Our share tips managed to swim against the tide last week to record a useful overall rise in the face of stock market jitters over Ukraine, lower growth figures from China and the prospect of higher American interest rates.
Both our 2014 and 2013 portfolios showed good gains when we carried out our usual review on Wednesday; the other two lists were substantially unchanged.
Much of the credit for the good showing was down to another surge in the price of Scotland's Smart Metering Systems as fresh investors moved in following the group's recent takeover of a Welsh competitor. The shares feature in both of our two latest portfolios and have contributed a total of nearly £700 to total gains in 2014.
They have now risen 40% since the start of the year and we have again raised the stop/loss price at which we advise followers to sell the shares as a protection against any heavy future profit-taking.
A few other recommendations also pushed higher, including IMI, WPP, DCC, Kingfisher, Signet and Compass, although some of our more recent tips continued to disappoint, including engineers Ricardo and GKN, plus retailers Marks & Spencer and Dunelm.
We believe the shares remain undervalued but will evict them from our portfolios at the published stop/loss prices if there is no recovery,
Meantime, we decide to add one more share to our 2011 selections when Bank of Scotland owner Lloyds Banking Group suffered a markdown on Wednesday morning.
We believe the shares were unfairly punished for a disappointing trading update from rival Barclays and expect them to bounce back once terms are announced for the imminent flotation of the group's TSB operations.
Analysts expect TSB to be valued at £1.5 billion.
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