Portfolio review

I haven't posted a graph of my portfolio performance recently. Two reasons for that:

• Yahoo's historical share prices for Taylor Wimpey are broken, so my graph is inaccurate.
• It's down almost 30%.

Ah well. I'm sure starting my investment career in a bear market is a good experience. Here's how each of my purchases is doing, after accounting for dealing costs and dividends (all data produced by my python script):

RBS.L 2008-07-12 182.70 -- bought at 293.84p = -37.82%

BDI.L 2008-07-12 103.00 -- bought at 146.73p = -29.80%

IEER.L 2008-07-12 2158.00 -- bought at 2136.00p = 1.03%

IAPD.L 2008-07-12 1499.95 -- bought at 1587.32p = -5.50%

GNK.L 2008-07-12 427.75 -- bought at 526.06p = -18.69%

QDG.L 2008-07-12 132.00 -- bought at 150.50p = -12.29%

MXM.L 2008-07-12 125.00 -- bought at 145.79p = -14.26%

LTAM.L 2008-07-12 1354.19 -- bought at 1232.87p = 9.84%

ZRX.L 2008-07-12 7.25 -- bought at 11.42p = -36.52%

IDVY.L 2008-07-12 1815.00 -- bought at 2170.61p = -16.38%

IFFF.L 2008-07-12 1929.00 -- bought at 2176.70p = -11.38%

TW.L 2008-07-12 37.75 -- bought at 104.43p = -63.85%

The biggest losers are TW, RBS and ZRX. They're also my biggest holdings. Perhaps I should take a hint.

Some lessons to take out of this:

• Management tend to be either lie or be incompetent. Do not trust what they say.
• Leverage is very bad in a downturn.
• A low share price can materially hurt a company, e.g. by denying them a rights issue.
• A downturn can lead to a general sell-off, even of companies unaffected by recession.

I will continue to invest over the next few years; I will learn my lessons but continue to pursue value.