There is never the "right" time for a share tipster to call a halt so it is with mixed feelings that I disclose that this is the last of the portfolio updates which have been a regular feature of this newspaper for the past 14 eventful years.
We leave you with stock markets facing an uncertain future with a minority government attempting to deal with the Brexit negotiations together with the threat of rising inflation and interest rates at home and concerns over both the Chinese and US economies.
But that could have been said at almost any time since we launched the column in January 2003 .
Over the years investors have had to deal with the after effects of political upheavals which have included with four General Elections, the Scottish Independence vote, Brexit, and the new presidency of Donald Trump, Periodic sovereign debt crises, wild swings in commodity prices and worries about the global economy have added to the mix.
In retrospect we chose a great time to begin the portfolio service with the stock market down nearly 40 per cent over the previous three years following the bursting of the dot com technology bubble.
Since then the benchmark FTSE index of the UK’s leading shares (the Footsie) has climbed a remarkable 87 per cent with increases in 10 of the 14years.
But it has not been champagne and caviar all the way and investors got a nasty shock when share prices of the top companies collapsed by 31 per cent in 2008 in the after shock of the banking crisis which ushered in a new age of austerity.
The one constant during these market fluctuations was the performance of our investment portfolios which beat the benchmark Footsie in all 14 years.
We were helped by a few shares such as Halma, Treatt and Smart Metering which managed to double in value at one time.
But the main factor was the stop loss system where we only evict tips when the price has dropped 10 per cent from previous peaks, enabling us to hold profitable investments but to cut potential losses b3efore they do too much damage.
The system was introduced after we bet against the crowd by tipping Royal Bank of Scotland and then subscribed further to a fund raising issue, losing 95 per cent of the investment in the process.
We lost a further tip under the system last week when we ditched our nominal holding intheme parks operator Merlin.
Oitherwise, the majority of our recommendations finished on a satisfactory note with three of the four portfolios recording gains of between 0.6 per cent and 1.2 per cent and the 2016 selections shading a modest 0.3 per cent.
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