In Summary my overall portfolio is up by 27.8% for 2021
2021 is finally over and my YTD is +27.8% which I am very happy with as it was a long slog of a year! (In 2020 I gained 24%) You can see from the graph below that the portfolio peaked in September and then dwindled down a few percentage points as quarter 4 continued.
This result leaves me apprehensive, feeling set up for a fall! Pride comes before a fall they say and I do worry that I won’t achieve anywhere near this in the coming year… I hope everyone has had a decent year and if not I am sorry to hear that, but we cant out perform every year and participating in the stock market carries with it significant risk.
I ran a poll on my twitter account recently and 63% of respondents selected Good riddance to 2021! 16% were afraid that they may not be able to repeat their performance in 2022. So whether you made a gain or a loss in 2021 we can all enter the new year with determination!
My portfolio performance vs the FTSE All share
I hope all my readers and their families are all keeping well amidst the ongoing Covid pandemic, hopefully we can return to some sort of normality at some point this year… p.s. I said this last year and it is still ongoing!
Number of Trades
(Comparatives to 2020 in brackets)
Buy Trades 19 (versus 70 in 2020) – (That was for 3 New Holdings and 16 Top ups to existing holdings!) This feels about right because I felt a lot less active this year as COVID rumbled on. In comparison in 2020 when I was forced to adjust for the initial onset of COVID by cutting TEG and doing a lot more buying in the midst of the dip.
Sell Trades 8 (versus 13 in 2020) This was for 6 Different companies completely sold including 1 Takeover in 2021 and 2 companies sold as a result of B&B type activity.
This year I haven’t really been adding capital to these accounts and overall made a 3% withdrawal. Some of this was because of a Commercial property purchase and related transactions.
In general I remain fully invested at all times but right now I am holding off buying much until we see what happens in January the markets could wobble a little after the Christmas cheer all wears off. Cash is sitting at around 6% for now and I do have my eye on a few bits and pieces to top up or buy.
Broker Charges
Total Charges for the year came to £421 (versus £1040 for 2020)
This is quite a saving and is as a result of reduced trading, in 2020 I placed 83 trades in comparison to 27 in 2021.
The charges were made up of £191 for dealing 27 times. (Average £7.08 Commission per deal) and Platform fees of £120 (same as 2020) less a whopping £0.03 of Interest! (That interest shows that I am usually fully invested!) Stamp duty is also included here at £110.
Most of my deals are via Hargreaves Lansdown at £11.95 the rest are Interactive Investor at £7.99 however I do get 1 free trade per month as part of the £9.99 per month service plan with Interactive Investor.
Dividends
Dividends received were around 3.6% (versus 1.8% for 2020) of average Cash invested. Dividend Yield is a useful chunk of my overall return and reflects my preference for holdings to pay some sort of dividend if possible.
Reasons for selling the 8 sells… (The bad part)
Its always a tricky one, when do you sell?
For me I have rough guide of when a share is down 20% it has my attention – It is put on the naughty chair where the teacher can keep a close eye on it (forgive my school analogy) now typically if it continues on down below -30% then it is out… This is coupled with a watch on the numbers and the story – has something changed with the company that doesn’t sit well with you?? This could result in an even earlier exit no matter the % increase or decrease…
Now 2021 again was a test for my portfolio with some proper stinkers needing cut (see table below) some of them I was in denial for too long and betting against the market – how did I think that I knew better?
This quick table below shows my sells with my actual portfolio comment recorded in Sharepad, I haven’t dressed them up at all so hopefully you aren’t too frightened.
I have included this detail in case it is of any help to others. Some of the notes link back to previous updates if you want more detail on my thinking at the time.
| Date | Ticker | Gain or Loss | Notes |
| 08/02/2021 | LOOP | -29.4% | Lost confidence here – was unsure when buying and conscious of competition like Zoom and MS Teams |
| 12/03/2021 | ABDP | +17.8% | Bed and Breakfast to move to ISA along side rest of ABDP holding |
| 09/04/2021 | NCYT | -9.4% | Profit Warning -disputed contract -uncertain future buy thanks for the learning experience should have sold half at +100% gain what a rollercoaster ride! Read more here |
| 05/05/2021 | SLP | +144.2% | Selling some from Trading account holding to reduce oversized holding since I bought more in SIPP. Read more here |
| 28/06/2021 | AFHP | +41.5% | Takeover Funds are in Read more here |
| 16/08/2021 | VLG | -20.3% | Profit Warning on Friday when I was in a business meeting so seen the damage to late to act promptly. |
| 29/11/2021 | ARC | -40.4% | Major warning today 2 lost customers sold via limit at £1.02 1st order rejected with 97.5p Read more here |
| 16/12/2021 | BOO | -59.1% | Profit warning had been about to sell a day ago as price fell through 145p I had been watching chart about to break down through support but dithered, lesson learnt (again) maybe stick to a 30% Stop Loss or use 200 day moving average as a sell trigger? |
Lets have a sneak peak at where the prices have went since I sold…
| Ticker | Sold at | Price Now |
| LOOP | 81p | 19p |
| ABDP | 2040p | 1770p |
| NCYT | 457p | 369p |
| SLP | 130p | 88p |
| AFHP | 480p | N/a |
| VLG | 66p | 30p |
| ARC | 103p | 80p |
| BOO | 113p | 123p |
This is quite revealing – someone said “Shares are for selling” and maybe they have a point! The majority of sells here have preserved capital and stopped the rot.
Bargain Hunting (The good part)
This table shows the buy trades for the year not that many so will just list them all here…
| 08/01/2021 | ECK | Buy | 0.6298 | Adding |
| 23/03/2021 | ABDP | Buy | 20.6 | Buying back most of the Bed and ISA shares |
| 23/03/2021 | ADVT | Buy | 1.16 | Buying a small amount here on the back of previous success of Vin Murria SPAC |
| 29/03/2021 | SLP | Buy | 1.149 | Buy here at 114p hoping to sell holding in trading account of same qty so all in SIPP |
| 08/04/2021 | JLP | Buy | 0.1598 | Brought to att in stock slam held by Slater more diverse than SLP starting copper production |
| 07/05/2021 | JLP | Buy | 0.20085 | Adding on continued positive outlook |
| 07/05/2021 | SOLI | Buy | 9.0075 | Adding here – have been waiting to add recent TU was positive ahead of the recently upgraded consensus forecasts. |
| 21/05/2021 | HSV | Buy | 9.46689243 | Adding on weakness looks like value here as long as US strength continues |
| 28/07/2021 | TRCS | Buy | 9.8 | New contract RNS with ahead of expectations note |
| 04/08/2021 | RCH | Buy | 3.983812 | Getting into FTSE250 on the 6th of Aug should be a catalyst for insti buying |
| 26/08/2021 | PMI | Buy | 1.8 | PE 9.9 PEG 0.4 DIV 6.59% what’s not to like? |
| 02/09/2021 | IDHC | Buy | 0.8718 | Adding on Strong results and still looks value |
| 07/09/2021 | PMI | Buy | 1.7789 | Look at Stocko report re div pe peg etc looks great better value than LIO TAM etc |
| 20/09/2021 | AHT | Buy | 58.1571 | Ahead of expectations last week |
| 15/10/2021 | BOO | Buy | 1.85047 | Looks like value at this price buying 0.5 of topup qty in case not will buy same again if fall (I didn’t and sold instead) |
| 16/11/2021 | HSV | Buy | 8.8359 | Lets hope this turns around or I predict a sell |
| 19/11/2021 | GBG | Buy | 7.2366 | Buying just below placing price for acquisition |
| 26/11/2021 | IGG | Buy | 7.697475 | Still looks value with decent yield |
| 26/11/2021 | UPGS | Buy | 1.732 | Black Friday Sale – outstanding supply chain worries but ok for some recovery. Slater |
Takeovers
Just the 1 takeover completed this year with AFHP – as always there is some disappointment that a good solid company is taken from my portfolio but nothing can be done about that and the associated bid premium was welcome.
My last gaming company in the portfolio Sumo has also had a takeover approved at 513p so the funds for this should land in early 2022 all being well.
General Performance/Comment
I am still trying to keep a lid on the number of positions in my portfolio and at the end of the year I had 30 Holdings (down 3 since last year)
My top ten holdings at the end of December and their overall returns as at 31/12/2021 (time of writing) are as follows (taken from Sharepad Portfoilio tracker)
- Future PLC +280% (Up 409% from initial buy)
- Belvoir Group PLC +124% (Up 138% from initial buy)
- Sylvania Platinum Ltd +81% (Up 361% from initial buy)
- Reach PLC +122% (Up 221% from initial buy)
- SDI Group PLC +231% (Up 354% from initial buy)
- Tatton Asset Management PLC +128% (New to the top 10 since last year)
- Integrated Diagnostics Holdings +31%
- Sumo Group PLC +75%
- Premier Miton Group PLC +39.5% (New to the top 10 since last year)
- MTI Wireless Edge +89% (Up 121% from initial buy)
You can see my full list of holdings if you go to my Current Holdings page
The lesson for me from this section is to run your winners and don’t be afraid to add to them!
SLP Sylvania Platinum has dropped back since last year quite a bit with the impact on chip shortages on the demand for PGM’s I would hope this bottleneck would start to unwind this year as the supply issues normalise but lets wait and see. The share price is below the 200 day moving average which doesn’t look great.
Overall Portfolio weightings
As I mentioned last year I bought some commercial property and this now further diversifies my overall portfolio. Have you thought about how you can safeguard your portfolio using diversification? Think outside the box – what happens if there is a market crash? A property crash? or both? have you enough set aside or in lower risk assets?
Currently I am just over half invested in the markets balanced up with 41% in real estate/property, see below pie chart.
Stock Portfolio break down below…
Unfortunately the old stockopedia site is no more so I can’t show you my portfolio Style analysis. It is not available on the new site and not sure if it will return? Maybe I need to ask Ed Croft? Anyway last year my portfolio had a small cap growth bias and I would say it it still the same.
Thanks for reading!
Any questions on anything let me know and I will do my best to answer otherwise thanks for reading and have a Happy and prosperous new year!
You can follow me on twitter just click the link on the left menu my username is @investorjohnuk I don’t post that much because someone else usually beats me to it with company news releases etc so you won’t be spammed with tweets!
P.S
I use Stockopedia and Sharepad to help inform my investment decisions.
Stockopedia has been a great resource for me and for sure has contributed to my success as has sharepad to a lesser extent but it has a better portfolio tracker and more detail on Major shareholders.
If you are not already a member of Stockopedia you can join by clicking the image above and we will both get a discount… Or if you contact me I can also get you a discount on Sharepad. Happy Investing and thanks for supporting InvestorJohn.co.uk
