Reminiscing on a good trading year so far

Monday, 26th October 2009 12:26 - by Boredmum

Well, this year’s trading has certainly been better than last. I have been keeping a rough guide of my share transactions for profit and loss, but felt that the time had now come to ensure I was more accurate for that old devil Capital Gains Tax (CGT). It seems there is an online calculator that should hopefully work everything out for you. However, you do need to input all data on to a spreadsheet; date, buy or sell, company, amount of shares, share price, cost and tax. Now, the benefit of the capital gains calculator is that it will take into account rules for averages in the same company, as well as 30-day rulings, etc. At least I believe that is how it should all work. I was inputting data from April 6th 2009 and as I was doing so I was thinking; ‘Oh that has doubled since then’, ‘Wow…that one has tripled in price’. At first I was thinking ‘If only...’, but then I realised my lowest point financially in the markets was January 2009. Since then I have tripled, actually almost quadrupled, my funds. That is when it actually hit home that it didn’t matter about the ones I had missed out on. As I don’t have endless funds, I usually have to come out of a share if I want to buy a new one. I wouldn’t have had the finance to stay in all of these shares, so of course there would always be shares that ‘got away’. I could have just sat in a few selective shares and it’s possible the result would not have been as good. It just goes to show you, it doesn’t matter how you do it, you can stay in a few select shares and make thousands of pounds from them or you can go in and out several times a week for much smaller amounts. Of course, it is more work but if you have the time and the results are the same then what does it matter? At least now I may stop thinking about the ‘ones that got away’.