Post dividend dip is common, usually in line with the amount of the dividend paid, so not a major secret, this applies to most companies.

On the flip, sometimes if you are trading not investing, it can sometimes pay to sell and take the capital gain pre-divi over the amount earned from the divi and buying lower after

I mainly invest for the long term, but occasionally I see a share that pops up and down, and up and down. I wait for a down and buy, then sell on the next up. It's worked so far.
I have read no books about investing and do minimal research. As I see it, if there was a formula, all those authors would be following that rather than scraping a living and boring your t1ts off writing about it.

I try to think about what makes people tick, what we use every day and I look for companies that seem to understand and deliver what their customers like. I read loads of stuff (not investment related) and try to pay attention to what's going on in the world. I also look for companies with what is described as a moat. Sage is a classic example of this. I think their products are pretty crap, but as an SME try getting your books run on anything else. They also own one of the biggest online payment systems.

An example of trends is online retail. Have a look at where Amazon is heading, and Alibaba. I can't envisage us loosing our desire for online shopping anytime soon.

The ISA route makes a lot of sense. I too use this for pension, but the rules have recently changed and I believe some of the negatives attached to pension investments have lifted, and they are again worth a punt. It spreads the risk somewhat.

I'd agree that getting mortgage free is a priority. That's security if the poo hits the fan. And once the mortgage is finished you can divert what was going to the bank into your own kitty.

Good luck with it, and enjoy the ride, it'll be a roller coaster.

Can you elaborate about mining, I never looked into it in depth but my impression was that while its was profitable at the start these days it would barely pay electricity bill.

Quite the contrary. That may have been true at one time, and still is true (in most cases) for CPU mining but ASIC and GPU mining are very profitable right now.

Cryptocurrencies and mining are a vast subject. I wouldn't want to hijack your thread by going off on a tangent, but I'm happy to share any info. It would probably be best to start a new thread to discuss it properly.

But briefly, as a comparison ...

I own an (ASIC) Antminer S9. Cost was about £1800, inc PSU:

Running cost is about £120 per month and it makes about £350 per month. So ROI is ok, but not great. However, it's relatively plug and play, low maintenance, compact and it's an easily scaleable solution, hence the popularity of ASICs in some mining farms:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxeF6364M-8

However, mining with the right graphics cards is more profitable:

A rig containing 6 AMD RX 480 GPUs costs about the same as an Antminer S9. However, it will make more like £550-£600 per month and costs less to run (approx £80 per month). You may notice that most of the better AMD graphics cards are sold out -- that's no coincidence. Presently the Nvidia 1080Ti is about the best available. It's more expensive than the 480 cards, but it mines at about twice the rate.

GPU mining is also more flexible than ASIC mining in that it's possible to run different algorithms to mine different currencies. A lot of the larger mining farms now use GPUs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd25gifGXVQ

Bear in mind also, that the depreciation of high-end graphics is very low and you can eliminate electricity costs if you invest in solar and/or can make use of the by-product (heat).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjP5ekChJJ0

Very interesting, I will start another thread about cryptocurrencies.

Another thing I have noticed is that often price jumps up at the very start of trading day at 8am and then falls off in couple of minutes. The problem is on makets.com I cannot buy or sell until about 08:05 so miss this price hike. Maybe I should look at alternate platforms.

Please do start a thread about cryptocurrencies +++ I had no idea it was still lucrative, or even that there were any other than Bitcoin.

If anybody is interested Ethereum dropped like 25% at one point on Monday so I bought some of it, let's hope it will raise again. If it just keep dropping I will be buying more and more of it.

I've moved this thread to "IT AV and other Tech" as it sits better here +++