Our share tips breezed to fresh peaks again last week with our four investment portfolios recording average rises of around 1.5 per cent when we carried out our review on Wednesday morning.
Pride of place went to the long-standing 2012 portfolio which rose another 3 per cent to take its total valuation to a record £11,120, up some £1,092 since the start of the year.
Much of the credit was down to another good rise in the share price of safety equipment specialist Halma, our star performer of the past three and a half years, although other constituents also did well.
The performance gave us the confidence to take a gamble on oil and gas minnow Parkmead with a notional £1,000 share purchase on Wednesday after the price fell back on news of a fund raising share issue.
We believe the price should bounce back in coming weeks as former Dana boss Tom Cross and fellow directors begin spending the cash on cut-price prospects and announce news of fresh gas production from Holland as they seek more stable income to balance depressed oil revenue.
We have set our usual stop loss level, some 10 per cent below the current price, at which we advise followers to consider selling on any major reversal.
The 2015 portfolio also out-performed with an overall rise of 2.1% over the week as a useful gain in cattle breeding group Genus more than cancelled out a fall in the price of Borders -based Produce Investments following news of contamination in its potatoes salads.
Further support for global advertising group WPP helped the 2013 list to a modest 1.2 per cent rise while the 2014 selections managed a 0.6 per cent increase despite another sharp fall in the price of mining giant WPP.
We are conscious that a number of our more successful tips could run into a bout of profit taking after their recent strength and raised stop loss levels for our notional investments in shares such as Genus, WPP, Halma, Experian and Ricardo.
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