It’s 6 weeks since I called ‘time’ on the 3 funds challenge so I thought I’d do a quick blog post on what happened next and how COVID-19 has affected my portfolio.

At some stage I’ll do a proper ‘lessons learnt’ blog but the most obvious lesson from all of this is that holding a few Premium players is a good way to manage risk. Yes, I cursed them in nearly every weekly blog this year because they weren’t rising as fast as the other funds but my god they’ve saved my ass during the last few weeks!

Right before everything ground to a halt, I did all I could to get a bit of money out of the platform but only managed to get about £1,000 out in the end as no one was buying and spreads were widening. Just before that, I sold De Bruyne and put the money into Fernandes, sensing that this would bring me a flow of dividends for a few weeks. And then that was it – all I’ve done since them is sit tight.

So how good have the Premiums been for me?

In the table above, ‘weekly profit’ actually means ‘profit since everything went to shit’.

As you can see, buying Fernandes was a good move to keep things ticking over, although his MB appeal has more than been matched by Sancho and Kane. Neymar and Mbappe have done me proud too. All in all, the Premiums have brought in about £950 in around 6 weeks, almost doubling their yield for the season. The daily trickle of dividends has helped to keep my interest in the platform too, and I’m sure is the key reason that FI is still attracting new traders at the moment (a huge edge on traditional bookies).

Who else did well? The Potential fund (youngsters and players from non-PB leagues) has ticked over fairly nicely too.

No dividends to speak of but plenty of these players have seen their prices gradually edging up. In a way, things haven’t changed massively for this fund as no one buys these players expecting to win dividends anytime soon. I guess the likelihood of a flat transfer window this summer could give some of the young players a boost if it gives them a bit more chance of breaking through into their first teams.

So, without any football, this fund is still up £307 in the period.

What about the Performance fund? This was the fund I was most worried about, especially as I’d invested heavily in some players ahead of a good run of fixtures.

Unsurprisingly, it’s been a bit more of a struggle for some of these players as they lose value as the weeks go by without any football being played. Despite that, on the whole, the prices have held up pretty well and the fund as a whole has still managed to turn a £140 profit over the period. Having ‘man of the moment’ Serge Gnabry in the fund has certainly helped.

In total, that means I’m up by around £1,400 since COVID-19 launched a wrecking ball through the season – that’s about 10% profit in 6 weeks. To put that in perspective, the company I work for holds some funds in an investment portfolio which has dropped by 10% in the same period. Crazy.

Yes, I’m sure there will be a bit of market correction to come for a few individual players but the general trend of the Index continues to be upwards, seemingly regardless of what’s going on in the wider world.

What’s really interesting to me is the number of new followers I’ve picked up on Twitter over the last few weeks – at least 2 or 3 every day and that’s without really being active at all. It looks as though the Index has attracted a lot of new traders as people become frustrated with the lack of other gambling opportunities (Belarusian Premier League anyone?). I’m also pretty sure that there are a lot of older traders, like myself, who are holding back some cash for when football returns.

Put these two things together and I think we could see some genuinely jaw-dropping growth in a few weeks time…