june '01

News and Comment

Having just come back from holiday I find myself up-to-the-eyeballs in work and e-mails so I have decided to wait until Saturday the 9th June to update the site. I was hoping to be able to get things straight but I think it was too ambitious a task.

This hasn't stopped me tinkering, I have made another three purchases for the micro chuffy portfolio in the form of Psion, Bright Station and Eidos. It will be interesting to see if these new additions have been just as badly timed as most of the others!

The Portfolios

I will be updating the portfolios on Saturday once I have reconciled the latest payments into the spartan portfolio which tends to be a bit time consuming.

News and Comment

This will be the last weekly update of the chuffy site. I have been trying to juggle heavy work commitments, raising a young family and running my investments with the effect that there are just not enough hours in the day to do them all effectively. I will keep the site going but I will revert back to how I used to monitor my investments before I began this site 18 months ago, i.e. once a month only. It was either this or just give up the site completely, which would be a shame considering that the number of visitors has just passed the 100k mark. To all those visitors who have written in over the last year and a half I thank you for your support and I apologise in advance for the reduction in output from this site.

The Chuffy performance since I last updated the totals has been fairly in line with the rest of the year so far and can be summed up in just three words, COULD DO BETTER !!! I am not too distressed by the lack of improvement considering we are still effectively in the Bear Market that can be traced back to early last year and if anything I am more inclined to increase my exposure to the equity markets that will sooner or later recover their nerve.

Like most investors, I am not a political animal but it came as a relief to see that the Labour Party has been returned to power in the UK following the latest election. I found it incredible that the main opposition party appeared to be hell bent on self annihilation in front of a world audience by pursuing policies that had no relevance to the wishes of the very people they expected to vote for them. The present administration could never be described as ideal but given the alternative I feel the economic strategy being followed by the incumbent Chancellor of the Exchequer will produce a favourable environment for the investing fraternity to begin to re-enter the markets.

I have been very busy making changes to the micro chuffy portfolio which has now 14 holdings. The portfolio has changed a lot since I first began it in March and the remit has completely done a reversal. I am building it around the High Tech companies that I have been following for the last couple of years. Due to this strategy being rather more high risk, I am using a 20% stop-loss limit which has produced its first casualties; ARM Technologies and Atlantic Telecom. I will remain a close follower of ARM with a view to getting back in if it falls another 20% below the price I sold at but Atlantic Telecom is one that I don't intend to devote any time to and rule out now any future plans to re-invest in that company.

The use of the stop-loss limit is new to me and I will be keeping its effectiveness under review but in its favour I must say that it certainly makes the decision on selling a lot easier. As it stands at the moment, I apply the 20% limit from the price paid plus the dealing charges, this may have to looked at with a view to increasing it to 25-30% for the simple reason that by their very nature the stocks I am picking for this venture are above average in the volatility stakes.

The Portfolios

The portfolios have had a pretty lack luster showing since I last updated them and also have had a bearing on my decision to go for a once-a-month update rather than the weekly.

The acorn portfolio has notched up a small gain with both holdings edging slightly ahead. Imagination Technologies are beginning to benefit from the alliance with Pace Micro as they begin to ship the next generation of set-top boxes for digital TV based on the Sega Dreamcast architecture. Chorion have moved up a tick or two as the disappointed investors who were looking for an early demerger of their two divisions have sold and moved on.

The spartan portfolio has produced an unimpressive rise with no real coherence from any of the main holdings. The only real "star" has been the new Finsbury World Wide Pharmaceutical Investment Trust in which I have just begun to build a holding. The fund has performed very well against a background of poor sector returns but because my exposure is so small it has made little difference to the overall total, but it bodes well for the future.

Finally, the pensions portfolio recorded the only fall this week as the holding in First Property Online took a hit against next to nothing volumes of shares being traded. The company is due to announce its maiden set of results this month and should provide the market and its shareholders with a clearer picture on the progress being made. To be fair, the number of properties available on the site has increased month on month but we need to know the level of actual business being done. It will also be interesting to see how thick the red ink is on the figures. Like all dot coms, FPO's accounts will probably be littered with write-downs and write-offs and they will have to be pretty good at spelling out exactly when they consider the "breakeven point" will be achievable. I await with bated breath.