Our share tips rounded off a strong July rally to achieve a record overall valuation last week with three out of our four portfolios recording further good gains.
The one exception was our 2013 list, which suffered from the dismal showing by Barclays after news of its cash call on shareholders. Despite the setback, however, solid performances by other shares in this portfolio meant it was still able to show a gain of 7.6% over the month when we carried our review of progress on Wednesday morning.
Its monthly performance was roughly equalled by our 2010 and 2012 lists which passed important milestones during the week to show gains of more than 100% and 50% respectively. The 2011 selections did better still, with an overall gain of 9.9% over the month with Pearson, Legal & General and John Menzies all pushing to their highest levels since joining the portfolio.
As usual we have raised our stop/loss targets on these shares, along with other recent strong gainers such as Stagecoach, British Polythene Industries and Fuller Smith & Turner. We will dispose of our notional holdings at the published prices to ensure we can lock in the bulk of profits on any stock market relapse.
We were relieved that Barclays managed to avoid triggering its own sell signal in the immediate aftermath of its figures and believe the shares should stage a strong rebound once its fundraising is out of the way. We intend to subscribe to our own share of the rights issue, acquiring an extra 82 shares at a cost of £117.45 - provided that the share price manages to hold above our stop/loss figure of 278p in the coming weeks. Satellite group Avanti is our only other tip in danger of eviction, although it did manage a rally.
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