Another quarter gone

I just looked back to my last quarterly post - to see it was put up the day before Mark Carney took over at the Bank.  Since then, we have commitments to low rates and employment - how the world changes!  Sadly for Mark, I think the UK banking community is somewhat more cynical than his native Canada - betting on interest rate rises much earlier than announced.

I for one am with the bankers here - what state body can hope to control free markets, especially in a country that slowly but surely will slip down the rankings of global economies over the coming decades?  I'd prefer to place my money on King Canute.

So let's talk about me!  And there is some good news this quarter:

1. I have swung back into the black, with a growth rate of 1.06% - not much, but that includes the fees I am subject to
2. Annuity values seem to have jumped - so I am on track to be on more than 51% of my current salary (and hopefully no mortgages by then)
3. My TER is down, remaining on a consistently downward trend that one would expect as a result of a buy-and-hold-forever strategy.  Its dropped from 0.81% to 0.74% in three months - and it was at 0.88% six months ago.   So that's more of my wealth to me, and less to fund management companies.

I sit on the sidelines at the moment, watching the 'recovery' take place - you can see from my performance vis-a-vis the FTSE All Share that i am definitely missing out.  My question is this: do I believe in what is happening in the world right now?  The UK house pyramid is being inflated by the government, by providing state support to those who would otherwise not be able to save a great enough deposit to buy a property - so prices go up.  What a surprise.

Do I think the world's savers will accept being robbed by their governments printing money forever? It isn't impossible that this is the new norm, but it should be remembered that those who benefit from rising asset prices are those who hold assets - those with small savings do not, generally, hold much other than cash.  So it is only those with a LOT of money who are going to benefit from the current market moves - and that is a recipe for social unrest.

My use of ISAs over the last few months has increased, in line with my overall strategy to move cash to a place where I can easily get access to it.  The 40% gamble you take as a high rate tax payer with your pension is that to buffer government interference - but I don't want to place all my eggs in one basket.  Cash in pensions comes out at 65; cash in ISAs comes out when the holder perceives government-driven risk and wants to get their savings abroad.

A downbeat post this one, but I believe markets have to go up and down - that is the free market - when government begins to try and make them go on up forever, unwilling to accept the natural vagaries of the capitalist system, bad things are likely to happen. 

Gold Resource

Readers know my penchant for gold and those who pull the stuff out of the ground....

My most recent purchase, Gold Resource Corporation fell off a cliff (a 21% drop) on the morning of Tuesday 17th September.   As ever, not learning from my earlier African Barrick Gold experience, I got involved.

The drop seems to have been spurred by a couple of changes in the business:

1. The resignation of the CEO, William Reid, who will be replaced by his son Jason Reid
2. A proposed 8% on precious metals miners in Mexico (where Gold Resource Corporation has all its mines and exploration)

I am not concerned about either point particularly - Gold Resource Corporation is one of the cheapest listed gold producers in the world, and neither an 8% levy or a change in the CEO fundamentally changes the business.

Cyclically Adjusted Price / Earnings - or the Schiller PE

A quick post tonight on something I am really into - Mebane Faber is a great source for this - is the Cyclically Adjusted Price / Earnings ratio.

Have a look at the paper here for more details on this approach - which values overall markets relative to their historic performance.

Barry Ritholtz has been kind enought to report this quarter's data on his page - the key table being here:

This should be read alongside the paper above, which will put the numbers in context - not all markets have the same average, so it's not a straight comparison.

Now where can I find a Greek market ETF.......

Down to Mexico

With Gold Resources Corporation, a seriously out of favour gold mining stock that is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and operates in Mexico.

Why / how did I find this one?  Well, I started tracking it a few months ago having spotted it has a strong dividend orientation (particularly for a gold miner).  If it can maintain its current 3c a month payout that puts it on a 5% yield (pretty impressive for a gold miner, which actually produces a lot of silver - about 100 times as much by weight according to the quarterly release on 8th May).

Year to date it has lost 54% of it's value and cut its dividend in half - but it has a reputation to maintain as a monthly dividend payer so it's likely management will be doing all they can to keep the dividends flowing.

It owns six properties in the Oaxaca state in Mexico, of which five are exploratory and one is operating as a mine.  A key metric for gold miners (especially with the recent drop in the price of gold) is the cost to produce each ounce.  In Gold Resource Corporation's case the total AuEq cost (gold equivalent cost - Au is the atomic symbol) was reported as $515 in May.  Compare that to today's spot price for gold, $1,287.80.  What was also interesting in the May release was that the company has paid down all its debt.

So, to go over that again:

1. The company has no debt
2. It produces gold at less than 40% of the market price
3. It has paid a dividend every month for the last 36
4. It's yielding 5%
5. Its share price is down 54% this year

A pretty compelling selection if you ask me.

One of the ones I have had my eye on

An early entry for July 2013 - I bought a decent volume of the Jardine Matheson ADR on Wednesday afternoon.

Having been to the Far East last year, I was particularly impressed by Singapore.  It is an impressive place for several reasons - it has a very strong state, as well as an appetite for trade (in fact, the main reason it was founded by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819). 

Jardine Matheson ('Jardines') is one of the oldest companies that operates out of Singapore, and boy is it involved in a lot of things.  Pulled straight from Wikipedia: 

'Today, Jardines is a Fortune Global 500 company^[2] that consists of Jardine Pacific, Jardine Motors Group, Jardine Strategic, Dairy Farm, Hongkong Land, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Jardine Cycle & Carriage and Astra International.^[3][4][5] It also owns Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group and has an investment (21%) in Rothschilds Continuation Holdings, the merchant banking house.'

Impressive stuff - a real classical conglomerate.  Looking through the list you will see if is a play on Far Eastern growth - or at least that's the theory behind my purchase.

It's not the most generous of dividend companies - the 12 month trailing dividend is 2.25% for the main listing (remember, I have bought an ADR), but it has huge exposure to a part of the world that is going to be more and more consumer orientated during my lifetime.

Laura was enthusiastic about the stock too (she liked Singapore....), and I was lucky (time will tell?!) enough to time my buy as the UK stock market was tumbling - so I picked up 20% more than I would usually do.

 

Back into negative territory

 I am back to that thing I thought I had left behind - losing money!  The slump in the gold price in the last quarter has been a real kick in the proverbial for me.  As a reminder, I am exposed to the price of gold via the ETFS Swiss Physical Gold ETF (down 26.85% since 1st January 2013; 13.6% of my total portfolio investments) and African Barrick Gold (down 78.21% 1st January 2013; 4% of my total investments).  Simply, gold has really stitched me up this quarter.  Luckily I am retaining a lot of my assets in cash (37.4%) so that has placed a brake on a ridiculous drop.

The impact of my buy and hold strategy is becoming obvious as the my TER reduces gradually (down to 0.81% from 0.88% three months ago), and my yield increases (12 month trailling is up 0.12% to 1.41% in three months).


As to individual share performance, African Barrick Gold is the naughty child in the corner (down 74.95% excluding its dividend) and Games Workshop sits high up there with a growth of 28.68% (excluding it's chunky 5.34% dividend).

Mark Carney kicks off at the Bank of England tomorrow; I understand the property bubble he maintained in Canada is looking fit to burst, so how long he survives running the British economy I do not know.  What I do know is that I will be moving out of sterling stocks in the next few weeks (my eye is on getting some Singaporean stocks, although I am not yet entirely sure how I will manage that through Hargreaves Lansdown) - I am nervous about the value of the pound as the quantitative easing race to the bottom continues apace....

Another Carnival Cruises crash?

It certainly was this morning, but not in the same vein as the Costa Concordia disaster in the Mediterranean at the start of 2012.  No, this morning the shares started 15.5% down on yesterday - and when I see that kind of share performance, I start to get excited!

Why, you ask?  You already hold CCL shares from the last time the company crashed something - how can a big drop be good?  Well, first things first - Carnival hasn't dropped as far as it did last time and it's been happily paying dividends since then.  It remains a solid long term company too - it's the biggest in a market which has huge barriers to entry (can anyone lend me the cash to buy a cruise liner?  I didn't think so), it's attractive to the oldies - and there are plenty of those in the world - and more importantly there will be loads more in the developing world who want to take advantage of the self-contained hell that is a cruise.  I cannot imagine anything worse.

The financial fundamentals are important in a business this size, so let's have a quick look at what reassured me once the markets were open this morning. Firstly, bookings grow - but in order to make this happen, ticket prices are down.  The earnings guidance is down by between 9% and 31% - so probably down 20%.  Sounds bad, but I do not think this is a position that will sustain - as I said above, this is a service for old people and there will be lots more of rich ones of those in future unless we all go Logan's Run - not a particularly attractive concept for a 31 year old!

I was thinking to pick up something distressed in Europe about now, particularly in Italy which totally stinks at the moment (wife said no to Greece :-(), but I am also getting twitchy about 12 year highs in the London markets.  Although, that said, if you consider all the money the Government has printed then actually the markets could go a lot higher - purely on the basis that so much money is washing around the system.  I digress.

The other company I am really interested in getting involved with is Jardine Matheson - an old family business with lots of interesting exposure over South East Asia.  Probably good until a war kicks off over the South China Sea!

Who ate all the pies?

I appear to have done so.  Ask my wife - I love Greggs, and it might be starting to show.

Sadly for Greggs, the stockmarket did not love their latest results .... and it showed.  On the 29th April the share price dropped more than 10% off the back of some fairly tedious results - like for like sales were down 4.4% during the last quarter.  Why?  Well, bad weather has been blamed.

I already held Greggs in my portfolio before the drop ... and I am very happy to load up on some more.  Why, you might ask?

Well, look at my investment criteria:

• Be contrarian - I bought in as others sold out
• Seek dividends greater than 3% - tick, Greggs is at 4.88% and the board will be keen to defend that 'rising dividend every year since listing' reputation
• Exposed to lots of markets - not really, these guys stick to the people they know, who tend to be Scots and those from northern England
• Get Laura's approval - aside from the obesity issue, she's very happy with Greggs
• Never buy on a Monday - nope, bought these bad boys on a Tuesday

A handy addition to the portfolio, let's hope.

Unlike African Barrick Gold, which continues to pile in - my investment has now lost just shy of 61% of it's value.  How annoying.

I have the POOOOOWWWEERRRRRR

Eleven days ago I made my latest buy.

I'd been feeling a bit funny about the 'always up' effect that seems to be going on in world stock markets these days, so I wanted to leave this purchase a bit longer than normal.

I don't think I previously mentioned, but I have been looking to get into a 'purchase logic' rhythm.  By this I mean that I have identified the main drivers of decision making, and will now rotate through the reasons that drives each purchase.

When I reflected on what and why I was looking at particular shares, I came up with three primary levers:

• Exposure to an undervalued market
• 'Safe' companies
• Technical drivers

For the first, think of Energias de Portugal.  A big reason for considering the stock is that it is closely associated with one of those countries in southern Europe that everyone is worrying about.  Portugal sucked on a cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings measure when I bought EDP - yet in fact it has exposure to Brazil and to the world's third largest renewable energy company.

Unilever was my latest 'safe' company - well know, sustainable (?) dividend grower that it is.  The world would have to go very wrong for Unilever is tank - although som enthusiastically bad management could cause it to go wrong (a problem I believe it is over).

My third lever for selection is the technical drivers.  I previously indicated my attraction to technicals like dividend cover, dividend levels, numbers of countries operated in, free cash flow, dividend growth rates, and earnings per share growth rates.  Well this the basis which I bought on most recently.

I review my weighted portfolio (exempting my gold ETF, which I hold to protect value haha recent gold slump!) against a set of criteria.  I then apply coefficients to make the average of each set of company fundamentals equal the difference between the currently owned shares average yield minus 3%.  This anchor point was sitting at 1.50 prior to my latest buy.

So I looked at currently held companies and a shortlist of others that I also fancied.  For companies those not currenlty held in the portfolio I expect a significantly higher (yet undefined) performance about those held.

I got to a shortlist that included African Barrick Gold (recently bought so disqualified), Games Workshop Group, Aviva, XP Power, and Vodafone (in that order).  Looking at these, I have bought into all but XP Power and Games Workshop Group twice already.   And out of the two I liked XP Power more (although it scored quite a bit less than Games Workshop Group) - this was mainly 'push' away from Games Workshop Group, which has a tight (as in bad) dividend cover of 1.08 versus 1.76.  So that's where I ended up - more XP Power.

So going back to my cycle - next month I need to be looking for stocks in undervalued markets - I can only imagine I will be digging around the Mediterranean region, given how much life sucks down in those parts. 

I hate gold .... miners

The elephant in the room to recognise this month is African Barrick Gold.  I rue the day I discovered this stock, which is a majority owned subsidiary of Barrick Gold Corp.  Since I came across these guys and bought in, then bought some more after the price drop post-Chinese pull out, my shares have lost 50% of their value.  Add in that costs are going up at their operations and it looks like the dividend might be history (although Barrick Gold Corp can't really afford to not have the cash flow).  Contrarian as I am, I think I might have three months off these guys before I consider getting back in.

So, what are the highlights for the last three months?  The gain has ticked up to 1.34% since the start of 2012 - although the market has zoomed up recently and is up 18.29%.  Not great really.

However, I am not the only manager who has had a bit of a crappy three months - I have moved from the 90th percentile up to the 83rd percentile of managers as listed by Trustnet.  And importantly, that's for the funds that haven't been cancelled or merged due to poor performance (a great trick I learned that happens with our friends in the City).

My dividend yield is on the uptick - very important given that dividends have been the primary contributor to wealth growth via the stock market over the last 100 years.  It's up to 1.29%; as time goes on I would hope this would head towards the market average - which is 3.3% today.

The absolute best is saved to last this quarter - and that is the likely output of my current strategy, which will deliver 59% of today's income when I retire at 65 should everything else remain equal.  I can live with that idea!

What else? The lunacy in the markets will probably continue for some time as free money juices stocks upwards.  I am going to stick to doing what seems to make sense - which other than African Barrick Gold - is my current stock selection strategy.

Thanks readers!

More Lever!

I have just placed my latest order with Hargreaves Lansdown for more Unilever.

I remember writing my 2012 review of my portfolio and just thinking 'yes'.  Unilever is an awesome company - it is exceptionally boring, and that makes me very happy.  Anyone who has been looking at my recent exciting purchase of African Barrick Gold will see why boring is good - and exciting is bad!

A quick reminder on Unilever's great data (other than the 26% share price rise in the last 12 months, which is clearly unimportant).

1. Google Finance has the yield today at 3.06% - so just above the 3% threshold
2. It's exposed to a lot of markets - around 101 by my last calculation - and it is doing very well versus its competitors in the emerging economies.  I think that foreign money will come in very useful as the UK obliterates the pound through quantitative easing
3. Laura loves Unilever - they have great ethical credentials (unlike my favorite Tesco, who she says suck)
4. It isn't Monday (useful!)
5. It was nice to see one of the directors upping his stake recently too

Looking forward to those quarterly dividends rolling in!

A New Hope......

So, today I took a risk ... although obviously it shouldn't be because you don't risk your future (by doing silly things like running your pension yourself without any financial services experience).

I have been reading about CAPE which is a way of measuring the value of a market against its average - it's supposed to be a real hardcore value investor approach to reviewing markets.  Unsurprisingly, Europe totally sucks at the moment - and it's CAPE reflects that.

So, looking down the list, where'd you think I went for? Greece? No. Portugal?  Yes, you got it - Portugal. 

But I went for a very interesting company there - one that my colleague at work commented 'how do you find these companies?!'.  EDP, or Energias de Portugal, is the former state electricity company - and it is awesome.  Why?  Well, a couple of things I really like about it:

1. It is the majority shareholder in EDP Renováveis - the world's third largest wind farm builder and operator
2. The Chinese have bought into it in a big way but do not control it.

It also has some tasty fundamentals which you can see on the investor's page - so it's paying consistent, increasing dividends - and the yield is 7.67% on Google Finance at the moment.   It's also got good geographical coverage - Spain, Portugal, Brazil, France, Poland, Romania, Belgium and the United States.  Dividend cover was 1.68 for the 2011 dividend - not initially attractive, until you consider this is a utility in a depressed state going through horrendous austerity because of Germany.  It's not going to get any worse unless the global financial system goes into meltdown (hopefully my gold holding will cover my ass in that eventuality!)

Other things I was looking at this month were getting involved in some forestry investment companies, or potentially more Unilever or Carnival Cruises - because they are both nice and boring with dividends that keep coming (60% of historic stock market growth has come from dividends, remember!).

Ok, that's all for today.  Hopefully no more African Barrick Gold events in this second Chinese-contacted business....

African Barrick Whoaoa!

An exciting early purchase this week - African Barrick Gold's shareprice nosedived on Tuesday morning after the majority shareholder, Barrick Gold Corp, announced it wasn't going to flog off African Barrick Gold to the Chinese state gold producer.

Why does this mean a 20% drop in the company's (African Barrick Gold) value? I have no idea - I guess the speculators were cleared out of the market.  What it did mean for me was 'buying opportunity' - nothing in what I care about had changed, apart from the expected dividend which touched over 3% - so I doubled my holding.

Since I bought in the share price is back up by a 1-1.5%, so no big dramas.  Do I think the dividend is safe?  I'd say so, given that Barrick Gold Corporation needs to cashflow to push out it's own dividends.

I read a slightly concerning story about energy rationing in Zambia, which is affecting the miners there, but I am not overly concerned about these kind of things.

The last three, and my thoughts for 2013

Ok, back in ....

De La Rue

Market dominant (the majority of nations are or have been customers), a predicted yield of more than 4%,  and the wife is a big fan - there was little choice but to get some De La Rue the month I did buy into it.

It had a rather sad end to the year, dropping over 10% - but is it still a goer?  It's on a very high price to earnings (just shy of 25), but fundamentally looks like it has a sound basis.  What could really screw the company up is bad management - they do have a couple of European competitors, and I am sure the business between the three is pretty cut-throat.  Diversification is what will keep this business profitable in the long run - and it's a relief to me they also manufacture high security feature passports.

Unadjusted yield: 2.74%

Greggs

This company was a stock market darling when I bought in, being one of only a handful of firms to increase it's dividend for decades in a row.  So why's it near the bottom of the list?

Although Lancaster has three of them, outside of the UK its non-existant - and i don't really see us convincing many foreigners to look like fat pies over the next few years.

Since I bought in, the Chairman has announced his intention to step down in 2013 and the CEO has been poached by Brakes (and good for him - its a great promotion).  The significant question for me is: are these rats leaving the metaphorical ship?  I have to say, with a slowdown in sales announcement a few weeks ago I can't really see myself doing anything more with Greggs for the coming few months.  It will remain on the watch list, but I cannot see it getting further.

Unadjusted yield: 3.78%


Vodafone

Oh Vodafone, how I love you!  Not because you are the last stock to blog on, but because you are such a perfectly successful British multinational. So why have you done this to me?  It's so out of character.  Not only are you my dog, but you are one of the Dogs of the FTSE.

I bought two tranches of Vodafone in 2012, and they've combined to give me a big kick in the teeth.  Its the world's biggest mobile telecommunications company when measured by revenues, second only to China Mobile in subscriber numbers (and that is a mobile market you do not want to go anywhere near).  It has amazing overseas exposure - Africa, North America, Europe (and therein lies the problem), the Far East.....

It also has to compete for fourth generation frequencies all over the world.  The electromagnetic spectrum is regulated by countries who allow you to send messages on wavelengths if you have bought them.  Right now the fourth generation frequencies are being auctioned - and if you remember the ridiculous amount of money that was spent on the 3G licenses, the market does, you will know why to be frightened.

But lets get real - its certainly hard to unpick the telecoms crash from the dot com crash and identify what the impact on the mobile phone companies was of overpaying - but these are services which are only going to grow.  Landlines are dead - data communication is the future - and firms like Vodafone, with their equipment partners (Huawei, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, ZTE, Nokia Siemens Networks), are the businesses that will benefit.  This is still gold rush territory in my head.

So will I be selling?  Will I hell!  I have absolute conviction in this company - even though the market doesn't.  In 30 years time I'll find out if I was right!

Unadjusted yield: 3.66%

So that's all for this year's review.  What do I anticipate in the next twelve months? Probably the following:

1. No crash, but no significant growth (so outperform with good dividend yielders)
2. A continued increase in the price of gold - primarily driven by central banks
3. A reduction in the portfolio running cost as the cost of share acquisition reduces as an overall proportion of the total fund value (it's front weighted, but the shares stay for ever)
4. A reduction in government expenditure internationally - so avoid those providing the government with services if the government is the main customer (raising questions about poor old CareTech)
5. A good old UK Tory Party scandal (its as easy as predicting rain in Lancashire)

Until next time...

The first twelve

So that's just over twelve months gone of my high-stakes experiment into running my own pension fund.  The performance highlights (if I were a fund manager i'd be fired):

1. I've achieved a share value growth of 0.32%, compared to the FTSE all share index which is up 8.25%
2. My gross yield is 1.23%; the market manages 3.4% at the time of writing
3. Costs are low - my TER is running at 0.99%, compared to a market average of 1.6%

So I should really fire myself now and get into a tracker.  Or should I?  Let's have a look at each holding to see how it has done.

I currently have 16 shares held in my portfolio, one over the magic fifteen recently reported as the 'optimum' number.  Their performance breaks down as follows:

• Aviva   -   up 25.97%
• Carnival   -   up 21.09%
• J Sainsbury   -   up 14.80%
• Games Workshop Group   -   up 13.85%
• Unilever   -   up 8.87%
• Caretech Holdings   -   up 2.65%
• African Barrick Gold   -   up 1.41%
• Smith & Nephew   -   up 0.73%

• IG Group   -   down 4.18%
• Tesco   -   down 6.10%
• XP Power   -   down 6.53%
• ETFS Swiss Physical Gold   -   down 7.14%
• Dee Valley Group   -   down 7.14%
• De La Rue   -   down 11.39%
• Greggs   -   down 12.06%
• Vodafone   -   down 12.70%

Aviva

This company has had a seriously up and down year - at one point it was down 20% from purchase price, now it's 25% up!

I bought into Aviva because I read it was trading at a discount of 30% to its share price (or Price to Book - P/B).  Well, according to the Motley Fool its now only at a discount of 7% - so that looks like it was a good buy.  The company is flogging off unprofitable businesses to maintain the dividend - which Google Finance currently has at 6.97%.

It looks like the two purchases I made were when it was a good buy, but i'd say with all the risk around the business the opportunity there has now closed.

Not adjusting for inflation, the shares have yielded 5.77% on the in ital purchase prices.

Carnival

If you remember back that far, at the start of 2012 the Costa Concordia ran aground - partially capsizing and killing 32 people.  A very sad event that led to (in my view) a huge overreaction by the market. 

The Costa Concordia cost Carnival Corporation $570 million to build and fit out accord to Wikipedia.  It was insured.  The market valuation of Carnival Corporation dropped from £20 billion to £16 billion overnight - equating to about 10 times the value of the asset (the boat).  Carnival dominate the international cruise industry, and logic said that the shares would have to recover to somewhere near the previous level fairly quickly.  As at lunchtime on Monday, they were 3.24% higher than the day before the disaster happened.

Again, not adjusted for inflation the shares have yielded 4.85% over the purchase price.

J Sainsbury

A good performer, but i'll be honest now: I have no idea why I bought into this stock off the top of my head.

Looking back, it was because I believed it was a good defensive share (admittedly with very poor geographical diversification - nothing of note outside the UK).  The wife perceived them to have much more ethical practices than other major food retailers in my portfolio, and it was on course for a 4.8% yield.  And that was about it.

It's great performance over the last twelve has been something to do with its ability to compete in the UK market, where it has grown it's market share five months in a row to the start of December. 

Looking forward, there are concerns as to the general marketing conditions in the UK for retailers - very competitive, and household incomes being squeezed.  BUT - i'd point you back to my earlier post; everyone needs to eat.

Unadjusted yield from J Sainsbury over the last 12 months has been 3.87%.

Games Workshop

A blast from my childhood, I bought into Games Workshop because it had good geographic diversification and a massive 'moat' over it's (non-existent) competitors - meaning it is able to maintain very good margins.  It also had a yield i'd calculated as 11.82% based on what Google Finance was telling me. 

I now pop into the stores and talk to the staff regularly; they remain (in Covent Garden at least!) fantastic ambassadors for the firm.  They are all hobbyists, friendly, and knowledgeable about the current and past Games Workshop market offerings.

Its only technical downside as a company, which prevented me buying in for a second time in late August, was it's dividend cover which was just over 1.  I popped into the Covent Garden store just before Christmas, and it wasn't busy (i had expected it to be rammed), so I look forward to seeing the interim results that will be out in the next couple of weeks.

Unadjusted yield: 2.76%

Unilever

A true 'blue chip' company, what could go wrong with Unilever?  It turned out not much.  The one story I remember since buying into Unilever was the one about the excellent performance in emerging markets.  First world consumers will not be switching brands too much between P&G, Unilever, and a couple of other big players - but emerging markets are their to be educated as to their preference brands.  That Unilever is growing strongly is a good sign - and it is historically 50% British, so I expect will do well in the former colonies.

It was expected to yield about 3.8% back in January 2012 - it's put in 3.56% unadjusted over the last twelve months.  Good work Unilever.

CareTech

Remember CareTech?  I know/knew someone there who gave me great confidence in the firm - and it's had a storming year from a share price perspective, up 51.62% according to Google Finance.

The first time I bought in was because they had cheap offices (no leather arm chairs for the secretaries), a 4.65% yield, and the share price looked like it had been hammered by the Southern Cross debacle (an unrelated care home business that ran out of cash).  I also noted in August that it had an amazing dividend cover of about 3.6 times - leaving loads of room for growth.

0.87% unadjusted yield so far - but their main annual dividend is paid in January which should give a big boost.

African Barrick Gold

I bought into African Barrick 17 days ago - there's not so much to say so far!  An attempt to get into a good yield, diversified gold miner - the gold mining sector being one that is increasingly appearing in the press as a 'bombed out' area.  The price of gold vs price of miners has been diverging for years, and is due a correction (either cheaper gold, which is bad for me, or more expensive miners which is good news).

Smith & Nephew

A company with an andpersand in the name - very annoying when running searches, I can tell you!

Since I bought in: the CFO has resigned and it has bought a wound care company in the US (many have criticised it for 'giving up' on the market and taking the easy acquisition option).

I got in because it mends old people (there are lots of those coming - whether we as a society can afford to mend them is a different matter!), and has a big dividend increase on the cards backed by a dividend cover of more than 3 (meaning more growth potential).

IG Group

Seemingly perversely, I bought more shares in this company after it had continued a long march down into the doldrums since my first purchase.  Why? you ask.

I got into IG Group because it's a world leader in what it does.  It is exposed to western markets (but that's where people with money for spread betting live!) and carried a 4.2% dividend yield in February 2012 (now at 5.00%).

Trading volumes have been down this year, as the markets have been settled (some say 'zombiefied' due to state involvement / interference) - but as the last few days have shown, there are big political problems in the world's biggest economy which will have a huge impact on the markets tomorrow morning I suspect.  Uncertainty makes companies like IG Group thrive, and I do not believe we are out of the woods yet!

As I observed when I bought in last month, it also has SEVEN MONTHS SALES worth of cash in the bank.  Nice!

It's unadjusted yield works out to 4.57% (discounting the purchase I made three weeks ago, which would make the yield 2.26%).

Tesco

What a drama this company has caused me!  After years of sustained sales growth, it tanks within weeks of me buying in.  It needs no introduction as a business, and is beginning to feel better at the moment.  Another Carnival-esque purchase, I just did not believe Tesco was worth 18% less because of a sucky Christmas.  I guess we will find out in a few days what the last couple of weeks have meant for them.

The great thing about Tesco over J Sainsbury is it has financial muscle.  Big-picture stuff I know, but India is desperate to modernise its agriculture and food logistics systems.  Sainsbury wont go near it (successfully, at least!), but Tesco is already there.  Tesco is British - and we have such close cultural ties, i've little doubt that some of today's shelf stackers in the UK will be getting all-expenses-paid one way trips to India in the next decade to run state-wide operations for Tesco in India.

Its unadjusted yield over the last twelve has been 4.13% - not to be sniffed at!

XP Power

A company I have a strange fascination with, I bought into XP Power because it does something specific well.  The management own around 19% of the outstanding shares (a good sign!), and it chucks off a decent enough dividend (currently around 4.76%).

Why's the share price down? No obvious reasons, so maybe another good one to pick up more of shares in.

Sadly for me, XP Power hasn't paid a dividend yet since I bought it in October so no yield on this one!

ETFS Swiss Physical Gold

This share makes me sick! I thought gold was meant to hold it's value :-)

Gold watchers talk about a 'consolidation' phase, and say that with more money printing and uncertainty on the horizon the price of gold can only go up.  Let's see - I am not enamoured with this one at the moment as it has created a significant drag on my portfolio.

Dee Valley Group

The UK's smallest listed water company, this company does not do too much.  A management change here, an improved business performance there - but looking at Google Finance you can see there's hardly anything really happening.

I bought into Dee Valley Group because I worked in the UK water industry and have my head around it.  It was yielding over 4%, and the Board has committed to maintaining the dividend in real terms for the next five years.   This company will almost certainly cease to exist come any deregulation of the UK water industry, a bit like Three Valleys Water.

2.86% unadjusted dividend since I bought in.

Ok .... getting bored now.   The next three look reasonably chunky to review, so i'll leave them for a few days.  This must be my longest post yet.