Over on John Kingham’s site, I made a selection of shares for 2012. Let’s see what happened:

  • ASX – All-Share Index: +12.5%
  • MCX – FTSE 250: +26.1%
  • UKX – Footsie: +10.3%

Making comparisons is going to be awkward, because what there was a very big divergence between the indices. The MCX flew away, but the ASX lagged, weighed down by the relative sluggishness of the Footsie. So, should my base comparison be the ASX – because after all I’m trying to beat the “universe” of stocks – or do I bewail my performance for lagging the MCX, from which many of my ideas were drawn?

Afferro Mining Inc (LON:AFF): +23.1% I said that there was huge upside on this one, as you received the market cap in cash, and got the resources for free. Good call on my part, although it was far from a smooth ride for investors.

BLSA – Blacks Leisure (short position): -100.0% I said there was a high probability of going bankrupt, and this was indeed the case. It went bankrupt in mid-January, so you wouldn’t have had long to wait. To be honest, this one was like shooting fish in a barrel, because the directors had already warned that there’d be trouble. Some BLSA stores was taken over by JD Sports for peanuts. JD. reports that the stores are performing well, so it looks like the management have, once again, repeated their basic template of buying out inefficient bankrupt niche retailers and breathing new life into them. JD shareholders (which includes me) are going to be happy with this purchase. If you’re looking for a similar short for 2013: HIBU. HMV looks pretty bad, too, but not quite the “sure thing” of HIBU.

Domino Printing Sciences (LON:DNO): +18.2%. I reckoned it was a good quality company at a reasonable price, but for which I wasn’t expecting

Dechra Pharmaceuticals (LON:DPH): +23.1% A nice little GARP stock that pretty much did exactly what I expected it to. Would make a decent selection for this year.

WM Morrison Supermarkets P L C (LON:MRW): -16.5% Well, go figure. It was reasonably priced at the beginning of the year, and became cheaper. The fall…

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