The first full week of October and its got off to a positive start, for my portfolio anyway. With the general market about flat as I type its pleasing to see the portfolio up in value today. I remain cautious on putting more money to work right now but there are some shares that I am close to topping up on.

I did buy into a company that I’ve had on my watchlist for the last few months first thing this morning, Eros International (EROS). EROS is a media and entertainment company based in India that commissions, produces and distributes, mostly Indian, films. It announced this morning that trading was going well and it plans to list on the Bombay Stock Exchange by the end of its financial year (ending March 2010). All this is positive news, I see EROS as being in growth sector, having aggressive plans to expand the business and the financial size to compete with other companies in the same sector. So on a current year PE of 7 and the Indian listing to bring in new investors I went long and bought 2000 shares at 195.6p.

I also trimmed my FTSE shorts shortly after the open, there may still be further downside but the US market held up well after the negative jobs report on Friday and so it seemed sensible to take some profit. I bought £2 per pt of the FTSE 100 short at 4981 and £0.5 per pt of the FTSE 250 short at 8940 to take a decent £449 profit. The rest stays for now but at the very least I will close them at breakeven.

After some large-ish falls last week its good to see a few risers today, topping the list is Dialight (DIA), up 11%, with some chunky trades going through and more large orders on the order book. I am sure its also being boosted by being bought again by the Naked Trader, Robbie Burns, who has a big private investor following. RCG Holdings (RCG) is up today, holding above its recent placing price - glad I didn’t panic sell there on Friday. Leisure & Gaming (LNG), Laird (LRD) and Unitech Corporate Parks (UCP) are also up today.

Hopefully the rest of the week can carry on in a similar way!