There is no disguising it. June was a dire month for the MB portfolio. It was down 3.7 per cent over the month. This compares with a 1.7 drop for the FTSE 100 and a 2.2 per cent decline for the FTSE 250.

Dart Group mainly to blame 

The biggest loser was  Dart (LON:DTG). It was down by more than a quarter over the month. At one point it was below 180p although it bounced back to 205p by the end of June.

This fall was triggered by a rather downbeat trading update. What was interesting for me was the widely different reactions from different quarters. Comments on Stockopedia[1] were mostly (although not entirely) negative. A number of comments focused on concerns not at all linked to the update, such as the age of their fleet or just general negative sentiment around the airline sector.

Meanwhile, punters on Interactive Investor[2] were more sanguine. The consensus here seemed to be that the size of the drop was unwarranted and that the drop presented a good buying opportunity.

I broke my own investment rules by impulsively stocking up my real life portfolio at 187p. The size of the drop seemed out of all proportion to the seriousness of the news. I reckon a lot of stops got hit, triggering a mini-collapse. I sniffed a buying opportunity and since I had a bit of cash sitting in my SIPP and so I thought, what the hell...

My Take on Dart Group

Although I don’t usually follow the stories behind individual stocks too closely, Dart has been an exception. This is possibly because it piqued my interest well before I adopted my current position of strategic ignorance. So here is my take on Dart.

Having old, cheap planes is actually central to Dart’s business strategy. Since their business is very seasonal, they wouldn’t be able to generate a sufficient return on capital from new planes. However, older planes don’t need to be constantly in the air to be profitable and it is easy to schedule maintenance during the off-season. It seems to me a business model that is fundamentally sound and the number of comments about the age of their fleet probably explains why Dart’s value rank is so high.

Lackluster performance across the board 

Anyway, I digress.…

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