After the big build up of expectations heading into January, the rockets haven’t quite arrived yet and, like other traders, my port is going through a pretty lean spell. We haven’t yet hit full scale panic on social media yet but I can see the early grumbling starting.

So let’s look at this a little bit. Yes, we’ve seen some January sales at the end of the staggered deposit bonus period. Traders always over-commit themselves to squeeze as much out of the bonus as possible, so some level of pullback is understandable. We’re also in the middle of the winter break and the volatile January transfer window so it’s easy to feel that everyone’s port is dropping when in fact you might just be sitting on players that are currently out of favour.

We know the marketing campaign is kicking in. The new advert looks great – it’s simple and pushes a different angle to the previous ones (dividends!). This will build brand awareness and attract new users and, therefore, new money into the Index.

One way to measure the impact of the marketing is by looking at how often people are searching for ‘Football Index’ on Google. This is a chart showing searches in the UK between 1st December 2018 and today:

The numbers represent the number of searches relative to the highest point on the chart – so a value of 100 is the peak popularity during the selected time frame and a value of 50 means the search term was half as popular. Note that the most popular time for people to search for ‘Football Index’ was between 13th and 19th January last year. As of today, the figure sits around the 75 mark but is rising in a similar fashion to last year. A reason for optimism!

I’ve used the January sales as an opportunity to top up my Performance holds. Based on upcoming fixtures, I’ve added Immobile, Orsolini, De Roon and Arnold to the fund. They all have the ability to compete for dividends, are reasonably priced and will come up against some fairly soft opposition over the next few weeks (Immobile is rising as I type this!).

The rest of that fund had a pretty flat week overall but buying into Arnold at just the right time (he’s up 13% since I bought him!) allowed me to turn a profit of £16, which isn’t too bad in the circumstances.

The losers this week were the Premium holds. Kane’s injury, coupled with a less than stellar performance from De Bruyne, left me down over the week by £49. If I’m honest, De Bruyne does concern me a bit. Although he’s still scoring and assisting, it looked as though he was a bit less involved in the Everton game and his PB win was a lucky one really, given his very low score. I hope this isn’t evidence of a tactical change in the way that Guardiola is using him.

Kane worries me less. Yes, he’s injured, but he’ll be back well in time for the Euros and I still envisage a transfer saga starting up over the summer too. After all, who’d want to play under Mourinho for any length of time?!

The big winners this week were the youngsters in my Potential fund. With less actual football being played and money to be made in transfer speculation, many traders are turning their focus back to the youth market and this fund finished the week £63 up.

The star of the week was Caqueret, up 14% after getting a goal and an assist in Lyon’s 7-0 drubbing of Bourg-Peronnas in the Coupe de France. Kulivert, Oscar Rodriguez, Geiger and Blas all had a decent week too.

Kulusevski sealed a slightly unexpected move to Juventus which was enough for me to hit the IS button while he still had a kind spread. I’ve no doubt that he’s a talent but I don’t want to hold him at his current price until I’m clearer about how he fits into the team. The decision to IS was the right one as he’s dropped below the IS price since then.

In his place, I’ve added Musa Barrow. He’s not going to be happy to sit on the sidelines for Atalanta for much longer and a move to Bologna looks increasingly likely. He’s dropped a bit since I added him but I think he’s real value at his current price – a 21 year old forward, for well under a quid in a PB league ticks plenty of boxes for me.

So that’s this week’s summary but, as always, you can visit the individual fund pages if you want to see exactly who I hold and how they are doing. Happy trading all!