Part time contracts how to find

[northernladuk]

The plan B is actually just fundamental investing in small UK shares. Over the past 6 months I have spent many hours taking a close look at the accounts, presentations, analyst reports, and social media opinion of about 100 small UK companies, looking for signs that many other investors are prejudiced against them. These form the best investments because almost regardless of the underlying quality of the company, those investors in due course are going to be surprised to find the company doing better than they expect (as a result of their prejudice), resulting in a rise in the share price.
In the case of small UK listed companies most of the other investors are private individuals - baby boomers, many of whom are racist, nationalist, and sexist - and in general prejudiced against British companies (which have historically underperformed in recent years).

I've invested half of my warchest (the other half in index funds), and am up over 50% in the past 12 months, which is a greater return than I can expect to get from doing contracts.
Of course it is risky because share prices can fall in the interim, but ultimately the value of the companies will be reflected in dividends and buybacks paid to investors by the companies such that the share prices won't matter.

In case you're interested, here are the companies I've identified (the first three of which still have further to rise in my opinion):


Pantheon Resources: A market cap of £750 million, but owns a 3-billion barrel oil field in Alaska that is worth £6 billion. Initial investment in Nov 2020 up 400%.
Cause of prejudice: racism against its American directors. Bad company name (should be "Pantheon Energy"). Oil seen (in error) as being replaced by renewables.

Plus500: Financial bookmakers. A market cap of £1.5 billion, with £700 net cash and net profits of £300 million/year and expanding. Initial investment up 25% in 7 months.
Cause of prejudice: Israeli directors (antisemitism).

Southern Energy: Canadian company owning low cost oil wells in Mississippi. Initial investment up over 100% in 3 months.
Cause of prejudice: Confusion with the similarly named Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), resulting in being overlooked. Racism (American owners). Oil seen (in error) as being replaced by renewables.

i3 Energy: Canadian oil company. Initial investment up over 100% in 5 months.
Cause of prejudice: Islamophobia (Islamic directors). Oil seen (in error) as being replaced by renewables.

Aviva (insurance): Initial investment up 75% in two years.
Cause of prejudice: Sexism (new female CEO). Seen as a boring company.

RSE: Private equity oil company. Initial investment 100% on the lows seen a few months after Covid.
Cause of prejudice: Oil seen (in error) as being replaced by renewables.


Many people discuss these companies on chat boards such as lse.co.uk and advfn.com and reading these whilst armed with a good understanding of the company can allow you to pick up on investors mistakes and misapprehensions as a cause of mis-pricing.

To be fair though, and no disrespect to you, ignoring the last 2 or 3 months of looming recession it's been pretty difficult to find a company that isn't rising hard after covid. The FTSE index which isn't a great mover has gone up for 5200 to 7500 in the last 2 years. Picking 100% growth wasn't that hard.

You've posted enough on here so I'm 100% you know what you doing, the situation we are in and the challenges but listing those stocks in those timeframes I don't think is a realistic picture of the exercise overall if you get me. Just for the sake of newbies looking at it and taking it at face value I mean.

You've picked some belters there for sure but I'd question your figures on Aviva and Southern Energy as well. Aviva 2 years ago was 300 at its very lowest just over 2 years ago and is now 400 and heading south so no longer 75%. SE was .6 now .78 so nowhere near 100% anymore.

Just being a pedant for others reading this as it's not quite as rosy as that list says. Impressive portfolio without a doubt but just adding a dose of realism to any giddy kippers thinking it's easy.

[GregRickshaw]

Quite a few consultancy firms offer an Associate programme these days. I often pick up a few days here and there, they generally send out emails when they are bidding for new projects and possibly need a few days expertise with the bid or days on site.

[GJABS]

To be fair though, and no disrespect to you, ignoring the last 2 or 3 months of looming recession it's been pretty difficult to find a company that isn't rising hard after covid. The FTSE index which isn't a great mover has gone up for 5200 to 7500 in the last 2 years. Picking 100% growth wasn't that hard.

You've posted enough on here so I'm 100% you know what you doing, the situation we are in and the challenges but listing those stocks in those timeframes I don't think is a realistic picture of the exercise overall if you get me. Just for the sake of newbies looking at it and taking it at face value I mean.

You've picked some belters there for sure but I'd question your figures on Aviva and Southern Energy as well. Aviva 2 years ago was 300 at its very lowest just over 2 years ago and is now 400 and heading south so no longer 75%. SE was .6 now .78 so nowhere near 100% anymore.

Just being a pedant for others reading this as it's not quite as rosy as that list says. Impressive portfolio without a doubt but just adding a dose of realism to any giddy kippers thinking it's easy.

I knew they'd be someone who'd check my figures OK I'll fess up that the above is a copy-paste job from a forum post I made 6 weeks ago, just before they put interest rates up and said there might be a recession (since then my main two investments Pantheon Resources and Southern Energy have both declined by a fair amount).

But you're right that markets overall had risen, and that does account for some of the growth I've seen. The question is whether the time I've spent on investment research has created more value than I could have generated through contracting, and I believe the answer (despite the recent falls, and the short period of time I've been invested) is yes.

What you say about newbies is worth repeating: If you are new to stock market investing, be careful and only invest small sums. The stock market has the uncanny ability to home in on your every psychological weakness and use it to winkle out every penny it can from you - indeed my thesis for my own investing methods is to understand where other investors' weaknesses are causing them to lose money, and be situated on the other side of their trades.
If you don't know what you are doing, invest in index funds, and don't try and trade in and out of them.
The sort of investment research I have been doing has been in depth. It is not an "easy" way to make money as it requires a lot of work (but it is interesting).

Anyway I don't want to let the thread drift over to trading/investing, as it is about the part time contracting - which is important because that is how I'm hoping to keep my skills current in case it all goes to pot!

[GJABS]

Quite a few consultancy firms offer an Associate programme these days. I often pick up a few days here and there, they generally send out emails when they are bidding for new projects and possibly need a few days expertise with the bid or days on site.

Interesting. Do you have any links please?

[northernladuk]

I knew they'd be someone who'd check my figures OK

You should have known it would be me. I can't let a post fully of happiness and success go without a mauling

[GJABS]

Reading the other thread about "Overemployment", ironically about doing double the work rather than half of it, an idea did occur to me. One thing a wanna-be part time contractor could do is to take on a full-time 5-days a week contract with work-from-home, and farm out some of the work to another contractor, thus reducing his/her own work to part time.
I suspect this probably wouldn't work too well though, due to vetting and GDPR issues with letting the other contractor have access to client code and data without permission. I just thought I'd mention it as an thought.

[northernladuk]

Reading the other thread about "Overemployment", ironically about doing double the work rather than half of it, an idea did occur to me. One thing a wanna-be part time contractor could do is to take on a full-time 5-days a week contract with work-from-home, and farm out some of the work to another contractor, thus reducing his/her own work to part time.
I suspect this probably wouldn't work too well though, due to vetting and GDPR issues with letting the other contractor have access to client code and data without permission. I just thought I'd mention it as an thought.

Highly unlikely for the same reasons and more mentioned in that thread. The biggest one crops up in the last few posts, the client expectations. A vast majority of clients don't expect or will be happy with that. Farming off roles has been the pipedream of many a new contractor for a very long time. It's not new but the WFH does provide the opportunity, only because the client can't see though.

[GJABS]

Highly unlikely for the same reasons and more mentioned in that thread. The biggest one crops up in the last few posts, the client expectations. A vast majority of clients don't expect or will be happy with that. Farming off roles has been the pipedream of many a new contractor for a very long time. It's not new but the WFH does provide the opportunity, only because the client can't see though.

Agreed, and likely to add more stress, so negating any benefit of a reduction in workload.

[mudskipper]

Can you do a bit of .Net (old style webforms) as well as SQL?

[eek]

Can you do a bit of .Net (old style webforms) as well as SQL?

You really are looking at retiring ASAP aren't you...