Rotating Out: Closing the VEU trade

Some profit booking; Retrospective on some profitable posts

🌍 A Neat Little Trade: In, Out, and Slightly Richer

Roughly four months ago, I scribbled a note on this very Substack, musing about the great unravelling of the US trade and the possibility of shifting winds toward a rest-of-the-world (RoW) trade. At the time, SPY, the S&P 500 ETF was sitting at 604 and has since wandered up/down/sideways eventually ending up at 594 mid this week, declining 1.9%. Meanwhile, if you'd plonked your money into VEU (the Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF) on the day I wrote that post and fast-forwarded to today, you'd have come out ahead by 10.21%.

As you’d expect, I was on that flight—passport stamped and all—and the journey was profitable. Sometimes you get lucky. Other times, you just have to pretend you did solid macro work. I’ll let you decide which bucket this one falls into. This week, I exited the trade.

Why? Well, the issue wasn’t the trade itself—it was where I had to park it. Most of my money lives in my nice, well-behaved Vanguard UK accounts—spread across ISAs, JISAs, and pensions, growing peacefully in diversified index funds. Unfortunately, VEU is a US Vanguard fund, and those are harder to get in the UK than a decent bagel (due to regulations). So I had to use my brokerage account (hello again, Interactive Brokers) and some options trickery to fulfil the trade.

And from the moment I made that purchase, it’s been poking at me. That capital could have been working in my more flexible, hands-on Coffee Can Portfolio—or fuelling my latest fascinations like Stellantis, Lenovo, or even Harley Davidson. (Because I’m one crisis away from extending my goatee and riding into a midlife methinks.)

So, I took the win, booked the profits, and rotated that money into core holdings that I can actually manage without wondering if I’ve tripped some Mifid 2 regulation.

Fear not—the bulk of my portfolio is still parked in diversified global trackers. In fact, most of it is Vanguard Global All-Cap fund, the benchmark for my Coffee Can Portfolio.

📊 Substack Stocks & Stats: A Performance Check (With Bonus Bragging Rights)

With the VEU trade now wrapped up, I thought this was a good time for a one-off review: how have my past ticker musings fared? Over the last 2.5 years, I’ve written 27 posts, each making a case for a specific stock.

If you’d followed each one and tossed £100 into each idea, you’d be sitting on £114 today. Not bad—beats stuffing it under the mattress. On an annualised basis, that’s 9.19% p.a. Respectable, especially with inflation trending back to 3.2% in recent print.

Over the course of time, my actual portfolio has been trending better than the 9.19% indicated above - largely because I gave my best performers the VIP treatment (read: heavier allocation). Moral of the story? Back your winners—and no, not with motivational quotes. With capital.

Here are five ideas that aged particularly well:

📉 AIM-ing Low: A (Very) Modest Investment

As a fun aside, I’ve also dipped my toes into the deep, murky waters of the Alternative Investment Market (AIM). I recently tried to buy a nano-cap with a £16M market cap, and let’s just say, placing the order was the easy part. It took four days to actually get filled. Liquidity in these markets is like British summer: technically exists, rarely seen.

I’d love to write about that stock, but (a) I don’t have enough conviction yet, and (b) I don’t want competition! The last thing I need is five readers driving up the price of my illiquid nanocap moonshot. Let me quietly buy in peace.

📬 Until Next Time…

That’s all for this edition. A successful trade closed, portfolio rebalanced, and a healthy dollop of hindsight applied. As always, happy investing—and may your trades clear faster than my AIM order.

Disclaimer: I am not your financial advisor and bear no fiduciary responsibility. This post is only for educational and entertainment purposes. Do your own due diligence before investing in any securities.