A pretty decent month all round with more shares going up, rather than down, for once. As mentioned below I bought, or topped up, a few more shares where the fundamental and technical signals both appeared to be pointing in the right direction. It's too early to say whether this tactic is helping but it is stopping me buying any shares where the share price is on a downward trend (such as FeverTree). The big winner this month was Haynes Publishing, which is really flying as investors warm to its digital attractions, while SimplyBiz has reversed recent share price weakness and yet still remains good value at the current price.
In contrast Quartix has fallen back on next to no volume with the rest of fallers dropping by single-digit percentages - which is well within the ordinary volatility of any share let alone those at the smaller end of the market. Now I know that some people use moving averages to decide whether to buy or bale and quite a few of these fallers are distinctly below their 100-day and 200-day MAs. However it seems to me that for every instance where it was right to buy or sell on a crossing event there are equally as many cases where it didn't work out. I'd be interested to hear whether any readers have a different experience in this area?
Anyway the scores on the doors are:
HYNS 23%, SBIZ 15%, SDI 13%, SPSY 8%, GAMA 8%, RFX 7%, BUR 7%, WJG 4%, PCA 4%, NRR 3%, BOWL 3%, KETL 2%, IGR 2%, PPH 2%, BOOT 1%, DOTD 1%
FDM -2%, KWS -3%, RWA -3%, III -3%, LTG -5%, GAW -5%, SCT -6%, CRW -6%, K3C -7%, QTX -10%
All in all this led to a 1.1% rise in the portfolio in October with the YTD performance now a little greater than 10% (which is a nice psychological support level). Of course with a General Election on the horizon I've no real sense of whether this level will be sustained, cut drastically or doubled. It feels crazy to me that we're living through such uncertainty but then I've thought that for a while now.
Purchases
H & T Bought at 379p - October 19
As picked up in September's report H&T put out an after hours trading update right on the last day of the month. Usually this is a ruse…
