Anglo-Scottish banking group TSB helped us to forget our recent disappointment over the Saga flotation when share dealings got off to a flying start on Friday morning.
We applied for a nominal £1000 worth of TSB shares for our 2014 portfolio and found ourselves allotted £998.80 worth as advisers bent over backwards to favour small investors.
Within minutes, the holding had surged in value by more than £100 as the share price raced from an initial 260p to around 295p in unofficial trading ahead of the group's formal stock market debut this Wednesday.
The windfall helped the portfolio to push to a peak valuation of £6450 despite a sharp fall in shares of engineer Ricardo on concerns the recent strength of the pound could affect its export business.
The TSB reception provided a sparkling contrast to the soggy performance of over-50s travel and insurance provider Saga, which has drifted 7% since its own flotation on May 23 and has contributed to a flat showing by our 2013 portfolio.
The majority of our share tips recorded small falls over the last week despite a late stock market rally and we sold our nominal holdings in engineer GKN and B&Q retailer Kingfisher from the 2011 portfolio when their share prices dropped to our stop-loss targets.
GKN is an obvious casualty of the stronger pound, which has been bumping around at five-year peaks against the dollar, while Kingfisher has suffered from the general retailing gloom with additional concerns over its major interests in the struggling French economy.
Encouragingly, our latest recommendation of shares in Scottish media group STV proved its worth, with the share price showing a 5% advance over the week, contributing to a small overall gain for the 2012 portfolio.
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