Our share tips struggled to make headway in a flat stock market last week with the total valuation of our four portfolio recording a marginal slippage of just less than 0.5% when we carried out our review of progress on Wednesday morning.
Only the lack-lustre 2015 selections managed to buck the general trend by halving previous losses despite further weakness in FirstGroup and Argos and Homebase stores concern Home Retail.
Much of the credit was down to a sharp recovery in the price of Tennent's Brewery owner C&C which had been nursing losses of approaching 10% last month before directors launched a major share buy-back programme.
Cattle and pigs breeder Genus also returned to profit as investors took up positions on hopes of good news from a trading update due this Wednesday.
High performance engineer Ricardo, famed for its work on McLaren engines, recorded a similar move back into the black in the 2014 portfolio but the gain was cancelled out by another slippage in mining giant Rio Tinto as a result of weak commodity prices.
It was the same story in the 2012 list where a useful rise in B&Q retailer Kingfisher was not quite enough to make up for the effects of profit-taking in shares of motorways contractor Hill & Smith and advertising giant WPP.
Safety equipment specialist Halma, our most successful tip, demonstrated its resilience in this portfolio to manage a small rise after directors produced an encouraging trading bulletin to counter the
effects of a downgrade by stockbroking giants JP Morgan Cazenove. The 2013 portfolio, which comprises five heavyweight shares in the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 share index, slipped back in line with the general performance of the Footsie with only publishing giant Pearson managing to record a rise over the week.
We took an unadventurous approach to the selections as a way to consolidate previous strong gains but intend broadening the portfolio with a more speculative addition in the coming weeks.
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