One-off Challenge 11: Invest £40 and try to make a profit

We now return to our normal, challenging programming.

This challenge is courtesy of...

Andy Law.
 
The challenge

Invest £40 and try to make a profit.
OK, full disclosure, I think the challenge as originally suggested was "invest £40 in stocks and shares and try to make a profit" but the version that made it onto the list was "invest £40 and try to make a profit", so that's the version we're going with.
One ground rule.  As the challenge got a little garbled in the listing, I could, technically, just put £40 into an ISA and wait for the interest payment. Obviously, that's not in the spirit of the thing.  So any profit has to be uncertain for this to count.


My first thought was to try my hand at app based day trading, as favoured by Donna. However, pretty much the first thing you see is a giant warning that states "80% of retail investors lose money trading on these instruments", which is... not encouraging. I don't mind spending some money on my challenges if I get a thing out of it, or a fun experience, or, at the very least, a chunk of cash to good causes (cf: the scratchcard debacle). This is just giving money to stockbrokers, a group of people not renowned for needing extra cash in the first place. Secondly, the minimum investment is £100, which observant readers will note is slightly more than £40. Combine that with the distinct possibility of losing everything and this option is out.

Then I considered doing some actual investment in some sort of shares, but transaction fees and the (admittedly less than day trading) possibility of losing significant amounts of cash, coupled with the sheer hassle of actually, you know, thinking about and choosing an investment ruled this one out, too.

So what option does a man with extremely low risk tolerance do for a non-guaranteed return on investment coupled with little to no risk to seed capital?

Fortunately, ERNIE had me covered.

For those not well versed in poor quality British acronyms from the 1960s, ERNIE is the Electronic Random Number Indicating Equipment (no, really, that was the best they could do). ERNIE (or rather, ERNIE 4) picks the winning numbers from the Premium Bonds draw. There's no guarantee that you'll ever win anything, so they fulfil my "uncertainty" requirement. Plus, there's no capital risk! Win!

Of course, there's the minor side effect that I'll have to wait until April to see if I actually make a profit.  Oh well.

Challenge... to be continued!
  
Will I be doing it again?

Probably not. Unless I win a vast amount of money on the Premium Bonds, in which case I might employ someone to invest for me!
 
Long-term updates

French words "learned" (according to the memrise app):733.
Daily photos taken? Yes.
Swordfighting learnt: Still haven't been back.  Bad swordfighters, bad!
I am currently reading: Still reading Daggerspell, although I've kind of lost it...
"Cheat" days on food since last week: None.
"Cheat" days on exercise: ALL THE DAYS!
My favourite #Inktober drawing:
I knew we should have turned left at Albuquerque.

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