- 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.
