We had mixed feelings at the end of another good week for our share tips that saw the latest 2013 portfolio record a notional profit of more than £1000 for the first time when we conducted our review of progress on Wednesday morning.
Two of the other three portfolios also moved higher, but the overall performance was marred by the fact that we had to bid farewell to one of our most successful tips when Carr's Milling Industries slipped to its published stop/loss level and was ejected from the 2010 and 2012 lists.
The shares had been showing signs of running out of steam for several weeks but their previous performance meant we could pocket total gains of just short of £1500 on our notional £2000 investments.
The fall in the Carr's shares saw the 2010 list shed just more than 1% of its value over the week. We decided to dip into our cash reserves to make two further investments in a bid to get it back on track to record 100% gains by the end of this year.
Publishing giant Pearson and Scottish security systems group IndigoVision are at opposite ends of the size spectrum but both earn the bulk of their cash in overseas markets and have recently produced encouraging trading updates.
We have set our usual stop/loss levels, 10% below the current share price, at which we will sell the shares on any sustained fall.
We also took the opportunity to refresh the 2012 portfolio by adding hi-tech engineer Smiths Group, which earns about 49% of its profits in North America, according to brokers at Charles Stanley, but is making inroads in faster-growing markets in Asia and elsewhere.
Most of our recommendations recorded steady progress for the week, but Standard Life took a tumble after its recent good run as the shares began trading without benefit of the latest dividend.
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