After riding a couple of weeks of excitement around the new dividend structure, the mood on FI seemed to take a distinctly negative turn last week as people started to notice drops across their portfolios.

As traders, we need to remember that drops are part of a normal market cycle and try not to panic every time we see things turning a little bit negative. Frustration and panic doesn’t make for a good trading mindset so, as tough as it is, the old cliche of ‘zoom out and see the profit over a longer period’ really is good advice.

As well as being part of the normal cycle of things, there’s usually an underlying reason for negative trends. In this case, I suspect a lot of the pullback was due to traders trying to scrape some money together for the IPOs due to land on the Index next week. We’ve got to get through some short term pain of mass IPOs in order to get the platform on a more stable footing. This is a big step towards that and I applaud FI for setting the prices slightly on the high side to deter ‘flippers’ and to ensure that current holds look cheap in comparison.

So with all that going on, this week was a bit ‘meh’ for all of my funds. Both the Premium and Performance funds finished the week slightly below where they started, with only my young Potentials turning a profit.

The Premium holds are particularly frustrating me at the moment. Neymar isn’t fit enough to play, Sancho has fallen out of favour with his manager and CHO hasn’t done enough to put himself back in traders minds yet. With MB a completely different beast now, this just means stagnating holds and actually perhaps I need to revise what I mean by ‘premium’ to take this into account. Food for thought anyway.

My Performance fund had a bit of a mixed week but a few players saw a decent rise – Jorginho and Depay due to their now proven PB credentials, Wijnaldum, due to having potentially 8 games in a 30 day period, and Golovin after netting me my first (and so far only) Gold day PB win. And sweet it was.

For the first time in a while, the Potentials managed to finish the week up, albeit only by £31. Having seen that Odegaard was out injured, I put him up for sale (for a £40 profit) and had a think about who I might fancy bringing in to replace him. High up on my shortlist was Rodrygo, given that he looks to have cemented a starting spot at Real Madrid now. Just after his first goal went in on Wednesday night, I hit the buy button and he didn’t disappoint – netting another 2 goals and an assist.

But what now? There are a few tasty youngsters on the IPO list – Fati, Camavinga, Tomori, Elliott – but all due to be released at prices that are reflective of their level of hype. Now, thanks to the guys at IndexGain, you can check what their PB scores would have been to see whether their hype translates to the PB matrix (if you’ve not seen this feature, have a look here: https://indexgain.co.uk/buzzscout)

I guess with the IPOs and the international break, there are really two options now. Sit tight and wait for things to settle or sell up a load of my holds to ensure I’ve got a large cash balance to react to whatever unfolds this week…

The full breakdown of my funds can be found on the separate fund pages. Comments and suggestions are always welcome. Happy trading!