So, things have been pretty quiet since I bought that second lot of Vodafone shares on the 24th. To be honest, this is pretty much in line with me "i think something bad's going to happen over the next few months to the stock market so i better be prepared" strategy. The UK stock market had a stinking time at the start of March, dropping just short of 3% in three days - makes me think there is worse to come!
So what's been happening recently? Well, i've decided a watch list is in order. Given I think that equities are going to get a lot cheaper in the next few months when everyone works out what a big deluded mess the current market performance has been - being entirely the product of mindless stealing from the population by government (or Quantitative Easing, for short!) - I want to try and remember who I thought was interesting over the previous few months.
So far it's got National Grid on (good sustained dividend), Fenner Plc (worlds number 1 conveyor belt manufacturer, started in Hull!), Care-Tech (care home group that's had a hard time because of the Southern Cross mess, but one at which I know an employee who says it's fine), Premier Farnell Plc (electronics distributor, one of two vendors of the Raspberry Pi - their site is getting 500,000 hits per day at the moment because the device has caused such a stir), United Utilities (good dividend, lower P/E than Dee Valley Water), Drax (massive coal power station energy producer - not sure about the environmental side though), Jersey Electricity (its got a monopoly, and just sells on very cheap French power - with a good yield), National Express Group (decent yield, and exposed to UK, Spain and North American transport markets), Asian Citrus Holdings (owns a load of fruit farms in China, where people are consuming more fruit as they "westernise" whatever that means!), and finally Games Workshop (i used to play it, apparently people still do, and it chucks off so much cash it's dividend is over 10%!).
So I was thinking my gold proportion of my portfolio was getting a bit behind versus other stocks - I was on a mix of 50% cash (I am serious about this market problem!), 37% equities and 13% gold. So I rebalanced the mix to 23% gold, 37% equities and 40% cash. Laura said she likes gold, and as ever it's a store of value so it should go up.
But I have learned a bit of a less on on this one - i bought the gold first (through the usual Swiss gold fund LON:SGBS) thing in the morning on the 13th (not a Monday). As of today (with a little bounce during today) it's down 2.74%. Not much in the grand scheme of things, but still its the kind of difference that in a sideways market will take a dividend yield >3% (which is a target of mine) to cover as a loss. How annoying. So, new rule: only buy stocks after a fall of over a period of say, one week, of 3%. I did this with Carnival and it's doing very well now thanks!
Not long now until the end of Q1 2012, when I can tell you how this gambling my own pension thing is going. Feeling confident in myself at the moment, although I think I may have underperformed because most of my stocks are not the kind that react well in a "risk on" market!
Until next time!
