A month of progress from the portfolio despite relatively little news. Santa delivered double digit increases from 5 holdings, with no double digit fallers. The highlight being another upgrade to expected returns from Somero - it had been pretty well flagged that business was good but the market appreciated the update nonetheless. British American Tobacco released interims that indicated cost savings kicking in ahead of schedule and increased sales of their cigarette alternatives leading to bags of cash supporting debt repayments, a hefty dividend and potential for buybacks.
Two top ups this month: Euromoney Institutional Investor (ERM) and JP Morgan Asia Growth & Income (JAGI). Both had sold off a little so I decided to end the year shopping in the pre-xmas sales. With ERM having some of their revenues drawn from organising events, fears over another COVID wave/ lockdown would justifiably hit their performance, so if this was the reason for selling it would be understandable. There are any number of reasons for selling a holding such as JAGI given that 35% of it's portfolio is based in China, and another 16% in Taiwan .It's hardly a recipe for sleeping easily at night, but assuming Mr Xi and chums don't do anything too daft and provide a softish landing for the Evergrande fall-out, China, and therefore Asia, should do just fine.
Drawing the arbitrary line under the annual performance shows the portfolio up 13.8% versus a gain of 18.2% for my benchmark. I'll take that. However, my Vanguard global tracker is up 26% - so double the gain for bugger all effort. Still I've made a decent return, increased dividends, yield and all for much less volatility than the UK indices.
Portfolio performance
Eleco -9%
