How My Stock Portfolio Gained £2752.21 in Jan 2023

Welcome to my January 2023 Portfolio Report.

My stock portfolio rose in value by £2752.21 (+11.4%) across the month of January 2023. This figure excludes the benefit of any additional deposits made and focuses solely on return achieved on existing capital.

£150.00 additional deposits were pumped into the fund this month, £0.00 worth of stocks were sold, with £0.00 of total capital being invested into additional holdings. £10.41 in additional deposits were made due to income from dividends being transferred into the capital account. The additional deposits and dividend income minus the capital difference invested and account fees has therefore led to a decrease in the capital held on deposit which has fallen from £172.67 to £398.74

Capital held on deposit now sits at 1.6% of the value of the fund.

The total value of the fund, along with the cash held on deposit sits at £25,352.48

2023 Performance

On 1st January 2023 the account sat at a value of £22,630.27. Since then I’ve pumped in a further £150 into the fund. Today’s value of £25,352.48 minus the £150 additional deposits, means that I’ve made an investment return of £2,752.21 so far this year which represents +11.4% gain in value for the year.

My Thoughts

The slow recovery I was hoping for to give me time to raise capital to invest before prices accelerated has not played out how I had hoped. Prices have soared quite incredibly in January 2023 despite no real particularly positive news.

Some stocks from the watchlist rose 20% in value in January for instance. To me this feels odd. 

The question is, could this be pent up demand? Perhaps we are seeing a return of investors flocking back to the market now because they are seeing a sea of cheap stocks and opportunity and don’t want to miss out. 

Or is this something else? A false jump leading to another drop. Look online and it’s not hard to find experts proclaiming more doom and gloom on the horizon. Some even predicting another crash is coming. But unfortunately, those people are always there.

Ultimately, trying to predict what’s coming is a fools game. Even if you get the prediction right, you won’t know until after the event. If you plan for a crash which never comes you shoot yourself in the foot. If you don’t plan for a crash you risk seeing the value of your portfolio fall again. 

But personally, I believe the best course of action is to do the same thing I’ve always done. Continue to buy well performing companies at cheap prices relative to their underlying value. If the market crashes again, so be it. Another window to add more 

value to my portfolio on the cheap. One needs to always remember (and I am constantly reminding myself of this mantra) that there is no rush to build my wealth. I am buying these stocks with no intention to cash in for 10-20 years. So, whatever happens to the value of my portfolio in 2023 is largely irrelevent. Whether it goes up or down over the next 11 months the only question that’s important is what will the stocks all be worth in 2033-2043?

If the markets crash in 2043 then I might want to delay any cashing in of my portfolio (should I choose to), but if the markets crash in 2023 or 2024, no big deal. I wasn’t planning on selling then anyway.

I know I repeat this almost every month it seems, whether the markets are up or down. But I genuinely believe that this is the core mindset to long term success. 

A friend of mine who makes 7 figures a year as a marketing copyrighter once said to me that after years of studying human behaviour the one pattern he’s always seen across his career is that us humans always get in the way of our own success. We always find ways to overthink things and mess it up.

Having spent years working with traders and investors I would say this is spot on analysis. Look at short term traders and their obsession with tinkering with their systems. Or buying a stock and then quickly feeling remorse and selling again. Only to then see the stock do well. Or investors trying to force something to happen and buying terrible penny stocks to try and make a quick profit, only to then lose money instead of make any. The corporate business decisions that create so much fuss and extra work that didn’t need to be changed. The incentive schemes that become so complicated to please all staff that that in the end we find that it’s the simplest of systems that work the best. Even in our everyday relationships we tend to often be our own worst enemy. Overthinking, when really, it all comes down to keeping things simple.

So whilst the threat of seeing our well-earned portfolio values rise in January exists, in the grand scheme of things another crash will mean very little. We just keep it simple. Buying more shares of wonderful business at prices that make sense, and we learn to enjoy the journey and the process, because if you do the little things right, over time the portfolio value will inevitably take care of itself.

Portfolio

SHARES	STOCK	COST (£)	MARKET (£)	GAIN (£)	GAIN (%)
120	STOCK 1	877.62	932.40	54.78	6.24
683	STOCK 4	3,931.89	4,712.70	780.81	19.85
30	STOCK 23	493.50	819.00	325.50	65.95
51	STOCK 2	1,028.30	1,095.48	67.18	6.53
1902	STOCK 25	2,584.60	2,225.34	-359.26	-13.90
991	STOCK 29	2,152.17	2,120.74	-31.43	-1.46
35	STOCK 16	501.53	640.50	138.97	27.70
936	STOCK 32	747.83	879.84	132.01	17.65
110	STOCK 34	1,557.70	1,719.30	161.60	10.37
13	STOCK 17	248.05	690.82	442.77	178.50
2619	STOCK 43	599.64	680.94	81.30	13.55
138	STOCK 39	249.26	362.94	113.68	45.61
1855	STOCK 46	2,540.51	3,060.75	520.24	20.48
109	STOCK 49	409.80	374.96	-34.84	-8.50
304	STOCK 55	1,048.02	480.32	-567.70	-54.16
219	STOCK 47	1,187.36	510.27	-677.09	-57.02
111	STOCK 33	3,068.48	2,442.00	-626.48	-20.41
50	STOCK 24	800.20	505.00	-295.20	-36.89
26	STOCK 45	491.34	700.44	209.10	42.55
	TOTAL	24,517.80	24,953.74	435.94	1.77
	CASH		398.74
	TOTAL PORTFOLIO VALUE		25,352.48

Dividend History

£10.41 was received this month in dividends and re-invested into the fund. We received a total of £10.41 in dividends for 2023 which is an average passive income of approximately £10 a month. I am hoping for a 2.5% yield from my account each year (approx £625 in 2023). This time last year we had received £13.60 in Dividends.

Historical Performance Tracker

My goal is to reach £1,024,864 in account value within 23 years from the start of this project. I plan to get there by achieving an average annual return of 15% from my stock picks and an additional average 2.5% annual dividend yield which will be re-invested into the fund for compounded growth. This also assumes a £250/month cash input to aid growth. This progress is represented as the blue ‘trajectory’ line.

My financial forecasts suggest that to stay on track and reach my goal I had to finish 2022 on £19,169. 

However, I am approximately 1 year ahead of schedule of reaching my target of £1,024,864 by 2042, which gives me plenty of room should I suffer 1-2 poorer years along the way like we are seeing now in 2022.

These projections are already based on conservative returns, based on historical performance of my handpicked stocks. I am therefore left in no doubt that I will make my target far sooner than planned. Initial projections suggested I would reach my end target aged 61. However, current projections now suggest the milestone will be reached by the age of 59. I hope to get there before I hit 55.

Join Me On My Journey

I hope you continue to join me for this rollercoaster ride across 2023 and our forthcoming years of financial growth. I sincerely hope to one day be able to meet some members in person and bask in each others stories of success. Nothing will please me more than for my hours and hours of analysis to have had significant positive impacts on peoples financial lives and wellbeing.

This is an incredible journey, growing a starter portfolio of £4k to £1 million. It will take best part of 20-25 years to achieve. However, I hope these monthly reports become a roadmap of sorts that future generations can take.

I certainly intend for my children to take on the baton and continue running with it long after i’m gone. For me, this is a the start of the Chillingworth legacy. Whilst I started in my 30’s with less than £10k, my children will start in their 20’s with perhaps £100k each. Their children may start with a million each. Their children could eventually be billionaires. Whilst I won’t be around to witness it, I’d be happy knowing I came into and then left this world having made a positive impact to my family in this way.