A horrendous start!

So there's no dressing up my start to this project - it's been horrendous. I've just totalled the figures up until today, and they make grim reading!

The FTSE All Share Index is up 4.17%, whereas my portfolio (taking into account management fees, interest on cash held, and dividends) is down 5.36%.

So I've underperformed the market 9.53%. Pretty terrible, because I could have put it all in a cheap tracker, but I think there's an advantage to actively managing your pension - so I've just headed over to Trustnet to see how I have performed compared to all the clever managers out there.

Top operator this quarter has been MFM Junior Oils Trust, based out of Bolton in Lancashire (no kidding!), which is up 31.6%. Well done to them! On a TER of 1.88%, you really cannot complain.

Where do I fit? 2754 out of 2793 Open Ended Investment Companies (OEICs). So in the bottom 1.4% - awful - but without factoring in a quarter of the annual TER for the funds. Based on an average UK TER of 1.6%, i'll factor in an extra 0.4% I haven't had to pay. Any better (at -4.96%)? Nope - I'm at 2744!

So can I rationalise this project to myself at all? Well, yes actually. Have I done anything I wouldn't have done again? Probably - Tesco was another lesson in "the past is no guide to the future", and my hugely illiquid Dee Valley Water drops by whole 1.5%s at a time (and all it has done is drop!). Gold has been pretty poor too. But I still think I'd be on a par with current performance - I've got my portfolio started, and all the trading costs I have incurred over the last few months will get smoothed into the value of the stocks over time. I've also held back from diving into anything new and dropped my trades to around one per month - I am anticipating a crappy market over the next two quarters, when there will be loads more good value dividend stocks out there. Plus I am in this for the long game (30 years!)

What have I got my eye on at the moment, that I need to convince the fiance about? Well, Games Workshop is yielding 9.65% (i used to play it when I was younger and it's a great business - no serious competition at all!), and I like CareTech as I have said before (yielding 4.32%). I'll probably dive into both during the next month, should they drop by a couple of percentage points.

Until next time!