Simple Pound

How I lost over £15,000 in a day

November 13, 2007

Okay, you can breathe again. I haven’t actually lost money, but simply reduced the value of my model (!) portfolio by 1.5% yesterday. At work, my team decided it would be fun to see who could make the most money out of £1,000,000 and hence we all started our own little fake portfolios.

Yesterday was the first day that my portfolio, which I had set up over the weekend, was actually subjected to the market and, well I have lost a staggering total of £16,875.24. Of course, I forgot absolutely everything about thorough company research, diversification and asset allocation and simply bought what I thought would make the most money in the fastest possible way (guess that didn’t work, huh?). In my defense, this trial has more to do with competitive speculation than actual investment and hence the it becomes much more of a gamble than stock market investing should be (at least if you eventually want to live of your return!).

I thought you might be interested to see what “horses I bet on” and whether I had an ever so vague reason for doing so (follow link!):

3i Group (III): Venture capital firm that favours tech start-ups; + 1.98%
Anntaylor Stores (ANN): Women’s clothing retailer in US - reason? I contributed to way too much to their profits and now I want something back! +3.24%
Apple Inc (AAPL): manufacturer of personal computers and related software - some people seem to want to spend a lot of money on the iPhone (why?); -7.02%
Archer Daniels Midland (ADM): agricultural processing company; -2.22%
Atlantia (ATL): Italy’s largest operator of motorways; +1.57%
Banco Santander (SAN): Spain’s largest bank; +0.20%
Bateman Litwin (BNLN): oil equipment services and distribution sector; +4.44%
BG Group (BG): Gas and oil exploration arm of old British Gas and major player in global energy market; -2.74%
BTG (BGC): pharmaceuticals & biotechnical sector; -3.20%
Carphone Warehouse Group (CPW): Europe’s largest independent retailer of mobile communications; -0.84%
Clean Harbors Inc (CLHB): I don’t even know what they are/do… was recommended to me (ah well); +0.70%
Exxon Mobil (XOM): used to be world’s largest publicly traded energy company; -2.73%
First Group (FGP): one of Britain’s largest transport companies; 0.48%
Google Inc (GOOG): search engine and do-gooder (*lol*); -4.80%
L’Oreal (OR): cosmetics group - I love Lancome products and yes I am aware that this is a very girly reason for investing in a company; -1.15%
PetroChina (PTR): Chinese energy company with market cap of $1,000bn - new world’s largest energy corporation; -5.39%
Petroleo Brasileiro (PBR): also “PetroBras” - Brazilian oil company announced discovery of new oil field; -11.77% (do you get that??)
Premier Foods (PFD): food manufacturer; +3.45%
QXL Ricardo (QXL): online auctioneer; +3.87%
Rio Tinto (RIO): Mining company for aluminium, copper, gold, diamond, iron and lead; +0.60%
Rheinmetall AG (RHM): German defence company; +0.45%
Ryanair Holdings (RYA): no-frills airline operator; -0.20%
Siemens (SIE): German engineering and mobile phone company; -1.13%
Telefonica (TEF): communications company who owns O2; +0.89%
Tiffany and Co (TIF): internationally renowned retailer, designer, manufacturer and distributor of fine jewellery - again active profit contribution on my part; +3.28%
Vallourec (VK): French steel tube-maker subject to take-over rumours; +2.14%