Summary of July 2016

I must admit that I was not happy when I put together this summary. I thought that my companies had developed much better than what was the case once I had it down in black on white on paper. Yet again my German banks keep disappointing me which they have been doing now for four years already. I have kept pushing more and more money into them and they keep falling lower and lower. It starts to be very frustrating and I am very close to create the rule "no more money into German banks".

Oh, and this summary covers the last two months developments.

I have already written enough updates concerning the work in my new company so I shall say no more of that. In my old company we have still not managed to stabilise the situation but there is money coming in so I hope things will get sorted out.

My wife have still not managed to get a job but now she is gone for two weeks to do some volunteer job to try to get one foot in the door via this approach. I hope that it will work out as she wants. For me this means that I can push work even one step further to make sure that I build up the needed technical knowledge even faster.

Stock bought July 2016: Company A

I am sorry but I am forced to call this Company A since it is the actual company that I am now working in and I prefer to remain anonymous. What was exciting this time was however that when I made this tiny little buy I had to report it as inside trading so that was something completely new. It was also a bit stressful to buy it since the silence period very shortly starting and I had to buy it within a week or I would have to wait for almost two months until I would be allowed again.

The company is traded on that London stock exchange and I bought shares including fees for a value of 2502.87 €.

Latest developments

I hope that all of you are doing well and that you managed to profit from the stock market crash that came with Brexit.

I have still not noticed a change here in the UK but there are reports concerning a more unfriendly environment towards foreigners. It is interesting times that we are living in right now.

This first month at work I have focused on the organisation and the people. I have already made most of the changes for the people and their rolls but I will start to roll out the administrative changes today. I hope it will be ok for them and that I will manage to motivate them to keep pushing forward.

The second month I will spend on learning the technical part as well as the commercial and business models part for product sales. The technical part is not rocket science but I need to push myself especially in one field that I know very little about so that I can answer any question appearing in the future and I must become the person to go to for all those technical matters.

When it comes to buying stocks I am still not really into the game. I will however try in the coming week to get a stock ISA up and running so that I can start to make 1,000 GBP investments each month.

I have the possibility, each month, to push in extra money for my retirement and if I pay in a minimum amount then my company will pay 2% of my salary. I have decided to push in 10% of my salary there so each month I have a retirement fund being built up based on 12% of my salary. I push that into a Global fund 50%, European fund 30% and UK fund 20%. I will over time change the UK fund down to either 10% or maybe even zero and that will then go into the European fund instead. This is tax free and it will lead to me being able to get money back when I make the tax declaration.

This extra retirement money that I push in I will not consider as being part of my contrarian adventure and I will therefore not keep track of it here.

Dividend from ABF: July 2016

It was time for the tiny bi-annual dividend payment from ABF. Their expansion plans with Primark is progressing quickly and they are rolling out more stores both in Europe as well as in the US.

For my 100 shares I this time received 10.30 GBP that go converted into 12.27 €. From this was taken 3.23 € in taxes and I received 9.04 € as cash on my broker account.

Now that I am in the land of ABF I get a better feeling for their products and I see them everywhere. Yesterday I walked into a Primark here and the store was completely loaded with customers. During the week the store looks more like an H&M in terms of visitors which was not at all the case in Germany.

To find out more about ABF please visit analysis of ABF 2015 and the Stock Dividends page has now been updated if you want to follow my dividend progress.

Stock bought June 2016: Commerzbank

I simply are not able to walk away from the German banks. This time I decided to push in some more money into Coba. Historically the decision is correct and I decide to look at history on this one.

I bought 200 more shares for a total value of 1,288.10 € including the fees. As always I was a bit early. I once again pushed down the price per share that I have paid in Coba and I am now down at 10.61 € per share and the total cost is up at 7,650 €.

The value today is around half of what I have invested which is annoying and the future performance needed from Coba to cover for all these poor years will be tough to reach and the likelihood that it will not increases for each passing year. That is reality and the flowers that should be sniffed.

To find out more regarding Coba please visit analysis of Coba 2016.

With the next update of the monthly report the new change will be brought in to the Stock Portfolio.