As it's now (a bit over, I'm slightly late!) 6 months into the year it's time for a portfolio update. Whilst I think 6 months is an insanely short period to measure portfolio performance it's at least interesting to reflect on decisions made in the time period and try and look for areas of improvement.
For reference, here's what my portfolio looked like going in to 2012:
As of this weekend, this corresponded to a total return of 20.4% after costs (An IRR of 44.1%). Whilst good, this is only marginally ahead of the returns I'd have made in the main benchmark, the FTSE Small-Cap Index (ex-investment trusts) of 18.4% although decently ahead of the FTSE All share, which would have grown my capital 12.2%.
I've gone from a total of 16 investments down to 13, so I've gone more concentrated overall. Partly this is down to a conscious choice to limit the number of holes on my investment 'punch card' in order to force me to really think about my investments although I'd quite like to go back up to around ~15 investments as this feels like a good balance between concentration and diversification.
The big positive drivers of my overall return have been from All Leisure (LON:ALLG), Judges Scientific (LON:JDG) and Sprue Aegis (OFEX:SPRP). ALLG & JDG I felt were my best ideas and hence had big allocations going in to 2012. Both performed well, with JDG reaching new highs recently although ALLG has given a lot of performance back since peaking at over 50p in April. SPRP is a more recent addition I made with the proceeds from halving my stake in JDG (made because it was making up an uncomfortably high % of my portfolio)
The biggest detractors of my performance have been from City of London Investment (LON:CLIG) and 21st Century Technology (LON:C21). I continue to hold both, and have added more to CLIG recently as the price has fallen.
