it’s now £4.21 - for a further top-up of Polar Capital.Had there not been a problem at the broker’s, I would have sold 100% of HSBC ...

... which is why I’d like to thank SalvorHardin for linking to the Canadian alternatives. Interesting stuff and food for thought as I’m far too UK-focussed. Thanks everyone - a few new-to-me shares to research.

Regards,

RD

[doug2500]

I managed to buy a small top up of Fevertree in early march for 1125, It recently went over 2000 before ducking below again.

I managed to make the right call but not in enough size which is a recurring theme for me. Having said that, things were very uncertain at that time so I was hedging my bets between keeping some dry powder but sticking a toe in the water. It felt at that time like there could very well have been the chance to buy more at 800 in the future.

[tikunetih]

Re: "Best Buy"

The most important thing was, per usual, to keep your head, not overreact and not become a net seller of risk assets at a time when others were panicking.

I mentioned elsewhere a relative of mine - who had no prior investment experience - who'd recently inherited some money and with whom I'd discussed earlier in the year some suggestions for investing it (KISS: low cost multi-asset fund). When I mentioned in mid-March that it could be a good time not to let the crisis go to waste they were happy to embrace it and by buying in tranches we got ~3/4 of the money invested by early April with the remainder fed in weekly over the next couple of months: job done.

They have a lengthy investment horizon and were accepting that prices could go lower and we might not have been buying around the lows (as we hoped to be), but they showed the "right stuff" by being unafraid to begin stepping in a measured way back into the burning building that others were fleeing. They experienced drawdowns on the very earliest purchases, and with no prior investing experience it would've been easy for them to call a halt and focus on the very short term, losing sight of their intended lengthy investment horizon - but they didn't - and now very much in profit they've seen the benefits of some applied contrarianism and of following and sticking to a plan.

Not a bad start to their investment "career".

NB they seem to have rustled up a bit more money, and when confirmed this is likely to be fed in over the next couple of months or so via regular purchases, which we'd accelerate if the market had another big setback or if we see a deep pullback from current levels.

[AndyPandy]

Easyjet, which I sold on Monday for a 62% gain over a couple of weeks. Today I ploughed that into McCarthy & Stone. Might take a bit longer, but there's nearly 100% upside on the net tangible value alone and a Positive couple of TUs. Its price seems to have lagged the general recovery.

To quote from one from March "All cash measures announced today (including our current financing facilities) ensure that the business would be able to operate with no sales revenue for a period of c.2.5 years". Let's hope that it doesn't come to that, but it is reassuring.


Also did well on DS Smith (now sold as it's bounced back to pre-Covid levels) and Compass Group - still holding as I believe the Business is doing better than the share price dive would have you believe. Looking for 100% upside there. Well, why not

So many shares were on offer last month, it seemed rude not to indulge.

Glad this topic doesn’t ask about worst sells.

Yes, well I did use the time to remove some deadwood that had been going nowhere for ages (or so I thought). Amongst the good pruning choices, there was also MARS and DLAR.

[ADrunkenMarcus]

I bought Paypal at end April - up 30% or so.

Best wishes

Mark

[Bagger46]

For me March-May has been a trading paradise, although I was so busy elsewhere that I did most of this by setting market orders in the dead of the night, being a long time poor sleeper anyway.

I am not any kind of trader normally, having been much more of one in my younger investing days, many decades ago. Last time I traded fairly heavily was during the financial crisis(where we recovered very quickly as a result), but this time there were so many opportunities that I dived in heavily(126 trades since late Feb, 98 very successful, extensive use of trailing stop loss too). (My wife normally does absolutely her own thing on her ISA, being a seasoned investor herself, but too busy elsewhere, so gave me 'carte blanche' to dabble there too. Her ISA is mostly ITs and opportunities abounded there too). Result, our three portfolios are back very close to their combined acc unit max. Not quite there but near enough, within what I would call market noise levels at last night's update. Our brokers and the taxman have done well out of this, but so have we!

As I posted elsewhere, I have come out of long retirement (nothing to do with any kind of income needs as we are thankfully more than comfortably set up on that front, just helping out where needed/able) and so I will just not have much time to look at markets going forward. I do expect further volatility going forward(covid/brexit/world mess), hence I might dabble, but on a much reduced scale.

But generally I feel that investors, in particular pot builders(because many retiree divi income takers have less flexibility/opportunities to do so) who are not prepared to change their LTBH approach when opportunities abound like in the past few months are going to lose out big time. Biggest losers will be HYP afficionados, as there were opportunities to make YEARS worth of income in 'other fungible ways' in just a few months.

Examples, too many to quote. Must dash, yet other (logistical mostly at the mo) problems to solve today with the businesses.

Bagger

[tikunetih]

there were so many opportunities that I dived in heavily(126 trades since late Feb, 98 very successful, extensive use of trailing stop loss too).

...

Result, our three portfolios are back very close to their combined acc unit max. Not quite there but near enough, within what I would call market noise levels at last night's update. Our brokers and the taxman have done well out of this, but so have we!

Clearly, there are various ways to skin a cat...

eg. Of the two largest portfolios I oversee (the first being the one I've lived off for 20 years, plus a second that's still in accumulation phase but has quite a similar shape to the first), both re-attained/surpassed their all time highs at the end of last week, but not a single trade was made in the first portfolio between mid-Feb and early June, and only 3 scheduled monthly purchases were made in the second (ie. no previously unplanned, reactive trades were necessary).


NB in case anyone hadn't already noticed for themselves, it's my experience that these sort of somewhat "mutual back-patting" type of discussions do tend to mark the nearer-term end of the market move that enabled the profits under discussion, and so it is proving here. From my own perspective, by the time I begin feeling any hint of hubris about the success of my market positioning, it's usually already past the time that I should of sold/begun-lightening-up on a trading basis. It's just that nowadays I just observe this stuff and don't bother acting on any of it anymore, such is the draw of an easy life.

[fca2019]

The most important thing was, per usual, to keep your head, not overreact and not become a net seller of risk assets at a time when others were panicking.

Exactly. That was the big take away for me as well. Keeping your head and not selling or panicking whilst during the market correction. Not checking your portfolio too often and stocks are a long term game, so long term thinking is required.

[Bouleversee]

Ask me in 6 or 12 months' time.

[simoan]

The most important thing was, per usual, to keep your head, not overreact and not become a net seller of risk assets at a time when others were panicking.

Exactly. That was the big take away for me as well. Keeping your head and not selling or panicking whilst during the market correction. Not checking your portfolio too often and stocks are a long term game, so long term thinking is required.

Crikey. A bit of sense on a rather silly thread celebrating short-termism with a dose of back slapping. Clearly we are not worthy of the investment geniuses amongst us! I'd much rather hear why they bought the shares they did but any kind of analysis seems to have gone out the window and simple price anchoring and buying any old crap seems to have sufficed. I'm not sure I'd want to own most of the shares mentioned in any market conditions. I think all that's been proved on this thread is that rubbish companies with weak balance sheets are the most volatile in times of uncertainty, however, that's no excuse to buy them... EVER.

All the best, Si

[Bagger46]

The most important thing was, per usual, to keep your head, not overreact and not become a net seller of risk assets at a time when others were panicking.

Exactly. That was the big take away for me as well. Keeping your head and not selling or panicking whilst during the market correction. Not checking your portfolio too often and stocks are a long term game, so long term thinking is required.

Well, yes and no.

In the scenario I have described above, you must of course not panic, but need courage and be fully prepared to sell, even at a loss, stuff which has gone well down(or even stuff which has held up well) if you identify other investments which have dived much more for no good reason, as far a you judge. These swaps can be very profitable indeed. I used that technique a fair amount in the financial crisis, and extensively here. It is not fool proof, of course and volume does come into it, but in the end you only need to be the correct side of 50% right, which considering some of the ludicrous prices on offer was relatively easy. It does leave your portfolios less balanced as a result, but this can be corrected gradually if/when markets eventually settle. You have to be prepared to recover your obvious increased costs, trading and tax(in our case two of the portfolios are ISAs, so no bother, the third is taxed).

Bagger

[OLTB]

What the last few months has shown me is that I wasn't holding enough cash (in fact I wasn't holding any!).

During my 4-ish years of investing I have always been fully invested and therefore when the downturn happened, I was not in the position I would have liked to be in, which was having the ready cash to buy 'cheap' assets as they were. My cash source has always been accumulating dividends and we all know what has happened to those.

I have resolved to build up my cash position so that when the next downturn happens, I have the ability to top-up my portfolio accordingly. The only thing I don't know is what percentage I should hold (I don't think there will ever be a 'right' answer for this though as it's a personal choice).

A salutary lesson for me.

Cheers, OLTB.

[tikunetih]

Keeping your head and not selling or panicking whilst during the market correction. Not checking your portfolio too often and stocks are a long term game, so long term thinking is required.

I've posted before about how price volatility shrinks investors time horizons, such that, for example, before someone knows it - and against all prior intentions - they can be induced into day-trading what were supposed to be ultra-long term pension holdings...

Key to avoiding this is to attenuate the influence of emotions, so that your actions (inactions!) are determined by your thoughtful, rational mind (ie. Daniel Kahneman's "System 2"), not ruled by your amygdala (Kahneman's "System 1"), the latter which was well honed by evolution to protect you from big cat attacks on the savannah but not so good for "protecting" you in financial markets where fleeing instinctively fuelled by stress hormones is usually not the right thing to do. Reduce the emotional effects by keeping the market at sufficient distance from you and by relying upon disciplined execution of the plan you drew up in calm times before the crisis hit, akin to the checklists pilots follow. I realise I'm like a stuck record.

Following every market crisis we'll hear from some people who's heightened market activity has served them well, but we don't tend to hear that much from the people for whom it went badly, and there will be no shortage of them. Of the investors who fared well, some will have been lucky while others will have been exercising some skill, but I don't believe that most investors posses that much in the way of durable timing skill. Absent durable skill, the more someone repeats their activity the more likely it will lead in time to them experiencing the average outcome of a negative impact on their longer term returns. Not everyone, but most. Not having a pop at anyone!

[simoan]

Key to avoiding this is to attenuate the influence of emotions, so that your actions (inactions!) are determined by your thoughtful, rational mind (ie. Daniel Kahneman's "System 2"), not ruled by your amygdala (Kahneman's "System 1"), the latter which was well honed by evolution to protect you from big cat attacks on the savannah but not so good for "protecting" you in financial markets where fleeing instinctively fuelled by stress hormones is usually not the right thing to do. Reduce the emotional effects by keeping the market at sufficient distance from you and by relying upon disciplined execution of the plan you drew up in calm times before the crisis hit, akin to the checklists pilots follow. I realise I'm like a stuck record.

Following every market crisis we'll hear from some people who's heightened market activity has served them well, but we don't tend to hear that much from the people for whom it went badly, and there will be no shortage of them. Of the investors who fared well, some will have been lucky while others will have been exercising some skill, but I don't believe that most investors posses that much in the way of durable timing skill. Absent durable skill, the more someone repeats their activity the more likely it will lead in time to them experiencing the average outcome of a negative impact on their longer term returns. Not everyone, but most. Not having a pop at anyone!

Amen. Out of the darkness cometh light.

All the best, Si

[monabri]

What the last few months has shown me is that I wasn't holding enough cash (in fact I wasn't holding any!).

During my 4-ish years of investing I have always been fully invested and therefore when the downturn happened, I was not in the position I would have liked to be in, which was having the ready cash to buy 'cheap' assets as they were. My cash source has always been accumulating dividends and we all know what has happened to those.

I have resolved to build up my cash position so that when the next downturn happens, I have the ability to top-up my portfolio accordingly. The only thing I don't know is what percentage I should hold (I don't think there will ever be a 'right' answer for this though as it's a personal choice).

A salutary lesson for me.

Cheers, OLTB.

Start saving!

Looks like the markets are preparing for wave 2 of Covid-19. With all the BLM protests throughout the Western World and the lack of any social distancing then the probability of a 2nd wave must surely have increased?

[johnhemming]

The markets are moreso responding to the idea that the recession/recovery is not that likely to be a "V" shape.