Our share tips were on the retreat again last week as stock markets took another dive on renewed fears that the UK's economic recovery could be hit by a slowdown in global trade during 2015.
The sell-off saw the total value of our four portfolios drop by 1.5% when we carried out our review of progress on Wednesday morning, although it could have been a good deal worse - the FTSE 100 was down by 5.5% over the same week, while several companies exposed to the oil market saw their share prices record double-digit falls.
We enjoyed a degree of protection from the worst of the market rout through our large cash reserves, and we have not bought into oil shares despite apparent bargain-basement prices.
Even so, we did suffer a hit from a slump in the value of our recent notional purchase of mining giant Rio Tinto as metal prices continued to slide on the effects of a slowdown in Chinese demand. But brokers at Deutsche Bank believe the shares could now rebound 60% over the medium term.
Our other major fallers of the week included Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds after the two only managed to scrape through the Bank of England's latest "stress tests", while road barriers specialist Hill & Smith was hit by profit-taking.
Alternative energy supplier Infinis also suffered after hedge fund boss Guy Hands warned he was considering a share sale.
However, most of our tips proved more resilient, with household goods retailer Dunelm, transport group Wincanton and TSB recording small gains.
The best performance of the week was from the 2011 list, which showed only a fractional overall loss. The 2014 and 2013 selections managed to confine their deficits to just above the 1% mark, but the 2012 portfolio suffered a 2% drop.
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