OOFT!! What a couple of weeks for this service, and Football Index as a whole.
The week before last was very good for us, dividend-wise, as we had players that did well in both European finals. We also saw a bit of an upturn in general market value as traders reacted well to a press release saying that an increase and restructuring of dividends would soon be announced. There was also news of a huge marketing drive to be unleashed in September that (it’s hoped) will attract plenty of new members to add extra liquidity to the market. The announcement of a shirt sponsorship deal with Q.P.R. would seem to suggest they intend putting their money where their mouth is (feel free to put your own club bias spin on that bit. I quite liked going to The Springbok back in the 80-90’s, so view them with a slightly less furrowed brow than I do other London rivals).
Last week was even better! The increase in market value had continued but, when the promised Dividend Restructuring arrived, things went a bit mad. Share prices increased, in some cases very dramatically, as traders reacted to the fantastic news of payouts DOUBLING! This really is exciting news as the dividends mount up very quickly. The last few months have been a bit flat for the market prices; this has been blamed on the uncertainty of pretty much everything in the world at the moment and also the introduction, in several stages, of a new Matching Engine by NASDAQ which will allow traders far more control in deciding the price they want to buy and sell at. Given all those concerns, it’s rather impressive that on my last update in mid August, we’d made about £50 in dividends from our portfolio that had cost us around £2,300. While hardly earth-moving, it’s not too shabby given the dividends were set at 1p-8p for most of that time, so the increase is very welcome.
Another benefit of the huge upturn in share prices is that we’ve finally been able to sell a few players that we’ve had listed for quite a while, including Kolarov who we were warned could end up being a total loss for us. He had been expected to move to a league not fully covered by Football Index, meaning nobody was going to buy our shares in him as he wouldn’t be earning for us next year, but when it was strongly rumoured that he’d be moving to Inter, his price stabilised and when the dividend announcement shifted his price in the right direction we actually ended up making a small profit, even after paying commission. Most of our other listed players went through too.
We had one additional buy this week and a few players were added to the Do Not Buy list for new members as their price is deemed to have risen so far as to be poor value now.
So to the figures. My portfolio of players cost £2,503.39, it is currently valued at £2,460.49, I have made £188.79 of sales (after comm) and been paid a total of £86.19 in Dividends. So as of Tuesday I’m about £230 up. We are now in profit even after paying subs for the 4 months since we started in June (rounding it up) at £35 a month, that works out to £140. This is the first time we’ve been ahead after subs were accounted for.
I’ve said we’re 4 months into this trial but I’m still not ready to call it. This needs another couple of months, if it continues in the manner it has so far, but with the new structures and the hugely improved liquidity, then it’ll make really good money from an interesting and very different source to our usual fodder and I’ll certainly be recommending it. That probably wouldn’t have been the case a month ago; it was heading for a Neutral as we weren’t covering the subs and we weren’t managing to sell our unwanted shares, but it was bouncing along showing potential. I’ll give it a month or so into the new season and then make the call, but I’m very happy with it at the moment. The new dividend level, the introduction of Team Of The Month, the full Matching Engine being introduced, new traders coming onboard and current traders getting used to what football is post Lurgy-Lull, is all very exciting.
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