I was a little distracted from the markets this month, as real-life took charge, but the portfolio did just fine without my active oversight. On the whole most of my trading actions were driven by price alerts where I'd previously identified a level at which I would be happy to either buy or sell. To some degree this took the emotion out of these decisions, since I'd already done the groundwork, but it's always a slight worry to trade against the market.

Still I did manage to write up the StockSlam from last month, where a number of interesting companies were highlighted, along with some notes on the two accounting/investing courses that I attended (Introduction to Accounting and Introduction to Equity Analysis). In the middle of the month I also managed to make my first ShareSoc Seminar of the year and found all of the presenting companies to be worthy of consideration. All in all another busy month but with more thinking than action!

Purchases

XP Power Bought at 2044p - March 19

In my view the shares of XP Power are being sold at a bargain price right now and this analyst report from Edison is in agreement. Right now the forward P/E is under 12 and it's clear, looking back over the past decade, that XPP goes through peak-to-trough cycles in valuation - with it being in the trough right now. So if trading continues as predicted, with the industrial, healthcare and technology segments continuing to grow well while the semiconductor manufacturers take their foot off the gas, then the company will continue to grow profits at a single-digit rate. In addition XPP is rated much more cheaply than similar companies, while offering a better yield, and I'm inclined to believe that the market has over-shot with its negativity here. Hence I've topped up my position.

Pagegroup Bought at 452p - March 19

As mentioned below I think that the FY results for 2018 are really impressive and that Pagegroup have an excellent runway for continued growth (assuming that that we don't fall into a global recession). Now fear of the latter is probably holding back the share price but even so the current forward P/E of 12-13 is discounting an awful lot of bad news (and the ratio hasn't been this low since the financial crisis). My…

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