Well that's almost it for 2012, apart from a half day's trading on Monday 31st December, so I thought this would be a good time to review the share selections from my Blog, in its first year. So, bearing in mind that's it's been a good year for small caps generally, how have my main stock picks here fared? Pretty well actually!
Let the figures do the talking! 63% average gain over 8 stocks - RESULT!!! What is even more remarkable, is that this is over 6 months, not even a year! OK, I got lucky with the timing, and I also got lucky with some great stock picks (!!!). But also I only bought things that were cheap.
Here is a table of all my main articles here this year, and the average % gain (excludes dividends, but also excludes bid/offer spread & dealing costs);
Here is a review of my "main write-ups" articles here from this year.
Main Writeups
On 18 June I wrote about £QED , with the shares at 38p, after attending a meeting with management. My conclusion was that the shares had good upside potential, targeting 60p. It proved to be a well-timed trade, although I more recently went cool on the shares, and banked the profits. I am neutral on QED at the moment, because the NAV keeps going down, and it's difficult to see how shareholder value will be outed, unless there is a takeover. It's beginning to look rather too much like a company that exists mainly for the benefit of its staff and Directors, rather than its shareholders (similar to quite a few other property companies, e.g. Inland).
Shortly afterwards, on 21 June I reviewed results from £NXR and saw good upside. They were 11p then, they are 13.25p now, a 20% increase, plus they pay a decent divi. Although the quoted Bid/Offer spread can be particularly bad with NXR, so essential to get inside the spread using a proper telephone broker.
Norcros is a SETSmm stock, so a good broker can work a buy order for you at the BID price (and when you want to exit, work a sell order at the Offer price).
I cannot emphasise enough that getting a proper…
