So when IS was withdrawn I decided to de-risk a little and sell around a quarter of my portfolio. I got pretty good prices for it, especially in the run up to the new divs announcement. Since then I've fluctuated a bit, selling off little chunks here and there, as well as putting some money in when I got a 10% deposit bonus.

Any way today is a historic day for me. My net deposits in FI are now zero. My entire portfolio is effectively profit from trading.

I know a lot of you think it's a bad time to sell and you've probably been gobbling up my shares. Fair play to you, however I'm now in a very comfortable place where, if this all goes wrong, I've not lost a penny, I really am just playing with paper profit.

Despite all the negativity right now I don't know any other platform I could have done this on so cheers FI.

First off, apologies this is a long post. It's also a bit rambling. If you can't be bothered to read it all, the main point is that the ME probably isn't as bad as I first feared, but it's still not for me. It's sufficiently not for me that I'm taking the majority of my money out of FI.

So about a month ago I said in a post that I felt the changes brought in with the ME had made FI a little too risky for my tastes. I also said I was looking to de-risk by selling about 75% of my portfolio over the next three months, essentially bringing it down from £16K to around £4K.

I've now had around 50% of my portfolio up for sale for around a month and I've been able to sell and withdraw £4.5K. So pretty much on track for a 75% reduction over 3 months. All of these sales have been to the Market, not via the Instant Sell option.

Obviously there are some players that just aren't shifting and I probably need to accept that I'm going to have to IS them at some stage. Probably after the selling side of order books gets introduced. However some players have proven to be pretty easy to sell at Market Value, although still harder than before.

I suppose the point of this post is just to share my experience in trying to shrink my particular portfolio (I appreciate that every portfolio is unique, mine was mainly focused on top and mid price players with very few bottom of the barrel punts) and take money out. It's not been great, but it's not been awful either, much like many things in life both the doomsayers and the boosters aren't correct and the middle ground is probably right in most instances. I would however say that 3 months seems about right to sell a portfolio of this size without taking a huge hit (although the introduction of Goal Keepers may throw a spanner in the works). Something that people now need to keep in mind when putting money in.

For me FI is too illiquid to have a large sum of money tied up in it. It's a shame as the withdrawals I've made now have my actual investment in FI at £2.5K, while my portfolio has a Market Value of £12K, so I've obviously done very nicely. Even recently, my return solely on dividends in the last 90 days is 2.28% (so 9.14& over a year). Way higher than I can get elsewhere, but I'm not in a position to be able to have £16K I need to give 3 months notice to be able to access. £5K is probably about the level I'm comfortable at. If the level of liquidity rises considerably with the introduction of sell orders I may look at reinvesting, although I'll be honest my confidence in the product as a whole has been shaken by the number of rapid changes we've experienced.

Take from this post what you will. To get me to reinvest of a larger scale I suppose I'd be looking for better stability in terms of the rules and better liquidity in terms of the ability to cash out. However I appreciate that these things may not accord with FI's business model and I may just have to accept that for me personally FI isn't for me anymore, although I will keep a small interest in it.

For those of you who stay the course, I'm sure you will be rewarded long term. All the best.

@Three-lions said in In play dividends return:

To be honest, I’m starting to think my money will be stuck in here forever ..... every time I re adjust to suit the newly moved goal posts ( and work out a new exit strategy ) they just move them again !

How long before we start to see people who are complaining about being stuck with IPD players being told by other users on this forum "It's your fault for making crap buys". It's impossible to know what's a good buy and what's a bad buy when the rules change so often and with such short notice.

Playing devil's advocate, here's an alternative view point.

Dele Ali only passed the ball 44 times last night. He completed 36 of them. So 1 in 5 times he had the ball he gave it away. Every time you give the ball away you give the opposition the chance to score. He's just lucky that they didn't make anything of all these blunders. He made 3 key passes so he's lucky his team mates were clinical and he got 2 assists.

Kroos on the other hand passed the ball 139 times, of those he completed 130 of them. So he only gave the opposition a chance less than 1 in 10 times he had the ball. More than twice as good as Ali. Of those passes 4 were key passes, so better than Ali, he's just unlucky his teammates didn't put those chances away.

So who would you prefer on your team, the player who gave it away less than half as often, was on the ball more than once per minute and actually created more goal scoring chances, or the player who gave it away twice as much was involved less than once every two minutes and relied on his teammates being clinical?

I think it's clear that FI massively underestimated the impact that the introduction of ME would have on liquidity and therefore also underestimated the amount of money that would need to be introduced via the market makers like LP1.

I'd even potentially argue that LP1 is harming liquidity as people are reluctant to accept bids via the ME when there is the chance of winning the LP1 lottery and having him pay full price for your players.

The whole problem is that the ME basically down valued all of the players, however the side of the site which shows you your value of your portfolio is basically still working using the old system. So people believe the value their players are worth the Market Value when realistically that's only obtainable in a very small number of cases.

The sooner FI update the way player values are displayed the better, at that point things might start moving again. Of course everyone will suddenly see their portfolios in the red and won't be happy with a 20 to 40% loss, but realistically you've already suffered that loss, it's just not displayed at the moment.

@NewUser7

Whilst all players can win a PB div, how realistic is it.

In the last 12 months around 500 players have won one or more PB div. That means around 2,900 players haven't.

Of the 500 who have won one or more 100 are guys who have won three or more, so they are the fairly predictable winners, so let's take them out of the equation. So outside of the top 100, 400 out of 3,400 players won between 1 or 2 PB divs in the last 12 months. In general there was almost certainly an element of luck to those wins.

That's odds of 1 in 8.5, let's call it 1 in 8 to be generous.

Now most of those PB wins were probably on bronze days, so that's 4p, but again let's be generous and say it was a silver day. So that's 8p.

So outside of the top 100 PB players you have a 1 in 8 chance of winning 8p a year. How much are you willing to pay for that? I'm guessing not a lot.

The vast majority of players have been rendered pretty much worthless by the removal of IPD and the introduction of this new div.

Now my port is almost entirely made up of PB players so this hasn't impacted me too much. But what FI have demonstrated is that they are willing to change the game at minimal notice and render vast swathes of the market pointless, while screwing over many people's trading strategy. It's that type of uncertainty that is preventing people putting in more money and is suppressing prices. I'm still willing to gamble on my players, but I want a much better yield than before because, in addition to the inherent risks that come with buying footballers (loss of form, transfers, injury etc) I've got the added risk of FI just screwing me.

The change is what it is, but let's not pretend that FI have done anything other than disenfranchise a massive part of it's user base. Some of those people will grit their teeth and try to adjust their trading strategy (good luck selling those worthless IPD players), but many more will just give up. They won't put any more money in, they'll withdraw whenever they finally manage to sell and they'll almost certainly warn off any of their mates who might be thinking of getting involved.

It's going to take a long time to undo the damage done in the last 9 months.

@dannypea

They made a few announcements on one post, so it's not always clear which part of the announcement people are responding negatively too, however I think the negative responses fall into a few categories:

IPO's - There is only a finite amount of money people are willing to put into FI. So the more players on the index the thinner that money is spread. I think some people are justifiably worried that adding more players at this time is just going to reduce the value are current players. This is a difficult one as they've held off doing IPO's for a long time and the market is getting out of date. Pre-Christmas when money is tight is probably not the best time to do it but they have to do it at some point. I think they need to do it but i think the people with concerns have valid points.

Deadline extension - There's no real downside to this for traders as far as I can see, but it's basically a money making exercise for FI. The shares are just being traded from one player to another, so their dividend liability stays the same but they get the extra commission. I don't see anything wrong with this but I think some traders, who justifiably feel burned by FI at the moment just see this as another example of FI milking traders for every penny.

People were expecting a bigger announcement- Some people are disliking this as they were expecting a bigger announcement from FI, maybe some sort of big Christmas promo to try and reward traders who have stuck with FI through a very rocky period. When they didn't get this they responded by disliking the announcement that was made.

General Sentiment - People are unhappy with FI at the moment, they are going to find flaws with any announcement they made.

There are definitely cycles but the current issue is pretty much unprecedented. That's because it's caused by a combination of factors rather than one single factor. These are:

1. Covid-19 - Nothing FI could have done about this and I think they handled it well. The temporary removal of IS kept money in the platform and protected the value of people's portfolios. Yes it sucked if you needed to get your money out but I don't know what else FI could have done here. However the knock on effects of Covid-19 are still being felt. Firstly there are people who have wanted to withdraw for three months who are still trying to do so, secondly a lot of people are struggling financially, which means less new money coming in. On its own this would have seen a drop in values.

2. The removal of IS and the poor implementation of the ME - FI switched from a temporary removal of IS to a permanent one. This lead to a loss in confidence for many traders who felt the goal posts had been moved. I cashed in about 25% of my portfolio and I did intend to cash in more over the next few months but will probably hold for a little longer. What I won't be doing however is putting any new money into the platform. FI were always pretty clear that IS would always be an option and I feel like they breached my trust. If they can make this change what other changes could they make? A lot of people will feel I'm over reacting but this is a personal thing and I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt this way. Could FI have handled this better? I would say yes, while the removal of IS was not doubt necessary for them as far as their business plan it wasn't communicated well. This must have been planned for a long time and could have been far better communicated.

3. High expectations on the new Dividend Structure - Some people thought the new dividend structure was going to see massive increases to the pay outs. As a result certain players sky rocketed. They are then retracting due to people's expectations not being fulfilled. Unfortunately, if you bought during this short boom you were going to lose money regardless as to what else was going on. This isn't completely FI's fault, you could argue they over hyped the new structure, leading people to jump to these conclusions. Personally I wasn't expecting much in the way of an increase so I didn't buy into it but I sympathise with those who did.

4. The introduction of a new player category. FI introduced goal keeper dividends. This saw a lot of new players essentially become targets for purchasing, unless new money comes into the system this is going to see other players drop as funds get spread over more targets. Unfortunately, due to the other factors listed above, there was unlikely to be sufficient new money to mitigate this. Could FI have handled this better, I would say yes, I don't think this was the appropriate time to introduce GK's. There was too much else going on. The GK's should have been announced in advance to allow a slower pile on and it should have been done during a boom time when new money was coming in, ideally in conjunction with an offer for new money put in and spent on GK's.

So it's been a quadruple whammy and that's lead to the current situation. One of these was unavoidable, two are definitely FI's fault and one is slightly FI's fault. In the face of all the above factors the introduction of liquidity providers is a drop in the ocean.

They'll be several stages to the recovery.

1. People who are disgruntled get their money out. Once they've gone they've gone and the that's that. Unfortunately, due to the lack of liquidity this may take a while. Also, due to the falls, there may be more people joining this group. I'd guess 6 months for this to completely shakedown, but the major impact will probably be done in 3.

2. The new season starts. This will likely lead to new money coming in, especially if it happens in conjunction with an offer and new advertising.

3. Covid-19 is sorted, people can start going to games again and interest in football picks up in general. No idea how long this will take.

4. The economy recovers from Covid and people have more money. This will be a slow process, for some people it will be happening already as they are unfurloughed and back at work. For some it may be 12 months or so, for my industry probably about 3 years. However this isn't just something that is going to impact FI.

5. FI intervene - No idea when this may happen or how effective it will be.

So, I would expect drops for at least a few more weeks, followed by a leveling off, a decent bump at the start of the new season and a slow but stead rise over the next 12 months. Realistically though if you bought in at the height of the pre announcement boom I reckon it's at least 12 months before you see a full recovery.

A lot of the above is speculation so I could be completely wrong. Just my thoughts though.

@Stevo

Increased liquidity helps by reducing risk. A reduced risk means you can buy at a lower yield. If income from dividends stays the same then a lower yield means a higher price.

So as an example; when IS existed people may have felt that this was relatively low risk and may have been happy to achieve a yield of around 5% to 7.5%, So a player who returned a yield of £1 in a year could be worth around £13 to £20.

With the removal of IS the risk of not being able to get out of a player had increased, so people would want a higher yield to compensate for the increased risk. If people now want a yield of say 15% to 20% that player is now worth £5 to £6.66.

However as prices fall and liquidity drops people might be revising that yield upwards even more as the risk continues to grow. That 15 to 20% now becomes 25%. So that same player is only worth £4.

If liquidity improves then risk decreases and as a result required yields drop and that player's value goes back up.

I think the reason not much trading is happening is because people want the best value, both when buying and selling. I'm as guilty of this as anyone.

I've got loads of players listed for sale, but they are all listed at Market Value, I'm not selling any using the Instant Sale option as I'm in no rush. Equally, I have some bids in for a few players I want to top up on, guess what I'm bidding below MV for them.

If pretty much everyone is taking this approach, only wanting to sell at MV and only wanting to buy at less than MV you're going to get a stagnant market. The market needs to shift either to a buyers market, with sellers realising that in the majority of cases they can't get MV any more, or a sellers market with buyers getting fed up with chasing bargains that aren't there in a lot of cases and paying MV or very close to it for players.

Not sure what will trigger the shift and as someone who is selling more than they are buying I hope it's a shift to a sellers market, but until the shift happens I think this is going to continue.

Congrats, amazing returns, especially seeing as you've only been here two years, so missed a lot of the easy money from CA.

Yep all the time. I think my biggest hit was before the withdrawal of IS and it was on Daniel James, bought at the peak and sold at a loss to put the money into players I felt had better chances of growth or returning dividends.

Sometimes you just have to accept you made a bad buy, yes the player might eventually recover and let you break even, but in the meantime, if you'd spent that money elsewhere you might have returned double or more.

De Ligt

Still only 21, he's an established player for Juve and the Netherlands so not a punt like a lot of young players . Has an average PB score of 115 over the last 6 months (3rd best for defenders under 21 with 10 or more games in the last 6 months).

In relatively poor form at the moment so his price has slipped quite a bit, will probably surge if he gets a PB win. Slightly over budget at around 75p. Big enough name that he has the potential to take an MB win if there are transfer rumours or if he does something spectacular in the Champions League.

@TeamGB

To be clear, I don't think they've burnt through most of it. But I don't think they have enough to put IS back in as they just don't have enough on the balance sheet to cover off the liability.

Without IS I think they are just fine and still have large reserves.

@NewUser120946

Yeah the removal of IPD's and the replacement with MDE is an odd one. I get that IPD's weren't sustainable as the price drops meant the commission on refreshing wasn't coming anywhere close to covering the payouts. But IPD's did cause trading and I felt they could have been kept with some tweaks (for example minimum commission of 5p, 5 game eligibility instead of 30 days to avoid situations where people have 7 or 8 games in a period, tweaking the payouts etc). MDE's are a nice little bonus but they don't encourage me to sell and buy.

I can only assume the FI feel that the natural churn, caused by players coming in and out of form is sufficient to drive trading. It used to be before IPD's, but obviously that was in the days of IS when it was easy to sell a player who you were no longer interested in. Whether natural churn remains sufficient without IS remains to be seen, my view is that it isn't because if people can't get out of holds they can't reinvest.

I'll happily keep the majority of my port for months on end right now. That's not generating anything for FI.

I suspect they can't put IS back as they've spent the money.

IS was a liability on their balance sheet. When they removed it that balance sheet suddenly looked a lot healthier as suddenly they had a large cash reserve which wasn't offset by a large debt.

However since then, with the increased div payouts, the market crash leading to less minting of new shares and the decrease in prices and trading volume leading to less commission they've been operating at a loss. That's eaten into a large chunk of that cash they freed up.

If they put IS back in now there will be a lot of people cashing out. I don't believe FI have the money to fund that any more.

@Mintyfresh

Yep, they are giving FI a good reason to screw people over. Turkeys voting for Christmas.

Any substantial changes to the matrix will see even more people leave, especially if it is done on short notice. The only way many people will tolerate it is if they give plenty of notice, say 12 months.

I think the most baffling thing to me is the fact that people are complaining that the same players keep on winning dividends. That's a good thing as it makes predicting the winners easier. Weighting the matrix on goals will add a lot more randomness, with the end result that it will be a lot harder to win. The only people who benefit from that are FI.

So you have people on here advocating for a change that only benefit FI to the detriment of users. These are probably the same people who wanted IPD's scrapped, thought the 2% purchase tax would encourage market buys and probably thought scrapping IS was a great thing.

Playing devil's advocate, here's an alternative view point.

Dele Ali only passed the ball 44 times last night. He completed 36 of them. So 1 in 5 times he had the ball he gave it away. Every time you give the ball away you give the opposition the chance to score. He's just lucky that they didn't make anything of all these blunders. He made 3 key passes so he's lucky his team mates were clinical and he got 2 assists.

Kroos on the other hand passed the ball 139 times, of those he completed 130 of them. So he only gave the opposition a chance less than 1 in 10 times he had the ball. More than twice as good as Ali. Of those passes 4 were key passes, so better than Ali, he's just unlucky his teammates didn't put those chances away.

So who would you prefer on your team, the player who gave it away less than half as often, was on the ball more than once per minute and actually created more goal scoring chances, or the player who gave it away twice as much was involved less than once every two minutes and relied on his teammates being clinical?

@NewUser644159

You do understand that if the points system was changed to benefit different players then those players would be the expensive once, so you wouldn't be able to afford them. Or do you want it changing to only benefit the players you've already purchased?