Our share tips turned in another resilient performance last week with the majority managing to hold on to the bulk of earlier gains after the stock market suffered a downwards lurch.
There were nasty surprises, however, with shares of Tennent's and Magners drinks group C&C suffering a nasty hangover after news of disappointing Christmas sales and mining giant Rio Tinto going into sharp reverse after the latest drop in global commodity prices. But they were heavily outweighed by gainers, with our 2014 and 2012 portfolios both recording overall rises of more than 1.5%. The other two lists were substantially unchanged.
Particularly good progress was made by transport operators Wincanton and FirstGroup, along with Belhaven Brewery owner Greene King and Argos stores group Home Retail. Other useful gains were recorded by advertising giant WPP and drugs group AstraZeneca and motorway barriers specialist Hill & Smith.
We did suffer one casualty when shares of alternative energy supplier Infinis finally triggered a "sell" signal under our stop-loss system and was ejected from the 2013 portfolio for a hefty loss - although income-seekers could consider holding on for their hefty dividends.
We have replaced Infinis with shares of B&Q owner Kingfisher.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article