Please critique my portfolio

Bazofts_Revenge

Nothing wrong with investing in personal likes. I have quite a bit in Morrisons and Sainsbury. Quite happy to hold them especially as the expensive investment in new stores has been halted and they should be generating cash now. We'll see later in the year. I for one aren't interested in shopping at Aldi or Lidl. 3 years is a bit of a short timescale for these type of investments. BUT people have to start somewhere and learning by experience is useful.

KP24

Hi,

Some answers..

How old is the OP? 33
Where this money came from excess wages, inheritance? Excess wages
Is the OP planning on adding to this small selection? (if so what is currently a random selection 'could' become a more balanced investment portfolio). £1k a month in different investments will soon change it. I can afford to invest around £200 a month
Has the OP a pension scheme or two up and running?workplace pension in place.
OP could be just wanting a bit of fun but sees this as more fun than betting on Horses and Football Scores. Hopefully he will come back and let us know.

snowqueen555

-1% but have you taken into account the costs of buying the shares? I suspect even more down with that taken into account.

Portfolio is not very diverse. I also think investors sometimes play the waiting game too long and hope for shares to bounce back. It is better to sell at a loss and invest that money into something else which might realise a gain esp in relation to Tesco and Sainsbury's.

Buffett famously lost nearly 300 hundred million on Tesco and made the same mistake of sitting a little too long on them, before selling his shares in Tesco. This was addressed in his annual shareholder letter.

Flobberchops

Morrisons has declined but IIRC pays a very decent dividend, right?

Ada1

How much are you paying for your Halifax fund? That's where most of your money is so it's what I'd get happy with first. Is it the right investment and is it on the right platform? If you;re not paying attention to it you may well find that you;re paying high fees for poor performance.

With that out of the way I'd then also think about how the holdings you've listed are held. IF they're not in an ISA get them in one.

To your holdings:
- I dont think you have said what the tracker is tracking or what its fees are. I think trackers are generally a good thing though.
- I like fundsmith
- Everything else is a punt. Good luck :-)

racing_blue

KP24 wrote: »

Hi all,

Just started viewing this forum and was hoping some of the experts might help critique my portfolio and suggest some changes:

1) Diageo - Bought 50 shares at around £19, current price around £18.50
2) Fundsmith - Bought 500 shares at £2 each, current price £2.30
3) HSBC Tracker - 375 bought at £4 each, current price £4.50
4) Morrisons - 435 bought at £2.60, current price £1.48
5) Royal Mail - 243 bought at £3.30, current price £4.44
6) Tesco - 250 bought at £1.98, current price £1.49

What this gives me is a current performance of -1%

I also have a Halifax Stocks and Shares ISA which i have around £30k invested in (cautious managed fund i think). I haven't added or removed anything from this for years though so any advice on this would also be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

There are all sorts of investing orthodoxies, and I think trying to pin down your own approach is important. Have you a written investment statement, covering aims and method? Method might include things like frequency of new investments, asset allocation, tracking performance, how you will monitor and minimize expenses, how and when you will start to draw down the fund.

At the moment you appear to have a cautious managed fund at the core, making up 85% of the portfolio with 6 satellite holdings making up about 2-3% each.

I quite like that. For me the reason to hold individual shares is to increase the volatility of the portfolio - they may go bust or they may increase in value with almost unlimited upside.

The one thing I might do, is to "forget" what I paid for each share. Because That is irrelevant now. Sure, set a target sale price and maybe even a stop loss, but do that when buying the share and look towards this number in the future, and not some number from the past.

snowqueen555

Well its dropped over 40% since he bought in, and only valued £700, I don't see much upside to the dividend payouts.

KP24

Hi all,

Thanks for the feedback. Some further answers..

1) The funds/shares listed are all held in an ISA
2) The Halifax ISA annual charge is 1.5%
3) The tracker fund tracks the FTSE All Share

I will look to make an appointment with Halifax to discuss my Halifax ISA. Does anyone have any recommendations for a similar type of fund if i did decide to move..?

Thanks.

grey_gym_sock

KP24 wrote: »

I will look to make an appointment with Halifax to discuss my Halifax ISA.

that may not be very useful. they should be able to answer any specific questions you ahve about the fund you currently have, but i don't think they offer proper advice, and there is little advantage in hearing a sales pitch (if they even do new sales in investments - some banks have pulled out of this).

Does anyone have any recommendations for a similar type of fund if i did decide to move..?

assuming you mean suggestions of a general fund, which it might be suitable to put all or most of your investments in, then 3 ranges of that sort of fund (all of which are a lot cheaper than 1.5%) are:

- vanguard lifestrategy
- legal & general multi-index
- blackrock consensus

each of those ranges contains a number of higher and lower risk funds. "cautious managed" suggests relatively low risk (though these terms are always a bit vague).