Share Forum - Discuss JSE shares and join the Investor Challenge

Thanks GCR - that is exactly what I am going to do. No doubt there will be all sorts of convoluted "explanations", but if I'm not satisfied, "heigh ho, heigh ho, off to the ombudsman I go"...

I am an ex banker so am very familiar with the financial fraternities eye watering charges. When negotiating on pricing always establish what their pricing is, if they tell you if you add a feature to our portfolio they must declare each cost component. You will find that they have no clue as to how costs are derived and will merely point out that that is the cost structure they work to. You will find that they won't be empowered to make decisions to cut back on fees, so if they can't make the decision get them to call in their boss and continue the discussion around the fees. Many operations will tell you that they don't have a mandate to effect meaningful changes, so the right question is "bring the decision maker here" don't accept a further future meeting to resolve the matter. If they are prepared to waive certain fees they will tell you "that they have reviewed your case and as a special concession they will lower the fees" don't stop there tell them to sharpen their pencils again and again and come up with fair and equitable fees that both parties can live with.
I could caution you on RA's but I think it is probably too late - when I retired at 58 I drew down my RA's rapidly via living annuities and move all away from Old Mutual - where I am getting better returns on the single LA that I have. You may want to look at investing in ETF in a TFSA as another option if interested earned in your portfolio exceeds the SARS deduction limits   

Hi Fin - be very cautious in using competitors on this site to map out your future investing options as by and large many of the competitors buy/sell shares to gain the No.1 spot for bragging rights.
You case is distinctly different you want pointers as to what you should do to alleviate financial burdens in retirement and TFSA's may not be the answer for you, especially given that any capital removed from a TFSA can't be replenished so it will affect your total investment.

So if you are going to be the administrator and investor of your "pension funds" you need to read a lot, attend seminars or talks on investing (Simon Brown runs regular sessions through JSE and presents in some of the large centres and listen) - he also has a website JustOneLap which you can read up back presentations. No I'm not a disciple of Simon's but I do value his mix of ideas; Warren Ingram is another who adds value to the mix.

Many people advocate investment advisors and quite honestly they are all well and good to listen to but find a creditable one who isn't hooked to any of the large investment houses otherwise they will want to sell their home breed as best of breed,

As a suggestion maybe you need to do a few sums like:- What's your monthly income now and what % do you want as a pensionable income when you go on pension, this could give you an indicator of how much you would need to put away now for your future "pension". It is not going to be easy as you would want to look to achieving at least a 70% pension replacement of your current salary incrementing/escalating over the next 8 - 10 year

As I said at the get go - this is my opinion, and is not a sure fire answer to your dilemma, and, others will also give their opinions - so sift through them and make you own call   

Fortunately I also hold AVI;CLS; BVT; CSB; MRP; STXIND - for many years and they have been my bacon savers

I dabbled in CFD in about 2005/2006 and then stopped - the reason being that they are short term contracts and as such SARS then saw this as trading. If you are categorized as a trader then SARS treat profits as income and you are tax accordingly, and if you really do well (ha ha) you could fall into the super bracket taxpayer. Also when I engaged with SARS to understand the ramifications of being a categorized as a trader you would have great difficulty convincing them that you could be a trader and an investor at the same time . I also raised the question of partitioning a portfolio into 2 components "trading" and "investing" - investing you have to hold the shares for 3 years to be categorized as an investor. When we had the crash 2007/2008 I sold out much of my portfolio some in time others not so lucky - but I still kept my status as an investor. Another "trick" I learnt was that you buy a sizeable parcel of shares and you trade within this parcel based on the shares volatility but tax year to tax year your holdings stay at the original purchase. However over the ears I have stopped doing this because my stockbroker now sends comprehensive documentation to SARS and their investigators will (if you are on their radar) interrogate your transactions on the transaction listing report.
One type of share dealings that seems to have either disappeared or doesn't seem popular anymore is installment shares. In 2005 and 2006 I built up my share portfolio this way - you bought x number of shares in a company (at trading prices) but only paid 55% up front the balance you could defer for one year - this gave you the opportunity to see the direction of the shares - if increasing in price you paid at the original agreed price and could then sell at the higher current price and make a small profit or large profit if it took off. Haven't checked lately whether they are still available though
Be very wary with SSF's and CFD's - in about 2006 I lost some R35 k in the space of 2 days so it really is gambling at the high end and as all casinos know the tables are loaded against the gambler   

Well if you are the risky type then you could invest in AYO, Steinhoff, Sygnia, Dischem, ADAPIT and home for a return to better days (except AYO)
I hold shares in the last 4 and am prepared to wait a while longer before making a sell decision

Wow - mine seems to be how the mighty have fallen. 2 place to go and I will be plumb last on the table . Whereas a few weeks ago I got to about position 3 . Guess I need to buy a bucket load of Steinhoff, Taste or Grande Parade next month

Its probably reasonable to buy into our market at present but may become even better as the old favorite Eskom and its blackouts start to bite. They predict (which is an oxymoron) that blackouts will continue to April this year - with winter coming through in May to August the blackouts will continue beyond April. It may be prudent to purchase in smaller parcels into something like STXIND over the next couple of months. Seems that this morning a number of my retail shares have recovered some of their recent losses but this might be short lived especially if manufacturers are compromised in RSA through black outs and are forced to dispose of product. I would also expect foodstuffs to increase in price as manufacturers start using generators to keep equipment running - production of product and refrigeration for other foodstuffs - RSA not a happy place to be in currently financially and economically

No problem with your reasoning at all. I presume you still trade hence the need to keep records of movements and patterns. I use my brokers charting facility to determine the direction of my share portfolio and also shares I am interested in buying - to me a picture is more meaningful and if there was a dip at any point over the window period 3, 5 and 10 years then I look at the sens bulletins at the time preceding and at the time of the dip.
Your post records the previous days movements but it would seem that you are not necessarily limiting recording the top 10 up/down movements - so to me it is unclear as to whether you are taking in the entire markets daily moves up/down and then selecting a few that have move significantly. Also are you sucking off the entire markets shares prices daily and plotting their movements or do you have a selection of say the 100/200 companies
Interesting exercise - back in 2004 and beyond I ran a spreadsheet where I physically plotted price movements on some 100 shares per day was a real pain capturing each day but as soon as my stockbrokers introduced their charting I stopped the daily recording as they did it albeit on closing prices. They also had a facility (20 shares per subset) where you could group a number of shares together and each morning I would go through the subsets and then make a value call as to which additional counters I wanted to add to portfolio. Paid many months of school fees but it was a valuable learning curve - I have been involved in the local exchange going back to 1967 when I first started work.
Wish you well in your endeavours