To keep reading sign up for an annual or monthly subscription here. If you're already a subscriber log in here.
Category: Quality Shares
Portfolio commentary: Rough and jumble
A disappointing performance from our Jumble Sale portfolio highlights the dangers of focusing on cheapness
There was one other Investability portfolio which I omitted to mention last week, the Jumble Sale portfolio, so here’s a quick update. It’s not really a portfolio anyway, in the same sense that the Atlantic and UK Quality Shares portfolios are – we set it up as an experiment to see if the there was any merit in the tactic of buying deeply unloved shares, without the same quality rigour that we apply elsewhere.
Invest-ability weekly 07/01/22: uncharted territory
A gentle end to 2021 has given way to a grisly start to 2022, and even good news is getting short shrift
For a while at the end of last year it looked like Santa would not arrive with his seasonal stash of investor bounty.
Free to read: the Invest-ability portfolios year-end review
How a focus on quality helped our portfolios beat the best managers in 2022
Having looked at private investors’ year-end reviews earlier this week, it’s time for me to review the two model … Read more
The Atlantic Portfolio sails along
Five companies delivered half of the performance of the US-UK portfolio - is it time to dump the laggards...or even the winners?
US indices had a great 2021, which meant that even the very best active managers found it hard to beat the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100. Encouragingly, the Atlantic portfolio came closest to doing so of the benchmarks we use, delivering a total return - ex costs- of 24.6% in the year, more than 2 percentage points better than Fundsmith Equity.
UK Quality Shares shine in a benign market
Invest-ability's UK-focused portfolio topped the table in a decent year for the FTSE
The FTSE 100 is best known for proving something of a perennial disappointment to its investors, certainly when compared to its more tech-heavy US counterparts. It lagged them again too this year by a mere ten percentage points, but with many of its constituents well into the green 2021 felt a lot better than many previous years.
Portfolio commentary: boring blue chips, please
Why I’ve taken a position in dull but worthy City of London Investment Trust
As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m going to begin building my Sipp with a few well-selected investment trusts – an instant portfolio if you like, hopefully bought at a discount to the underlying value of the assets in them.
Trusts in this report
Source: SharePad
A few readers also offered a few suggestions of trusts I could look at, among them Scottish Mortgage which at the time I wrote was trading at about 1,461p a share, an 8% premium to its net asset value (NAV). I’ve long liked Scottish Mortgage and would like to join my kids and many others in owning it, but as I said, the premium was too punchy for me given I reckon markets are looking pretty frothy.
Quality Shares Weekly: 17/12/21
Where to go stock hunting as rates rise, pubs’ pain, boohoo’s latest booboo, and Domino’s welcome delivery
After the week began with an eyewatering November inflation reading which showed CPI hitting 5.1%, the big news has been that the Bank of England shocked everyone once again by actually raising the benchmark interest rate by 15 basis points to 0.25%. After totally wrong-footing everyone in the previous month by not raising rates when universally expected, perhaps observers were simply taking a more cautious approach to predicting what the MPC might do next. Either way, lots of pundits remain unamaused by the Old Lady's antics.
Quality Shares Weekly 10/12/21
Markets can’t make up their mind about the latest Covid twist
The week began with a strong recovery from the recent market wobble as fears over the Omicrom variant looked like they could be overblown, only for indices to dip again as the week drew to a close as concern that the spread may be accelerating prompted the introduction of new restrictions.
Portfolio commentary: A blank canvas
My pension money has hit my Sipp – and the first step is to lay down some rules of engagement
It was a pleasant moment this week when a chunk of my pension turned … Read more