Share growth so far this year

[Dod101]

My portfolio has held up well, still within 1% of its all time highs.
I had a good proportion in the right investments but they might have done well for the wrong reasons, so I don't know if I was skilful or lucky.

Essentially last autumn I built up a very large weighting in precious metals and their miners, plus a moderate cash reserve because I was concerned that central banks would struggle with inflation and risk crashing markets and causing a deep recession if they raised rates by more than token gesture amounts.
I was preparing for stagflation and I was expecting things to take a turn for the worse on or before the FOMC March meeting when a rate rise and possible QT was telegraphed as likely, with the taper tantrum of a few years ago giving an idea of what to expect if the Fed tried it again.

But instead of central banks and their actions/inaction causing financial instability and an inflation problem, we have the Ukraine invasion which seems to have caused much the same set of problems.

This week, for the first time in a while FTSE began to take my interest for topping up. P/E 14.5x, yield 2.8%, cover 2.5x. That's not at all expensive, especially considering the very low yields available on bonds or cash.
I'm not yet enthusiastic enough to deploy my cash reserve (8% of portfolio) or switch out of precious metals (36% of portfolio) but I'm now watching closely.

I assume for the purposes of comparison you are excluding your cash reserve and precious metals from your portfolio results? If so you are doing well.

Dod

[simoan]

The US market (Vanguard's VUSA S&P500) seems to have hardly noticed events unfolding in other parts of the World).

If you look more closely you'll find it is mainly UK, Europe and Emerging Markets that have been hit. Japan, Pacific and US equities have hardly been effected. My US holdings are down 0.1% on the week but this includes exposure to Uranium and Fertiliser stocks. Fixed interest has held up well too, with no real movement in the small amount of Prefs I still hold.

I don't normally look at performance over a week but FWIW I have just looked at my spreadsheet for 27th Feb on MS Backup. I am down 2.5% this week but now beating the FTSE All Share for the first time this year. However, a really strange thing happened the previous week; I invested in gold for the first time ever by buying iShares physical gold ETC. That was up 5% last week. Even Fundsmith was up last week, that must be the first time for a while

All the best, Si

[BT63]

I assume for the purposes of comparison you are excluding your cash reserve and precious metals from your portfolio results? If so you are doing well.
Dod

In 2022 so far, only including the shares-based investments, portfolio is -3%.

As mentioned in previous postings, I try to run a more stable portfolio for good quality sleep at night when things get rough.

Once markets hit bottom and tech/cyclical/high-beta shares take the lead my portfolio will probably lag.
However, if markets go low enough I will use borrowings to purchase additional shares which can flatter the performance even when holding slower-moving shares.
The last time I did that was around 2009 and I had paid back all the borrowings by about 2014.

[Dod101]

I assume for the purposes of comparison you are excluding your cash reserve and precious metals from your portfolio results? If so you are doing well.
Dod

In 2022 so far, only including the shares-based investments, portfolio is -3%.

As mentioned in previous postings, I try to run a more stable portfolio for good quality sleep at night when things get rough.

Once markets hit bottom and tech/cyclical/high-beta shares take the lead my portfolio will probably lag.
However, if markets go low enough I will use borrowings to purchase additional shares which can flatter the performance even when holding slower-moving shares.
The last time I did that was around 2009 and I had paid back all the borrowings by about 2014.

By my standards you are doing very well. From 31 December closing until last evening I am down 8.6%. I have 30 shares of which about 20 are more or less income shares, the rest being growth. I live off the income because I have no pension.

Dod

[BT63]

By my standards you are doing very well. From 31 December closing until last evening I am down 8.6%. I have 30 shares of which about 20 are more or less income shares, the rest being growth. I live off the income because I have no pension.
Dod

My end of year 2021 portfolio topic is below, portfolio is essentially unchanged since, although (as I said I might at the time) I used some of the cash to add a few more PM miners on weakness and took profits on them last week, putting the proceeds back into the cash reserve:

viewtopic.php?f=56&t=32684

[Arborbridge]

My income IT basket is down by 6% on the previous Friday, and my HYP is down 6.1%. Seems in line with the market.

Broadly speaking, my unit prices are now back to where they were after the pandemic struck - sort of Feb/Mar time 2020. That worked out in the end and seems a semi-distant memory: let's hope this one will too.



Arb.

[BT63]

I notice the (more growth oriented) FTSE 250 is now officially in a bear market, down just over 20% since its peak and halfway back to the 2020 lows.
P/E looks similar to the FTSE 100 mentioned earlier, yield around 2%, cover around 3x, so not expensive.

Although it could be only halfway along its journey to the bottom, I think there's enough long-term value to make it worthwhile increasing my monthly purchasing of UK mid cap index funds.

I prefer to accumulate gradually rather than throwing in lump sums. The purchases go through by direct debit on five fixed dates every month but I adjust the amounts being bought depending on how cheap I think shares are.
I think it's a reasonable time to pick up the buying pace from surplus income, but it's not yet anywhere near the point of using my cash pile.

Below links to a comment I made two years ago during the Covid meltdown where I talked about ramping up buying and cashing-out savings:
viewtopic.php?f=88&t=22633&p=296974#p296974

[ADrunkenMarcus]

The accumulation units of my dividend growth portfolio are down about 4% as of Friday's close, compared with 30 April 2021. They are up 21.4% compared to 30 April 2020. I cannot do calendar year 2022 to date but the portfolio is down about 4% compared to 10 January 2022. I'm quite pleased given that I have significant exposure to smaller companies and the FTSE 250 has done significantly worse.

Best wishes


Mark.