Portfolio review 1st Half 2007

I thought I would have a look to see how my share picks have performed in the first half of the year and to see if I’m still on target for my 8% yearly target.

HYP Portfolio

This curently contains only 2 stocks, BP and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). I anticipate that the high yield portfolio will form the bulk of my investments due to its low risk/easy to manage properties.

Although the portfolio contians only 2 items to date, it will eventually exand to 10-15 companies. My idea is to build this portfolio up slowly, I don’t wish to invest all my money at the same time and want to take advantage of ‘cost averaging’. So, the storey so far:

Overall the performance to date for the current year is 4%. This doesn’t sound alot but I’ve only held the stocks for 3 months and have yet to receive the substantial 5% dividend from RBS.

Value Portfolio

The value portfolio has stormed head, mainly due to the performance of one share:

Overall performance for the first half of the year is around 11% which is very satisfying. Note the GSK appears more than expected since I disposed of a quantity before the recent fall.

Overall

Although I’m very pleased with the performance so far, I am wary of the current economic cycle and feel that we are in line for a downturn soon. That said, value shares should still outperform other shares during bear markets.

In the next 6 months I can see me selling some BP (as I’m overweight here) and probably buy GSK which has defensive and value properties.