My Portfolio: performance update

John Lee
+28 per cent

The adage “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” proved true with my New Year visit to the Ladbroke Arms – the flagship gastro-pub of the Capital Pub Company, which is quoted on the Alternative Investment Market (Aim). Impressed with the ambience, the food, the activity – and the fact that my host, chief executive Clive Watson, has been steadily increasing his shareholding – I decided to double my stake. This must make it the most expensive pub lunch to be consumed in London in 2010!

Capital Pub – which is trading well and at half its asset value – is typical of many of the established, profitable, undervalued Aim stocks that I have been steadily accumulating.

This week, at Westminster, I was also able to ask the government whether Aim shares will be made eligible for tax-efficient individual savings accounts. Lord Myners, the City Minister, defended the existing situation in his reply, but was heavily questioned by a number of peers dissatisfied with his answer. So I am not unhopeful that he will look again at this whole area.

Kevin
Goldstein-Jackson
+34 per cent

My self-invested personal pension (Sipp) portfolio – didn’t do badly, but I should have done better. I ought to have followed a hunch and bought shares in Barclays at 60p last January. I could have sold them at 350p in August.

Surprisingly, Westmount Energy, whose share price started the year at £1 and ended it at 85p, was one of my Sipp’s best performers. How? Because the company returned cash equivalent to 65p per share to shareholders after selling its stake in Eclipse Energy.

Industrial engineer Weir Group did well, rising from 310p to 717.5p – although I reduced my stake at 604.5p in September. Other good performers included Falkland Islands Holdings (227.5p to 455p), Premier Oil (985p to £11.05) and Lonmin (911p to £19.59).

Disappointment came from publisher Bloomsbury (159.75p to 126.5p). My cautious stance towards the end of the year saw cash increase from 20 per cent of the portfolio to 33 per cent.

Peter Temple
+12 per cent

A 1 per cent uplift in the value of my portfolio since October looks pedestrian in the light of a 6 per cent gain in the market. But my stock-market investments are up by a more reasonable 4 per cent over the same period. The difference is accounted for by a decision to write down the value of my Isle of Man investment property.

Property values were little changed there in 2009 and optimistic valuations placed by local agents on similar properties have not been realised.

Since January 2009, my portfolio overall is ahead by around 12 per cent, compared with a 23 per cent gain in the index. I have not included any uplift in value in my investments in rare coins.

Nick Louth
+46 per cent

My total return for 2009 was 45.9 per cent, more than enough to recoup my losses in 2008, and my best annual return since 49.6 per cent in 1999. With a defensive focus, the yield on my portfolio has risen to 4 per cent. However, the big difference now is in the enhanced defensiveness, with 21.8 per cent in corporate bonds and preference shares, and a much bigger holding in large cap growth-orientated shares.