My S&S diary - investing from February 2026

Martico

No idea if it's a thing or not, but I remember someone once telling me the 90 mantra on trading: 90% of people day trading lose 90% of their pot within 90 days.

winkowinko

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81919251#Comment_81919251

The forum just breathed a collective sigh of relief after reading your last sentence.

LL_USS

Thanks everyone, I know and have seen this before when on the forum anyone just starting to mention "trading" then it's all no no no no no no…, which is kind as it hopefully prevends people from trying. As I said in the first note of the thread, I do this for a reason.

Morning 12 March 2026

I have started to look less at my long-term pot Dodl (guess we are told DON'T look, but as individuals we still do in early days). Still can't help thinking "to do or not to do" as I need to drip in about the same total amount for area indexes. People would be advised: dollar cost averaging - but how much each time and how regular, I still need to decide that. Some of my friends are conservative and have taken out most of their long-term investment to reserve cash - that's one extreme. Others take cash out a bit, 1/5 of their pot for example.

My LISA pot still has 15K in it to invest - Decision before 10am for Dodl bulk order gathering - buy 3.4K more today, all except US (main issues still all ahead, not this Middle East crisis), not Emerging market (already have enough) and not Pacific (price already come back up considerably, though my plan was to get 2.2K more before the next input of Lifetime ISA). Europe index comes back up a bit now but still okay to buy, £20 difference compared to the price of last time I bought, nothing much for a long-term plan, also latest price of £480 still much lower than the average I've bought to date (of £497/share - funny I cannot find this Vanguard FTSE Developed Europe ex-UK Acc on other platform or MSN). Still super tired from extra long hours of teaching yesterday. I am going to take it easy today.

For the T212 pot, oil has come back up to the level I bought. It would have been much easier that I had not bought it in the first place in panic. Just leaving it for now.

After 3pm: For ETFs when the sentiment of the day is positive or negative, it seems to be hightened towards 3pm, lots of trading up to 3pm, then a bit less between 3-4:30, but in this last part of the day, the trend still intensifies. Oil price with WisdomTree at p5,872.9 at 3pm, climbing higher after.

InvesterJones

It seems strange to say 'I'm trying trading because I want to show my children that it's a bad idea'. When the time comes, I doubt they'll look up an archived thread on an internet forum by their parent and judge things as a result (any more so than you just straight telling them). But equally there are a whole host of things I'm sure you don't want your children to do, like crack cocaine or whatever, but you don't need to have tried it on their behalf..

And if it is just a thought experiment, use the simulation option in T212 or at other websites, where you can pretend to trade without actually using any money.

eskbanker

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81920619#Comment_81920619

Remember, kids, don't go chasing all-time highs…. 😉

Middle_of_the_Road

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81919371#Comment_81919371

Not bad idea, diversication wise. If combined with the lottery and raffle tickets you'll have quite a multi-asset portfolio.

seacaitch

Usually, the best outcome for people gambling with zero edge in "games" with negative expectancy - such as in this exercise being recorded here - is to suffer an early setback that dissuades them from continuing…

Worst thing is often early success that convinces them they've a knack for the game, since in nearly every instance this just means that they eventually suffer a much larger and damaging setback later.

Seems like the OP wants a bit of a taste of it, so they've a better idea of what it's about, before calling a halt and returning to something more sensible. So long as they call that halt, sooner rather than later, then not completely mad, perhaps ;)

Just make sure you're not like the subject in the Dandy Warhols' "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth" ;)

Similar to the OP, I was from a poor background, and in adult life I sought money to provide security. I did this through working, business, and especially through investing - successfully. Not by short-term gambling in games where I had "negative edge", and where the longer I played the more certain the unfavourable probabilities would act against me and I'd become ever more certain to lose…

To the OP: choose your "game" carefully. Scratch that current itch if you need to, but then move on to one where the odds are massively in your favour, which for nearly everyone - including you - means choosing (very) long time horizons, broad diversification and (very) low costs. That's how you (almost) guarantee you'll win, and the longer you "play", the more likely and larger your "win".

LL_USS

Thank you everyone. @eskbanker hey you don't trust my method 😆? Look at what @seacaitch says, I am not completely mad. As I said, just bear with me. I've always been a sensible adult my whole life. I know (mostly) what I am doing and am prepared to pay the price for this "trading" part. But I need to try it out, alongside "investing" of the LISAs my Dodl pot.

A diary of just long-term investing, even for when someone starts out with a sum to decide how to drip in/ or all in, and around some geopolitical and AI overinvestment issues would not need as much of people intervening, I suppose.

LL_USS

Friday 13 March 2026:

The last load of buying for my long-term investment pot went through as I woke up this morning. The biggest one is Vanguard EU - I bought in when it was so high, averaging £497/share but after this new purchase, the average comes down to £488.69. Again, may mean little in the long term but it's better to look at for now. Most of these funds have been bought when the prices are a bit lower so smaller negative for each - only Pacific and US green at the moment. All purchases done for most regions, just the US left. With new money invested in Apr, the allocations of fund in my plan looks like this:

It's sunny but windy today. Pausing my morning exercises, I check T212 to confirm that EM is still down. So I go ahead with the plan of dripping more into Emerging Markets in the next few weeks (Mondays and Fridays). It is the only one that is up-to-date in pricing among the region indexes on Dodl, whilst it can be bought and sold a bit more flexibly too. The plan is to buy more EM as long as IT STILL STAYS DOWN and in the case of buying more EM, I will gradually replace it with US later.

Note: no transaction costs on Dodl investments. All the funds chosen (except Microsoft) are in GBP (pounds) / GPX (pennies) so no FX foreign exchange charges.

On T212 all red except oil, which is still going up. Petrol is getting more and more expensive.

A bit more energy today, perhaps because I had a long sleep the day before after that very long-hour teaching session (longer than usual), but also a bit of weight lifted from my mind. For big indexes like regions, you know in the long-term it should go back up. But the speculations on company shares or single commodities like oil when they are in red, the heart does sink. When they go back up (not even in some noticable profit yet), of course a relief. Oh well, a relief just to get the money back AFTER all the heartache!

iShares Emerging Market a bit up today - before 10am I updated the order to 500 on Dodl. Order in progress soon after. Let's see what price they are going to buy for. A bit easier with a limit buy if I do the purchase myself on T212- but I guess it makes little difference for a long-term pot. Ah they are quick. Order goes through at 10:43. £494.07 for 14 shares. So £35.29/share, bringing down the average price paid a tiny bit to £36.43/share. Laughing at myself now for buying £1.4K of EM on the Monday after the first incident in Middle East, thinking "now cheaper stocks". Too fast is not good - iShares EM, as I mentioned in early entries, was still £39.47 when I bought that day, hardly any lower than before (luckily other area indexes i bought on Dodl only went through the next day, 3 March, when the prices came down a lot more).
(1) I could have checked the price live before ordering (that was the only index I would know the price quite close on the day, others are mutual funds and prices take 1-2 days to update)
(2) general dollar cost averaging applies, and also one of those notes from online teaching - as we see the price go down for stocks we need to buy - don't jump all in. Break the entries into 3, later one higher than the other.

Total Dodl pot today: £-313.96 (if left in cash, cash holding currently have 3.8% interest, so about +£80 after 5 weeks on the amount that I have put into investment)

My workplace Defined Contributon pension pot (volunteer contribution / investment pot), which is managed by the pension provider, not self-managed by me) is still 1.37% down from before the Middle East crisis started. When I started to invest on Dodl, I checked to see that the DC pension pot (something extra I put in with the plan to take out at retirement commencement hopefully the whole pot tax-free) has had a yield of around 9% (since I started to add money in, July 2017, but only heavily funded over the last 3 years). Not bad for something I do not have to manage.

Just before 4:30pm, put an order of 0.67365299 Emerging market shares on T212 to see if orders go through the same way when it's very close to 4:30 when LSE closes. Why 0.67365299 - just to round up a very long and silly fraction in the number of shares there. Oil comes back to p.6,008.1 as the market closes. Hurray the weekend is here! I will not open T212 or Dodl from now till Monday morning. Promise.

cloud_dog

So have you liquidated your oil position?

Given your entry point I would think there is more downside risk, compared to potential upside returns.