Virgin Portfolio Finale Report
(Account Closure)
‘Where are you?’, wife screaming from the kitchen at 2030hrs. ‘Give me 15 more minutes, I need to finalised one last execution’, responding loudly behind the door. ‘What the F**k?!, You have been in there for 20 minutes!’, wife getting annoyed. ‘Chinese and American trade wars not going well’, me pleading reply for more time. ’Seriously, what the heck are you doing in that TOILET??!’, wife kicking the toilet door down!
I am the father of three jobs, every second is gold dust to me. Yes, I spend a lot of my trading/investment time in the toilet after work. This is the only free quiet time which I can execute trades before the US stock market closes at 2100hours GMT. While I am taking a big POO, I still want to be making money.
April 2016 – Birth of Virgin Portfolio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQwgbYB11yA
Back in 2016, I took out a 36 months interest free credit card cash loan to fund my stocks and shares experiment. There was a small fee of £357 for the cash transfer. Providing I would repay all the Loan amount before 36 months ended, I do not need to pay for any more fees. If miss the payment on the 37th month then I would be elegible for 37% APR interest.
Honestly 36 months is a nice period for short term investment. Anything less than 36 months would be a high risk gamble. Currently as of writing this article, the loan period are only 26 months maximum.
I call this the Virgin portfolio, simple because it was Richard Brandson’s company called Virgin.
This was a very high risk project and I had to stick to some very discipline rules to ensure success.
Virgin Portfolio
Finale Results
The loan was due to expire on April 2019 (month 36), I had to start selling my existing and remaining holdings to capture my final tally to ensure I have funds to pay the remaining loan that is left on the bill.
As it stands of today, after the full sale of my remaining stocks, which gives me a profit of £4986.26.
With the £15,000 investment over the period of 36 months on stocks and shares between Apr 2016 to Apr 2019, I have managed to captured a nice profit of £4986.26 which is equivalent to 33.2% profit. As mentioned previously, the fees only cost me £357.00 for the credit card loan.
All this work was done purely on my mobile phone via the broker App. Since this was a short term growth portfolio, there was more focus on US growth stocks rather than dividend stocks or other region stocks.
Honestly, I do feel slightly disappointed because I could have captured more profit if I sold earlier before the end of 2018. I could not forecast the future well enough and did not let go in time. Alternatively I could have been making a loss as well.
I ran out of time and could not find anymore room for growth and had to settle for the winnings I currently have and return the loan base on the agreement I have signed with Virgin Credit Cards.
Top 3 Profits
The three top earnings came from the bluechip technology stocks companies. Lessons learned was buying these companies during the dip. Apple – Apple stocks are one of the most predictable trend stocks in the last 7 years. Bought Apple shares on three dip occasions for last 3 years. Microsoft – This was bought back in April 2016, when the company missed their earnings report and there was a huge 10% drop. I stuck to my fundamentals of valuation and bought a handful of shares. Netflix – I bought Netflix in May 2016 for $86, during one of the worse drop in the last five year. Sold the stocks at $169 (which was way too soon).
Top 3 Losses
The three top losses had one common theme! E-Sports stocks! These three stocks suffered the worse dropped towards the end of 2018. This is easily the worse time to sell any of these stocks. If I had money, I would still strongly invest in E-Sports stocks as this is the future of audience sports. Razer – I bought Razer too soon after its IPO. Activision – I could have cash out on Activision at 100% profit. However with the bad performance their stocks had dropped more than half its price from peak. Nvidia – Suffered losses as the crypto mining and semi conductor business have suffered the most during the end of 2018.
Lessons Learned
I never regret taking on this high risk project. Profit is not the prize won today, in fact I have learned these 7 hard lessons from 3 years short term stocks trading.
- Long term interest free loans only occurs during low interest rates period. This will not occur for at least another 2 decades.
- Bull Market do not last forever. Never fear the Bull Run and Join the Bandwagon.
- Always buy a stock during a an opportunistic downturn.
- 3 years is a very short period for proper investing.
- Always take profit when company stock reaches record breaking high.
- Growth stocks are very high risk as it can go double or half its value in less than 6 months.
- Never wait to save for investment. Always start early!
Next Action
Next step is to pay up the loan before the real interest kicks in. I shall take the profit and invest in my Life Time Isa for my retirement tax free portfolio. With a £4000, investment before 5th April 2019, the UK government will award me an additional £1,000 free money. This is providing I do not withdraw before I turn 55.
Wished I could take another 36 months interest free credit loan. However the longest term deal is only 24 months just now. The period is way too short to try to make any profit. Therefore, this credit card project will not be continue again. Looking back now, I wish I have taken more money and several more cards when I had the chance.
