The kids are taking over!

For the first time in a long while, the Potential fund is leading the way for ROI after some quite incredible rises on a handful of players in the port. First up, I need to big up my man Musa Barrow, who has hit the ground running at Bologna and took his first PB win on Friday night. As a result, he’s up over 50% in a week for me. Bonkers.

A rise like that makes you question whether you should be taking profit and some traders definitely did go down that route. That’s not really a style that works for me at the moment as I don’t want to be worrying that much about my portfolio game by game. Also, if I’m really honest, I do get a bit attached to players and that tends to stop me selling on the rise. I need to work on this!

The other three big risers were Aouchiche, Edouard and Cherki. As I write this, Cherki is making his first start for Lyon against PSG and he’s up 36% in the week. By the time I finish this, I guess he’s either going to be up another 20% or down 20%, depending on which way it goes for him on the pitch. At 16, he’s a long term hold for me but braver traders will want to flip in and out of him depending on his performances each week.

Edouard is a rise that was always going to come at some point, although I’m not clear why it’s come now. He’s been on top form all season, can’t stop scoring goals and I think a move to the EPL looks almost nailed on for the summer, although I wouldn’t rule out a move to a Ligue 1 team. The question is, do I hold for the transfer spec or do I look to sell on the next rise? Hmmmm.

Aouchiche was the most recent IPO disaster and I think that kept his price artificially low for a while but comparisons to the likes of Cherki and Gravenberch were always going to push his price up eventually. I’d say he’s probably got a bit more of a rise in him yet and looks a decent long term hold anyway.

A few players had a dip, notably Caqueret and Alena, but with other decent rises on Benrahama, Oscar Rodriguez, Bergwijn, Stengs and Blas the fund finished the week £355 up – the best week in a while.

Sander Berge left the fund last week – moving to Sheffield United kills his potential for me. This left me with a few pounds to invest and I went for a slightly left-field choice this time – Ivan Oblyakov. I’ve gone into him purely because I picked up some chatter on Twitter indicating that he might be the next big thing out of Russia. If there is any chance that he gets called up to the senior team, he’ll look good value at 70p.

The other funds have been treading water this week. The Premium fund saw a nice rise on Sancho, but this was balanced out by some small dips elsewhere, so only £33 up overall. Sancho is only a few pence away from taking back the crown of King of the Index, but I fully expect Neymar to pull away again when he returns to fitness.

The Performance fund is all over the place at the moment with some notable drops on the likes of Aouar, Arthur, Pjanic (again!) and Sabitzer. I’ve made the mistake of holding players too long in this fund and I’ve got 6 or 7 players who really aren’t on their PB game anymore. If I sell now, I’m potentially selling at the bottom, so I’m inclined to hold and see if I can get out on a good performance. This is probably ‘bad’ trading though as I’m sure I’d be better off selling them and reinvesting in players who are on the rise. Perhaps I’ll bite the bullet and list them all at least. I need to get over this attachment thing.

One I did sell was Orsolini. I really like him as a player but I just couldn’t justify holding him at that price with Bologna not having any European action coming up. He dipped a bit before he sold, so I probably wasn’t the only trader thinking that way.

It wasn’t all bad news though. Kostic got a huge rise and PB dividends on Friday night. His performance was outstanding – 2 goals and 2 assists demonstrating that he’s got more to his game than just crosses. He’s an absolute must-have for me. Uth also continued his rise with another assist, meaning that he’s had a goal or assist in every game since he joined Cologne – and he’s still only 75p!

The other big rises were on my new additions to the fund this week – Ocampos and Ekambi. I picked them out after trawling the fixture difficulty reports on IndexGain and spotting that they both looked great value for the next few weeks – and so far, that looks spot on!

That’s where things are now – oh and Cherki is dropping… You can visit the individual fund pages if you want to see exactly who I hold. Feedback and tips are always appreciated too.