Good morning!

I was amused this morning to see on an American website, they were asking New Yorkers for their views on Brexit. One confused respondent asked, "Is it something to do with breakfast?"

Is it affecting the markets much? Things feel a little more nervous this week. Looking at the small & mid cap indices for the last year, it all looks fairly stable to me, apart from a nasty spike down in Jan-Feb:


575007151e8e1SMXX_MCX.PNG


The SMXX is down about 4% in the last 12 months, and MCX is down just over 6% over the same period. So not a very good market. A lot of people I talk to are saying that their portfolio is flat, or slightly up or down so far this year. By the way, the blue links on SMXX & MCX are worth clicking on, as that takes you to the Stockopedia page which shows all the constituents of each index. It's interesting to have a rummage, sort them by various criteria, etc.

Personally, my long-term portfolio is about flat this year-to-date, but my geared trading account is up strongly - due to catching the HOME takeover bid, and being heavily overweight (and geared) in BOO. Although one needs a few big winners to mop up all the mistakes. I've not done my stats yet for this year, but last year my win:lose ratio was 60:40, which gave a satisfactory overall result. We shouldn't beat ourselves up over getting some investments or trades wrong - it's perfectly normal. As long as there are more (and bigger) winners than losers, then everything should be fine.

I'm padding this out a bit, because there are only 2 companies in my universe which are reporting today, and only one of them is any good.


Porvair (LON:PRV)

Share price: 330p
No. shares: 45.1m
Market cap: £148.8m

Trading update - for the 6 months to 31 May 2016.

I've re-formatted the trading update into bullet points, and bolded the most important points:

  • Constant currency revenue growth of around 10%
  • Most markets experiencing good demand.
  • Interim profits are in line with management expectations and will be ahead of those reported in 2015.
  • Order books for the second half are healthy.
  • During the period the Group acquired TEM, which is performing well.
  • Investments were made in expanding manufacturing facilities in both the US and UK.
  • Net…

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