Last week I opened with ‘there really isn’t a week that goes by without something significant happening on FI’ and boy, I wasn’t wrong. As if we didn’t have enough with PB, MB, IPDs, deposit bonuses and the January money back offer, FI added another set of IPOs and a new transfer dividend into the mix.

Traders had mixed feelings about the new dividend as did I. The product is complicated enough, without adding another temporary dividend into the mix. It didn’t help that the ts&cs were less than clear – had to be new shares, net shares (this caught me out) and had to be confirmed by the BBC… until they (rightly) decided that was mad. But hey ho, we play the game that’s in front of us.

Which is also how I feel about IPOs to be honest. I avoided them for a long while but now I’m happy to get down and dirty with the rest of them. If they aren’t going to fix them or make them fairer, I’ll take my chances and make money when I can. It’s shite for new users though and not a good look for FI.

Talking about getting dirty, I went into full on ‘pump’ mode this week once I’d realised how the transfer dividends thing worked and plastered Musa Barrow across my timeline for days. Why? To be fair, I think he’s a good hold but I was also just curious to see whether we could get him over the line for dividends – and we did!

However, I neglected to read the small print and didn’t realise it was ‘net shares’ only so I sold the 150 I already had and re-bought 200 (thinking that would make the full 200 shares eligible), missing a rise and paying commission in the process. He’s still sitting at a profit for me overall but now looks like a loss in the process – and I only got a payout of £2.50 for the net gain of shares. Doh! Still, it was all good fun and I do still believe in him as a player so I’m more than happy to hold.

Anyway, onto this week’s update –

The Premium holds bombed again and I’m really struggling to keep the faith with some of them at this point. Kane’s injury dented his price, Sterling suffered for the lack of consistency at Man City and De Bruyne was the nearly man again, just missing out on PB (if only we had tiered PB!). The only glimmer of hope was Neymar, who just keeps winning PB and posting monster scores (his last 5 scores are: 237, 270, 273, 226 and 236). In my eyes, he’s easily a £10 player and it’s just a matter of when, not if, so I’ve topped him up by another 10 shares.

His efforts weren’t enough to stop that fund ending the week at a loss of £65 and a disappointing overall ROI 21.9% since this challenge began. I’m holding onto all of them for now, even Kane. Despite his injury, as he’s more of an MB hold anyway and this ‘will he, won’t he make it’ narrative should be good for that.

My Performance fund had a good week, rising £72 and taking the ROI to 61.6%. It’ss grown to 21 players – more than I’d originally intended – largely because I see so much value in this part of the market at the moment. Having said that, I would like to cut things down a little so I’ve got a couple in the sell queue at the moment.

With some in the queue, I took the liberty of jumping on Mark Uth, just moved to Koln on loan and immediately on set pieces. Forwards on set pieces are a rare beast indeed and at only 47p, I had to jump on. He’s up 14.7% since, making him one of the week’s biggest risers, alongside Rebic and Arthur.

The biggest drops in the fund were on the ‘old guard’ of PB players like Pjanic, Brozovic and Parejo. They’re definitely out of fashion at the moment and need to hit some high scores to see a rise again soon – perhaps the latter stages of the European competitions may help with this. As always with FI, there’s sometimes a case to be made for patience, and sometimes a case to be made for cutting your losses and moving on!

The Potentials had a good week too, mostly driven by the stratospheric rise of Rayan Cherki on Saturday night. His 50% rise is one of the largest I’ve recorded during this challenge and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Alena caught the big rise during the week for similar reasons.

This inevitably leads to comparisons with other youngsters who might be bubbling under the radar and FOMO starts to kick in. Seeing Gravenberch rise, I felt I had to jump on just in case. At over £2 in a non-PB league, he’s a bit of a risk at his current price but at only 17 years old, he’s probably worth it as a long term hold, especially as Ajax have a decent chance of progressing in the Europa League.

Ignoring my screw up with Barrow, the main losses I took during the week were on Berge, Djenepo, Rodrygo and Benrahama, but none of these were huge drops and the fund ended the week up by £107 with a respectable ROI of 48% so far.

That’s enough for now but you can visit the individual fund pages if you want to see exactly who I hold and how they are doing. Feedback and tips are always appreciated!