Hi - I deleted both my share charting and photography web sites. While a few people followed both, the time and cost to keep them updated wasn't justifiable and with my move from Melbourne to central Victoria I felt it was time to more fully embrace retirement. I still have an interest in both. I'm still travelling, writing and backing those articles with photos - but less regularly (and only when the weather is ideal). I've got a small bucket of money from the sale of our Melbourne home and I'm planning to put half of that into shares and half into contributory mortgages. I've mentioned the latter before but believe they are a really safe way to invest providing you are happy with a return of about 6% - 7%. I only invest in metro residential properties where the borrowers debt is less than 65% of the properties value. Investments are a number at $50K each to spread what risk there is. For example, I took one yesterday which is only 3 months at 8.99% where the LVR is only about 30%. While the short term isn't ideal it allows me to spread maturities so I haven't got all the loans falling due at the same time. The vast majority of contributory mortgages are for a term of 12 months. For those unsure what a contrib mortgage is, its an investment in the mortgage over just 1 property, whereas a pooled mortgage is an investment in all the mortgages (the pool) of the Fund. There are plusses and minuses in both but I like to know exactly what security backs my investment - and contrib mortgages give me that.
As for shares, I did a full scan of the ASX 200 a week ago and have started to build a portfolio of generally high market cap companies that pass my standard charting buy test - coming off a low and making a new uptrend for at least 3 months that breaks a prior downtrend; generally show a long term trend of rising prices; in a range of sectors; and not in an industry I regard as challenged in these recessionary times. For example I wouldn't invest in Premier Investments, despite it ticking all the other boxes, given it is reliant on consumer discretionary expenditure. Same goes for JB HiFi, Harvey Norman etc (although the latter is one I wouldn't touch due to Harvey running it like his personal fiefdom.
Anyway the scan was interesting. No banks passed muster but there are a large number of companies making new uptrends. I only want about 12 - 15 holdings max and I'll build those by taking an initial investment and then topping it up once that has risen 3%. Stop loss is a two week break of uptrend usually.
I've recently bought into (or topped up) ALU, CHN, COL, CSL, FPH, LYC, and WES. While I sold out of most of my holdings a month or two ago to assist with the costs of setting up our new home prior to the old one settling (getting bridging finance proved to be really problematic despite almost a million dollars difference between what we sold and bought - we didn't have a mortgage on the sold property and if you don't have an existing mortgage none of the major banks will look at it because there isn't enough fat in a short term bridging loan for the greedy bastards).
I still held PLS and CXO although both are in the red. I continue to hang onto them because I think they will recover (some charting logic in this but mainly a belief that the EV demand will drive them higher). Have a buy out for Ampol and looking as BSL, CSR, DXS, GMG, GPT and MQG. Re that latter I said none of the big banks did it for me - but I don't regard MQG as a traditional bank.
Where do I see the market going? The XAO is making higher troughs and peaks on the weekly and in a strong uptrend. I'd like to think (despite the challenging times) that it could now rally to around 8000 and long term trend since 2008 suggests a peak of 9000 in 2024 is likely before the next fall into the abyss. Candles suggest the XAO's 4 week losing streak may be turning and the coming week might see the start of another short rally.
Good wishes to all.