Whats your S&S ISA Portfolio? (Winners and Losers)

moneylover

bigfreddiel wrote: »

my simple etf based balanced portfolio is doing 10% and it really is soooooooooooo simple

fj

would you share what this balanced ETF portfolio consists of? Sounds very sensible

moneylover

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Best performer is European Assets Trust which is up 49.9% in past year.

Bought this as was on large discount. Also European stocks were out of favour at time.

Is this still a good IT to buy for Europe, please. Have been thinking about a fund or investment trust for Europe, was not brave enough last year. My son made 30% on a fund but now sold out

guitarman001

Wow, a lot of funds you all invest in. Surely charges must wipe out a lot of the gains?

I'm looking at funds for my pension but charges put me off. Thinking about some general UK & ex-UK trackers to keep charges low. THen also perhaps Aberdeen Emerging markets, First State Asia Pacific, and some European fund. Also Kames High Yield Bond.

I guess you choose many funds to mitigate the risk of a big loss?

Have been looking at Vanguard ex-UK equity tracker which looks pretty good. Was thinking about putting a whack into it but after reading all of this, I'm wondering if I should diversify more (eggs in one basket etc - though it's a CHEAP basket with AMC=0.3%!)

guitarman001

jimmyjones wrote: »

I have a pretty boring passive ISA portfolio:

HSBC American Index - 29%
HSBC FTSE All Share Index - 24%
HSBC European Index - 15%
L&G Global Emerging Markets Index - 13%
HSBC Pacific Index - 8%
HSBC Japan Index - 6%
HSBC UK Gilt Index - 5%

My SIPP is even more boring:

Vanguard Lifestrategy 80 - 100%

This is much more along my original line of thought!! Easy, lower charges... but not managed so if the market goes down, so do your trackers? I don't know.... Vanguard 80% - the ex-UK equity tracker has done much better than that, no?

guitarman001

Linton wrote: »

A key factor is that more or less exactly 5 years ago the FTSE100 was at its peak just before the credit crunch crash. Now the FTSE100 is around 10% lower. Anyone with a highly defensive portfolio with a large % in bonds is laughing whereas those of us mainly into equities are on average barely breaking even. This isnt the usual state of affairs over an extended period.

Excellent point - I considered going into Vantage 20% just for this reason - less equities and more bonds incase of another UK crash.

cashbackproblems

moneylover wrote: »

Is this still a good IT to buy for Europe, please. Have been thinking about a fund or investment trust for Europe, was not brave enough last year. My son made 30% on a fund but now sold out

Blackrock Europe Equity tracker has done ok, have a low TER 0.5% and has no monthly charge to hold with HL.

My best funds have been Aberdeen Emerging Markets, Invesco Perpetual High Income, Asian High Income and Kames High Yield Bond.

Worse has been a russia one i forget the name of and JPM Natural Resources.

bowlhead99

moneylover wrote: »

Is this still a good IT to buy for Europe, please. Have been thinking about a fund or investment trust for Europe, was not brave enough last year. My son made 30% on a fund but now sold out

I am in Henderson European Focus Trust which has done 40% (~500p to 700p) since June (though I didn't catch it at 500p). And it's still sitting on a discount, actual NAV is 791p as of yesterday.

Europe market prices have rallied and some commentators are very bullish on Europe's prospects from here. Currency movement has also helped out recently: a company worth 100 Euros would cost you 82 pounds to buy one month ago and now if it's maintained its Euro value, it's magically worth 86 pounds as sterling is at the lowest it's been for over a year. Part of that is due to the fact that US fiscal cliff and some Europe problems have receded a bit so people around the globe are no longer looking for the 'safe haven' of pounds and UK assets. One would not expect you to be able to keep getting 5% exchange movement every month forever.

I've heard some compelling arguments for Europe or particular parts of Europe and although I have just taken some of the profits on HEFT despite the continuing discount, I moved some of my pension into a Europe fund a while back which was quite lucky timing with the January rally and currency changes. Clearly however there are still plenty of risks so I'm not looking to add more weighting to that part of the world, but I do have more there than I used to a couple of years ago.

bowlhead99

OK, this is not my ISA but a SIPP created 6 months ago by transferring in an old pension - there is quite a lot of overlap with my ISA portfolio. The returns are just the price movements net of charges pulled off my summary screen, so exclude the dividends which add a few percent to some of the holdings (particularly the pref shares).

All of the holdings are maximum 6 months old with some of them quite a bit less - for example the Japan fund has been good to me in an ISA and after trimming it back there I only added it to this particular pot in Jan.

It's not very cautious and is not my only pension... and the holdings are not equal weights! By comparison FTSE 100 has done 5850 to 6300 in 6 months which is 7.7%.

Stock Name Change (%)
ABERDEEN GLO SERV JAPANESE SMLLR COS D2 GBP 3.1
ABERDEEN PRIV EQ F ORD NPV GBP 15.35
ASIAN CITRUS HLDGS ORD HKD0.01 -4.29
BEACON HILL RES GBP0.0025 -24.09
BIOTECH GROWTH TR ORD GBP0.25 9.17
BLINKX PLC ORD GBP0.01 60.42
BOWLEVEN ORD GBP0.10 -15.27
CITY NATURAL RES H ORD GBP0.25 -6.87
Cash GBP 0
ETFS METAL SECURIT ETFS PHYSICAL PPSG BASKET 6.43
HARBOURVEST GL PE 'A'SHS 16.44
HENDERSON EURO FOC ORD GBP0.50 22.38
ISHARES II PLC MSCI LATIN AMERICA (USD) 4.86
J P MORGAN INDIAN ORD GBP0.25 15.28
LLOYDS BANKING GP 9.25% NON-CU M IRR PRF SHS 24.42
LLOYDS BANKING GP 9.75% NON-CU M IRR PRF SHS 22.27
NATWEST 9% SR'A'NON CU M PRF 16.74
NEW CITY HGH YD FD ORD NPV 10.46
PANTHEON INTL PART ORD GBP0.67 24.45
PLAYTECH ORD NPV 37.19
POLAR CAPITAL FUND EMERGING MKTS INC I ACC NAV 11.06
PROTEOME SCIENCES ORD GBP0.01 59.34
RAVEN RUSSIA GBP0.01 PRF SHS 11.59
ROYAL DUTCH SHELL 'B'ORD EUR0.07 -0.44
RUFFER INVESTMENT RED PTG PRF SHS GBP0.0001 3.30
SCOT MORT INV TST ORD GBP0.25 17.09
SCOT ORIENTAL SMLL ORD GBP0.25 32.71
SIRIUS MINERALS ORD GBP0.0025 86.64
STD LIFE UK SMALL ORD GBP0.25 11.92
TEMPLTN EMG MKT IN ORD GBP0.25 14.37
TESCO ORD GBP0.05 13.61
VALIRX ORD GBP0.001 -10.61
VANGUARD INV SER GBL SMALL CAP INDEX ACC NAV 10.66
VANGUARD INV UK LT LIFESTRATEGY 100 PERC EQTY 10.17
VICTORIA OIL & GAS ORD GBP0.005 -28.86
VODAFONE GROUP ORD USD0.11428571 -1.54

jabbahut40

Hi,

Its been a while since the last post.

I would be interested in the people who were happy to share their portfolios what changes they have made since their last post and why?

Also happy to hear from new members who wish to discuss their biggest winners and losers?

Comments welcomed.

Jabba

bowlhead99

As my last post was only a month ago, the portfolio looks pretty much the same, it is generally up along with global markets.

Some of the holdings have continued to grow particularly well and I have taken a slice of profit out of them: examples Blinkx is now showing +113% profit on my remaining holdings with Playtech up to +60%. The cash has mostly been recycled into a couple of shareholdings that had done less well but which I still like - no new companies added. The actual company names are not really relevant, so much as the concept of selling high and buying low. I have not fully exited either of the companies I took a slice from as they still have decent prospects in my view.

On the funds / investment trusts side, Scottish Oriental Smaller Cos is currently up to +42% since I got in last August. So this has had a very good run, along with other EM funds in the last 6 months, but particularly so. It is an investment trust so the share price is driven by sentiment in the market in addition to the underlying NAV. The NAV hasn't increased by 42% but the pricing has gone from being a discount to NAV to being a premium to NAV.

I have taken some money out of this one in the last few days, as buying at a discount and selling at a premium is obviously a good thing and while I still want to keep an exposure to Asian smaller companies, the recent NAV rise and discount elimination makes it less compelling. I have reduced the total value to the same cash amount I originally put in, which in percentage terms is smaller than its original weight (because the overall portfolio is up).

The proceeds released from this have gone partially into some more Lloyds preference shares (they are not the crazy bargain they were a year ago, but both classes are still yielding 7.8%) and partially onto the sidelines as cash.

Overall I still like equities and risk but I would be very surprised if I don't get a chance to deploy the cash into equities on a pull-back of indexes in coming months. IMHO we will see FTSE at 6000 again before 7000 given the economic climate, so while I'm still putting new money into investments generally, I'm not letting everything ride on equities. And particularly not the ones where I have opportunities to take recent currency gains as well as underlying local currency asset price gains.