2024 was a mixed year for the UK market. While the first six months were broadly positive, the second half of the year was weaker as external concerns weighed on investor sentiment.
My rules-based SIF (Stock in Focus) portfolio continued to trade throughout the year, adding stocks when my screen offered buying opportunities – and shifting more heavily into cash at other times. (Subscribers can see a fuller explanation of how the portfolio works here.)
When markets closed on 31 December, I’m happy to report SIF was comfortably ahead for the year, maintaining its long-term record of outperforming the wider UK market.
SIF 2024 performance review
SIF gained 12.5% in 2024, versus a 5.6% gain for its benchmark, the FTSE All Share index. This portfolio return includes estimated costs but excludes dividends.
Taking a longer view, SIF has now risen by 98% since inception in April 2016. That’s equivalent to an annualised return of 8.2%, again excluding dividends.
Including dividends, I estimate SIF has generated a total return of 134%, or 10.3% annualised since April 2016.
The consistent additional return generated by dividend income is one reason why we’ve decided to skew SIF more heavily towards income from 2025. More on this below.
Winners outnumbered losers in 2024
In total I closed 20 positions during the year, with 13 winners and seven losers:
You can find full details of the portfolio’s trades during the first nine months of the year in my previous quarterly updates – Q1, Q2 and Q3.
Let’s move on and take a look at changes to the portfolio during the final quarter of 2024.
SIF Q4 portfolio review
I added six new stocks to SIF and sold six during the final quarter of 2024.
This left SIF with 16 open positions at the end of December, unchanged from the end of Q3 and in line with my target number of holdings.
Here’s a snapshot of the SIF portfolio after markets closed on 31 December 2024:
Stocks sold in Q4
In this section I’ve included a short summary of each of the stocks…
