I'll do some background in a future post and also some thoughts on how I make my investment decisions / structure my portfolio nowadays. I hope I have learned some lessons in recent years!
This post, I will cover the sells I made in December. This has been a busy month as I have done some major portfolio surgery. It looks like a lot, but I have not sold any shares for 2 years due to various work related compliance reasons so it actually averages out at less than one every 2 months.
All UP/DOWN measures are to the nearest 10% and include accumulated dividends.
I'll cover the handful of buys in the next post.
Sells:
Gattaca (LON:GATC) - I met with management shortly after the NHI deal and they were convincing and seemed to understand the market they operated in and the challenge of integrating NHI. I should have sold as soon as the first profit warning was announced but hung on for the dividend, which was cancelled. [LESSON LEARNED - BE VERY SCEPTICAL OF "TRANSFORMATIONAL" DEALS. SELL ON A PROFIT WARNING UNLESS THERE IS A VERY CLEAR REASON NOT TO AND ALWAYS SELL ON A CHANGE TO A STUPID NEW NAME. (HOPE DOES NOT COUNT AS A REASON)]. DOWN 90%
Interserve (LON:IRV) - Originally bought for the dividend but when it became clear the wheels had come off and that there were fundamental flaws with the business model I didn't sell. [LESSON LEARNED AS ABOVE] DOWN 90%+
Empresaria (LON:EMR) - I saw the management present and was swayed by the presentation and the presence of other respected shareholders but didn't actually do much thinking or research or establish why I thought was a good investment. And lost money. [LESSON LEARNED - DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH] DOWN 30%
Stobart (LON:STOB) - I met management and was impressed by them and by the asset they had in Southend Airport. However, despite the progress being made at Southend, the boardroom fights worried me and I also don't like the strategic direction recently announced. Not sure what lesson I can learn here. Maybe I just got lucky. I can't claim any massive insight. Southend could quite easily have tanked and Easyjet withdrawn…
