This will be a new weekly feature. A few readers have asked what I would do if I was starting the season fresh. For newer traders, it can be a bit nerve wracking coming in at a time when so many players have increased so much.

But as I said in my recent strategy series I still believe we are relatively early in the rise of the Football Index. If you put in the time to learn and do your research it is very possible to make big gains when starting from a blank page.

Therefore, I’m challenging myself to start fresh with a bankroll of £1,000 starting on day one of the new season.

Let’s see how I get on when facing the same challenges that a new trader would. I won’t have any help from the recent bonus or the benefit of being able to work months ahead of the market. We’ll get there eventually, but we all have to start somewhere.

I think this will be interesting to track throughout the season. How will I do starting from scratch vs my existing portfolio? It will also show the weekly thought process and decision making around buying, selling and managing your bankroll well.

As I obviously have an existing portfolio, I will not make these exact trades but they will be tracked realistically. I will also own every player on this list for real so the picks will get my full attention.

As I always say though, don’t blindly follow any picks you see from others including mine. Do your own research and if you see what I see, great, but you have to know why you have bought the player and be happy with it.

Starting from scratch, I’m not expecting huge and immediate gains in just a few weeks. I think the first few games will be very up and down and the market will be far from rationale. The goal is to setup a portfolio we have reason to believe in and then the gains will look after themselves in the months ahead.

£1K Strategy

Overall I am going for a relatively medium to long term hold strategy, targeting £1 to £5 players. The targets will be solid picks but still have scope for very impressive gains. As a new trader unfamiliar with the platform, I want to see strong and steady gains to boost my confidence. The last thing I’d want is high risk picks that can crash and burn and cause me to quit in frustration before I’ve even established myself as a trader.

I will not be going for the premium players at £7+. I think these are best suited to very large bankrolls as they are a good source of steady dividends but do not have as much scope for huge value increases.

I will be aiming for about 10 players in my portfolio. This is probably smaller than most people. It has some diversification but not too much.  With a limited bankroll of £1k, I do not want to spread myself too thin. I want to get paid handsomely when a player does well. I can do this because I am confident in my picks.

To warrant that confidence, I will need to do plenty of research and monitoring of the players fortunes and we’ll need a few hours per week for that at least. That is another reason why sticking to 10 works. It is easy to keep on top of them and with a decent chunk of cash in each, I want to know everything about them from playing position to what they had for breakfast.

I expect to be making perhaps 1-3 trades a week initially. It’s a portfolio for people who are happy to do research, look at stats and read match reports for at least a few hours each week. But you do not have to be monitoring news feeds 24/7.

I’ll be using a simple bankroll management plan. £100 for a big buy and £50 stakes for a smaller buy. This means I can’t lose more than 10% on any given trade (and in reality, more than 5%). I’ll buy as many shares as I can for that money and then round it to an even number. There is no reason to buy 20 shares if you can afford 21 but for some reason not having round numbers winds me up. So there’s a little insight for you into just how much of a nerd I am.

The 1K Challenge Portfolio

Bankroll remaining: £522.20

n Aguero, Alcantara, Tolisso, Milinkovic-Savic and Ramsey I have a solid spine of players who showed excellent stats last season and remain good value. Barring a significant change (see my first games survival article) I expect them to do well this season and get substantial price increases.

I will be sticky on these and it will take a lot to knock me off them. If they just have one poor game or misfortune and others start to sell, I won’t care and can easily ride this out.

This opens up our portfolio with a really solid collection of picks. Aguero has caught buying action recently but he has so much quality I think he is worth that price. The rest have risen recently but not as extensively as others for various reasons that don’t matter to our long term strategy.

Ramsey for example has a knock and may not start the first game, but that is hardly a big deal and we get him for a 13p discount on his price just 5-6 days ago.

Alcantara I notice as I write is just picking up a link to Real. That would be all to the good, but I’m also happy with him at Bayern.

I will at some point add a couple of cheaper picks, ideally a couple of emerging talents that I spot in the new season.

I have chosen to leave a sizable chunk of my bankroll free because as a new trader, I think I will get better value out of emerging players rather than putting it all on known performers who have already been heavily bought.
I’ll update this every week with the buys, sells and decisions made and explain why I’ve done the things I’ve done.

It should be a fun challenge and hopefully people are going to find it entertaining and interesting to follow along