Craven House Capital $CRV.L sold

Yesterday was quite a dramatic day for Craven House Capital ($CRV.L), the company announced it would delist from AIM and join the Specialist Fund Segment of the London Stock Exchange, along with securing funding for $150m of new capital priced at 1.25p per share. The stock exploded from around 1p to a high of 1.8p and has now stabilised at 1.4p.

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Half year performance report H2 2015

It’s that time of year again, doesn’t time fly. I haven’t made many trades during the second half of the year, perhaps that is why it has been a good half year for my portfolio! It returned 7.5% in H2 2015 versus -3.4% for the FTSE All share tracker and -1.0% for the S&P tracker. Performance was driven mainly by my 34% holding in Craven House Capital (LSE:CRV), which was 16% up in the half year on good news that it has signed a deal to raise £30m in equity at a price of 1.25p per share. That is significant for a £6m market cap company. Excluding CRV my portfolio was up 3.6%, so still outerperformed.

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Portfolio Changes

A lot has been happening in the markets over the last couple of months but unfortunately I haven’t found much to take advantage of. Partly I have been too busy to look for investments but also most of the carnage seems to be hitting oil companies and mining, neither of which I think are particularly attractive on aggregate at the moment. I have made some changes to my portfolio in the last week however, but these are not a reaction to macro events these are specific adjustments I have made.

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Half year portfolio review

Time sure flies, it’s time again for a half year review. I don’t put much weight on my half year results but it’s useful to keep track of what is going on. In many ways H1 2015 was a pretty dire 6 months for my portfolio, yet I managed a respectable 8.8% return compared to 4.5% for the FTSE All share tracker and 0.2% for the S&P 500 tracker.

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2014 review and portfolio update

It’s that time of year again, and hard to believe it’s been 2 years since I started this blog. Time sure does fly. The second half of 2014 in the markets has been very interesting, unfortunately for my portfolio that wasn’t a good thing. Overall my portfolio was down 10% in H2 2014 compared to -0.7%% for the FTSE All share tracker and +5% for the S&P 500 tracker. My portfolio is 75% in the UK so the FTSE is the closest benchmark, but given how easy it is to invest in the S&P and hedge currency I aim to beat both benchmarks.

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Portfolio Update

This is a painful portfolio update for me, two of my holdings are down considerably and I’m sitting on losses not because of an error in judgement (I will happily admit I made errors but I had realized that) but because of greed. I risked a lot of money to make a further 1% on a trade. That greed for a fraction has cost me over 40% on each position. Lucky for me (or possibly due to intelligent position sizing), these positions were not large and haven’t cost my portfolio much. My pride has taken the brunt of the hit as opposed to my wallet. Hopefully by telling the tale of my woes readers will avoid similar pitfalls themselves.

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Half year portfolio report

It’s that time of year again, I review my portfolio performance every 6 months as a compromise between short term volatility and waiting too long between reviews. The first half of 2014 has been a bit of a roller coaster for my portfolio, driven mainly by swings in the price of my biggest holding Craven House Capital. The rest of the portfolio has been much smoother, seeing nice steady gains.

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