Boring purchase

I've interrupted a long period of inactivity with a very dull purchase.  Ho hum.  I wouldn't normally bother writing about it, but so far I've tracked every single buy and sell in this blog, so I may as well continue.

I'd been sitting on a load of cash in my investment account for two reasons:

• We're planning to build a kitchen extension, and I thought I might need the money for that.
• I didn't want to be fully invested in shares, because the market didn't look particularly cheap.

The first of these reasons is no longer relevant - I have enough savings elsewhere to cover the extension.  The second still applies, but I can park the money in short term bonds and earn a small return, rather than leaving it as cash and earning nothing.

So I've increased my holding of the iShares UK Corporate Bond 1-5 Year ETF (IS15) up to 25% of my portfolio.  It's now my second-biggest holding behind Berkshire Hathaway:

• BRK-B: 35.3%
• IS15.L: 25.1%
• TSCO.L: 18.4%
• NWBD.L: 14.2%
• BP.L:  7.0%

Review of 2012

Rather than summarizing, I think it's simplest to list my transactions in 2012:

• January.  Bought some more Game Group, on the premise that they were either going to 10-bag or were going bankrupt.  Sold all Maxima and Bond shares, to realise tax losses.
• March.  Sold all my Game Group shares, upon realising (correctly) that bankruptcy was overwhelmingly likely.
• April.  Bought some more Tesco shares, because they were too cheap.

That's it.  So I finish the year with a mere 5 shareholdings: Berkshire Hathaway, Tesco, Natwest perpetual 9% preference shares, BP, IS15 (Short-dated corporate bond ETF).  

NWBD was the outstanding performer over the year with a return of 47% (including dividends).  Berkshire Hathaway and IS15 delivered an acceptable return of 12% and 10% respectively, while BP and Tesco let the side down with falls of 3% and 5%.

I've just enhanced my portfolio tracker to report annual performance figures.  These differ a fair bit to those I've previously reported, but I think they're more accurate (and now I can report consistent numbers each year):

• 2008:  Down 70.2%.  Portfolio was small.
• 2009:  Up 62.6%.  Portfolio was medium.
• 2010:  Up 17.6%.  Portfolio was large.
• 2011:  Down 14.8%.  Portfolio was small.
• 2012: Up 10.1%.  Portfolio was medium.

My annual return over the 5 years has been 14.7%, but that's only because my bad years have come when I've had a small portfolio and the good years have come with a medium or large portfolio (if small=1 then medium=2 and large=4).  If I'd been fully invested throughout then my return would have been minus 11%.

So far in 2013 (yes, all 9 days of it) I'm up 3.5%.

Update:
Reworked performance report after enhancing my portfolio tracker to report accurate numbers.  The previous report was not 1st January to 1st January, but something like 6th January to 4th January - turns out that makes a massive difference to my return over the year - first week of 2012 was a disaster and first week of 2013 has been stellar.