(Thank goodness its over lol)
In Summary my overall investment portfolio is down by 25% for calendar year 2022 almost wiping out my +27.8% from last year!
You can see from the graph below that the portfolio steadily dwindled down across the year as the various headwinds took hold.
Last year in my review I said this…
“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… “
Boy was I right on that front! I know lots of investors have had a bad year so I hope you are surviving this and can shake it off and aim to succeed again in 2023! This just highlights that regular risk warning given, that we should only invest with money that we can afford to loose! Markets can go down as well as up!
With the last few years being a bull run some new investors will find this a bitter pill to swallow – there is a lot to be said for experience in investing – I don’t count myself old (who does) but I have seen plenty of rough times from the .com boom/bust, the Global Financial Crisis and more recently Covid etc but thankfully I am still here and still investing.
My portfolio performance vs the FTSE All share
How did you perform? Hopefully you did better than me this year? Let me know below!
Number of Trades
(Comparatives to 2021 in brackets)
Buys
Buy Trades 46 (versus 19 in 2021) – (That was for 6 New Holdings and 40 Top ups to existing holdings!) This makes sense to me, I try and keep buying even when things look grim – yes the prices could fall further but trying to time the market is hard to do consistently. In these markets you do have to be careful but you can lock in better dividend yields and even hope to get a relative bargain.
Sells
Sell Trades 5 (versus 8 in 2021) This was for 5 Different companies completely sold including 1 Takeover in 2021. Homeserve isn’t counted here as takeover funds don’t come until January so it is still a holding of sorts.
This year I added 7% to capital invested in these accounts (This figure is closer to 11% when I add back some funds withdrawn this month to move to my ISA ahead of the April deadline in 2023). One would hope that purchases made in these markets should boost portfolio performance and over all returns in future years.
In general I remain fully invested at all times but right now I am holding off buying much until we see what January brings – probably more of the same! We didn’t manage to get much of a Santa rally this year!
Portfolio cash is sitting at around 4% for now and I do have a few bits and pieces on my watchlist of course and cash will jump a little when the Homeserve takeover completes.
Broker Charges
Total Charges for the year came to £1072 (versus £421 for 2021)
This is over double the previous year due to over double the number of trades, in 2021 I placed 46 trades in comparison to 19 in 2021.
The charges were made up of £447.96 for dealing 46 times. (Average £9.74 Commission per deal) and Interactive Investor Platform fees of £190* less a whopping £11.30 of Interest! Stamp duty is also included here at £445.
*(ii now charging 19.99 per month to cover the SIPP fee of £10 and the our accounts at 9.99 per month)
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 equated to a useful 4.7% (versus 3.6% for 2021) 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.
This year in particular dividends provided some comfort in the midst of falling prices and of course carefully buying at reduced prices can lock in better dividend yields.
The star performer here was SLP Sylvania Platinum my largest holding which paid out 10.25p per share across the year – which equates to about 10% yield for the year and to 18% of my average buy price of 56p!
Reasons for selling the 5 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… The other factor which has came into play this year is when the whole market falls it can be better to wait it out rather than time the market by trying to jump out and in.
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 |
| 24/02/2022 | ABDP | -28.6 | Probably a bad day to sell but free fall here for now metrics look bad |
| 31/01/2022 | SUMO | 74.5 | Woo hoo Takeover monies in 75% Profit |
| 05/04/2022 | ADVT | -31 | Shouldn’t have bought in the first place |
| 19/07/2022 | GBG | -23.7 | ROC 2% ROA 2% margin 9 SR 27 why am I still holding it is only a 0.5% position and I wont add |
| 31/10/2022 | UPGS | -21.6 | Tipped in the times hoping to sell and buyback after calms down but mindful of results on Thur?? |
Lets have a sneak peak at where the prices have went since I sold…
| Ticker | Sold at | Price Now |
| ABDP | 1050p | 1640p |
| SUMO | 513p | N/a |
| ADVT | 80.75p | 75p |
| GBG | 380p | 317p |
| UPGS | 120p | 147p |
Quite a mixed bag of results with my sells this year – I knew when selling ABDP that it was probably the worst time to do it but the chart was terrible and it kept falling. Outlook wasn’t good either with war just declared on Ukraine in the background.
This is how it looked at the time…
Now ABDP have a Stock rank of 78 possibly on a brighter outlook somewhere in the numbers or because of their price momentum but at first glance the stock report still looks terrible! (Beware of the fickle Stock ranks! They are not the ‘be all and end all’ but act as a useful guide)
Another bad move was my attempt at timing the market with UPGS. Their share price had been languishing and when they were tipped in the Times one weekend I thought this would be a good time to sell my then underwater holding and then buy back when the price settled lower again. As predicted the price shot up almost 20% and I sold but of course my predicted return to lower pricing hasn’t happened yet and I remain on the side-lines.
Bargain Hunting
I tried often in vain to pick up shares at discounted pricing to add to my existing holdings – this year I was quite cautious and bought in smaller chunks than normal so that I could keep buying if the price fell further. This is why for some companies I show several buy’s as I bought in further (often at cheaper prices) hopefully pays off in the long run.
This table shows the buy trades for the year sorry for the small font but hopefully you can zoom in if you wish.
Of course some of these buy trades will be great and some of them will prove to be terrible as ever!
Takeovers
Just the 1 takeover completed this year with SUMO– 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.
This is my last gaming company in the portfolio so I am on the lookout for something to fill this gap – maybe Keywords Studios or Tinybuild are ready for further research? Any suggestions let me know!
Homeserve buyout has been fully approved now with suspension of trading on the 4th of Jan 2023 so that will free up some more capital for reinvestment.
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 31 Holdings (up 1 since last year or flat if you consider that Homeserve is on the way out) How many holdings do you have? If one of my positions go wrong hopefully it shouldn’t destroy my entire portfolio!
Top ten holdings by Value
My top ten holdings at the end of December and their weighting as at 28/12/2022 (time of writing) are as follows (taken from Sharepad Portfolio tracker)
- Sylvania Platinum Ltd 11.2%
- Belvoir Group PLC 7.4%
- SDI Group PLC 7.1%
- Tatton Asset Management PLC 5.8%
- Solid State PLC 5.2%
- Tracsis PLC 5.0%
- MTI Wireless Edge 4.7%
- Future PLC 4.7%
- IG Group Holdings 4.5%
- Ashtead Group PLC 3.7%
You can see my full list of holdings if you go to my Current Holdings page
As always run your winners and don’t be afraid to add to them! Don’t be disheartened with the markets the way they are – as long as you are investing in sensible profitable companies you should do ok over time. Make sure you are not investing with money that you simply cannot afford to loose!
There are many other less risky ways to make a return on your savings, especially now with interest rates improving you should be getting at least 2% on any cash that is needed on an instant access basis.
The other question I ask myself is – Do I need to take as much risk? If you are in your 20’s and still trying to secure your financial future then one could argue that a bit more risk could reap rewards over the time horizon available. However if you are financially secure then I would suggest that the risk taken should be reduced to a more moderate level.
Diversify
You shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket!
Of course it goes without saving that you should not put all your eggs in one basket so Diversify! I am guilty of not diversifying outside of the UK for my stock market investments but otherwise I am well diversified within my UK holdings. Residential and Commercial property further diversify my investments. This means if one section of my investments is suffering I should have another basket not suffering so much – or at least paying a steady income so that I can rest easy.
The below table from Sharepad shows my region exposure via my UK shareholdings
Overall Portfolio weightings
During this year more commercial property has been added and this now further diversifies my overall portfolio. (as shown in the pie chart below) 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 or income?
Currently I am 45% invested in the markets. This is balanced up with 28% in residential and 24% in Commercial property, see below pie chart.
Stock Portfolio break down below…
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 hopefully a prosperous new year!
You can follow me on twitter just click the link on the left menu… my twitter 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!)
