Saturday 31 December 2016

Portfolio Update 2017


The end of the year is nigh, so it must be time for an annual portfolio update!

It's been a hectic year. I added quite a few holdings including a few new US holdings in early January 2016 and these have all made decent gains over the year from dollar appreciation following the Brexit vote. Also some of my larger UK stocks also received a boost for the same reason. Unfortunately later in the year, following Trump's victory, I experienced a bit of a slump despite a broadly buoyant market.

A small part of my portfolio has been sold down and invested into a portfolio of Unit Trusts & OEICs, but I won't comment on the performance of that at this stage, as it's been invested less than a year.

Unfortunately during 2016 my stock portfolio has underperformed my benchmark index, the FTSE All Share, marking the end of a 7 year out-performance spell.

This was largely because I am very underweight mining/resource stocks which have rallied significantly this year, on the back of a recovery in oil and commodity prices. The All Share Total return has been roughly 16%, and my return for the year including dividends but minus fees was 12% so an underperformance of -4%, which I'm still very happy with considering I own zero resource stocks.

Over a 5 year rolling period my portfolio has delivered a return of 82.7% against a return of 61.6% for the All Share TR over the same period. So thankfully it has been worth the effort!

My top 3 performing holdings this year were: Murray International Trust (+49.6%), Intercontinental Hotel Group (+39%), and IG Design (+31.18%).

The 3 worst were IG Group (-36.05%), Berkeley Group (-20%) & Marston's (-14.02%)

IG Group were hit particularly hard recently when the FCA announced that they may clamp down on the amount of leverage allowable for CFD and spread betting contracts.

Holdings as they stand are:


Company %
GlaxoSmithKline 8.09
Imperial Brands 8.02
Fidelity China Special Situations 7.84
AstraZeneca 7.75
British American Tobacco 7.47
Berkshire Hathaway 6.34
Murray International Investment Trust 6.22
Fundsmith Emerging Equities Trust 5.89
Lloyds Banking Group 4.28
F&C Commercial Property Trust 3.29
Legal & General 2.96
Alphabet 2.89
Unilever 2.79
PZ Cussons 2.26
Reckitt Benckiser 2.09
BAE Systems 2.07
Diageo 1.94
PepsiCo 1.89
Walt Disney 1.88
Intercontinental Hotels 1.86
Chipotle Mexican Grill 1.70
WS Atkins 1.55
Apple 1.48
IG Design 1.33
Sage 1.16
Marstons 0.97
Berkeley Group 0.84
Restaurant Group 0.72
P2P Global 0.70
IG Group 0.63
Domino's 0.58
Cash 0.52

I'm happy with the portfolio as it stands, and don't anticipate making any huge changes. I may add to my positions in Restaurant Group and IG Group as I think these both look attractive at current price levels, also I am looking to acquire a holding in IBM as I'm quite interested in their Watson AI software technology which I think could be a source of growth for the IT goliath.

If you have any questions/queries please leave a comment here or get in touch via twitter @mattbird55

All the best for 2017!

Matt.