Following folks on Twitter suggests that there was an enormously wide variation in the overall portfolio performance of private investors in the last year. But without people saying what they invest in and how big and diversified their portfolio is, I am not sure the information provided helps much. I also worry about how they calculate their performance figures and whether it includes dividends reinvested because I never find it a simple thing to do as none of the software products I use give me a correct figure so I still have to do the calculations manually.
One feels wary of publishing such data because when you have a good year you appear to be a clever dick with an inflated ego, while in a bad year you look a fool. Consistency is not applauded on social media. But here’s a summary of my portfolio performance. Total return for the year (including dividends) was almost exactly 30% return on my capital invested at the start of the year. As my target is simply to consistently beat the FTSE-AllShare which was up in capital terms by 14.3% last year and dividends would have added another 4%, I am happy with that outcome.
My portfolio is very varied with a slight emphasis on UK small and mid-cap shares but it does include a very few FTSE-100 shares and several large investment trusts and funds including some overseas focused ones. One of the reasons for outperformance was probably betting on a successful resolution of the Brexit impasse before the General Election, which has clearly had a very positive impact on markets, particularly in UK small cap stocks.
It was partly a good year because I had few bad failures – Patisserie was the worst, but when you have a large number of holdings, as I do, then there are always one or two disappointments. Others I managed to get out of without much damage but Patisserie had trading suspended at the initial announcement of possible fraud and never returned.
Well at least I beat Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway last year. He only managed an 11% gain last year while the US market gained 31.5% last year, including dividends. No doubt some clever sod will suggest that I could have saved a lot of effort and just invested in an S&P 500 tracker but that would have been a risky strategy because the US markets can be very volatile. Incidentally Berkshire now has cash of $128 billion. Buffett is clearly finding it difficult to invest the money. Perhaps he is slowing down at aged 89 and if he has another bad year like the last one folks might be encouraging him and his partner to retire. But few investors achieve outperformance every year – one needs to consider performance over 5 or more years.
My portfolio also includes some Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) which would have generated a less good overall return because they tend to be vehicles for turning capital into tax free dividends. As usual they mainly showed small capital losses although two VCTs focused on AIM stocks did relatively well for a change.
What of the future and where should we be investing? I am still keen on technology stocks and here’s a useful quotation from Alan Turing who is soon to appear on new £50 notes: “This is only a foretaste of what is to come and only the shadow of what is going to be”. He wrote that in 1949 about the future use of computers, but it still applies as many new and innovative businesses based on software and the internet are still being founded. However, I think the valuations of early-stage unprofitable companies are getting overblown (e.g. in fintech and biotech) so I suggest one needs to be careful.
One slight negative in my portfolio performance last year was that total dividends received fell slightly. That’s probably because I sold a few high yield shares – with a buoyant economy it hardly seemed the best place to be. I hold no builders, no banks or other financial institutions and no oil companies at present and generally do not as I am prejudiced against them.
The slight cloud on the horizon is that Boris Johnson has to conclude a free trade deal with the EU in the coming year, or face a difficult decision. That might cause some business uncertainty in the meantime. But I doubt if it will affect those companies with quality businesses. As I have been saying for the last 6 months, it is business perspective investing that enables you to generate good returns, and that is very much the basis of my good performance last year. Plus avoiding too many investment disasters as I said in a previous blog post.
If you were hoping for details of my holdings, or share tips for the future, you will by now be disappointed. What made money for me last year, may not do so this year, and giving tips for the coming year is a very risky proposition. Such tips tend to encourage churning of portfolios and increase the readership of publications giving them but it is not necessarily a productive exercise. I prefer a strategy of buying good companies and holding them for as long as it makes sense to do so.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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