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[Lomcovaks]

Hello to everyone and investment tail winds to us all!

I'm based in London, UK and found the forum via some of Vic's postings on Google finance and I'd like to say a special thanks to him for his postings there and their tempered, yet enthusiastic nature.

I've dabbled in stocks for over twenty years without any stellar successes but I'm very much a 'buy and hold' investor and truth be told, I've probably suffered from not taking profits on many occassions.

However, recent market conditions coupled with personal misfortune placed me in the unaccostomed position of having far too much money and not knowing what to do with it. My wife died very unexpectedly late last year and her employers gave me a very generous 'death in service' payment benefit.

This coincided with the March lows in the market and I took the plunge and invested the majority of the monies in an investment bond via an IFA with a global spread and kept a significant chunk as my personal 'pot' to play with.

A combination of timing and fortunate stock selection has seen gains of over 27% in the last month on my own portfolio. My biggest gainer has been Fenner (FENR), which I picked up at 40p, closely followed by Coal of Africa (CZA) at 37p.

My biggest regret? Not buying into Aurora Russia (AURR) at 10p just before the directors started buying as it's recently hit 27p. The company invests in 5 private Russian companies, most of which are leaders in their field and the market had priced AURR as though all five would go bust, which was plainly crazy.

Biggest gamble? My medium term punt on India Capital Growth (IGC) an AIM listed closed end company that invests in unlisted and very small Indian companies. I was completely screwed by market makers with a spread wider than the grand canyon, but I bit the bullet and took a 400 pound hit on a 5k investment as my gut feeling is that the Indian economy is set to outperform. I had a five year view on these but within the month I'm seeing a modest 500 pound gain on my punt.

[DanB]

Hey Lomcovaks,

Welcome to the forums, great to have some experience on the team.

Enjoy.... XD