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Your Best Investment...

Honest reporting on shorter-term trading activity and ideas
ADrunkenMarcus
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Your Best Investment...

#11606

Postby ADrunkenMarcus » December 3rd, 2016, 9:34 pm

What's been your 'best' investment and why? (And yes, 'best' is whatever you want it to be!)

In my case, I have decided upon Domino Printing Sciences as it has the highest compound annual growth rate in total return of any shares I have held. However, there's a catch: I bought it in January 2015 at 655p a share, hoping to benefit from long term growth. Then, in March 2015, a takeover offer was published at 915p and I sold in the market at 945p on the basis that I thought the takeover would go through but the market was offering a higher price than the takeover offer. Inclusive of a 14.8p dividend, it returned almost 47 percent and a CAGR of 787 percent (largely due to the very short holding period!)

Best wishes


Mark.

gbjbaanb
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Re: Your Best Investment...

#11635

Postby gbjbaanb » December 3rd, 2016, 11:52 pm

I'll give 2 examples:

1. Trinity Mirror. I bought some a while back for 30p or so, then watched as it went up and up and up past £1. Sold out with a 200% profit and still don't know quite what happened.

2. WHSmiths. Bought 16 years ago, is now the best performer I have, with an annualised return of 8.5%. The length of time without catastrophes makes it my best overall performer.

I think the moral is to either gamble, or pick anything sensible and hold for ages. Guess which is the safest! I have others which have performed better than SMWH for short terms, but I don't really count them as best investments, if I'd kept them and they performed well over time, sure - but unless you are lucky, you really just want something that doesn't let you down. IMHO.

ADrunkenMarcus
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Re: Your Best Investment...

#11805

Postby ADrunkenMarcus » December 4th, 2016, 5:14 pm

gbjbaanb wrote:The length of time without catastrophes makes it my best overall performer.


Yes, a steady performer and a long holding period works wonders. On that basis, mine would be Diageo which had returned about 427% from October 1998 until October 2016, growing its dividend at a 6.8% CAGR and total return at 9.7%. However, I didn't buy it originally as it was a small number of inherited shares (when I was far too young to own them!): my only credit is I haven't sold it. I am hoping for similar characteristics from Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser.

gbjbaanb wrote:I have others which have performed better than SMWH for short terms, but I don't really count them as best investments, if I'd kept them and they performed well over time, sure - but unless you are lucky, you really just want something that doesn't let you down. IMHO.


Yes, that's quite true - and there are probably all sorts of short, selected periods where relatively bad companies' shares performed well. I think my Domino Printing Sciences example was a good company but the results were, essentially, one of luck in that the company was bid for so shortly afterwards. On the other hand, much of the cash proceeds went into Spirax Sarco Engineering in March 2015 and that had returned almost 50% when I worked out the figures a few weeks back.

In trying to balance between holding period and overall performance, Renishaw has done well for me: bought at 869p a share in October 2011, it had risen to 2940p as of early October 2016 and returned 263% including dividends: a CAGR of 29.4% on a total return basis. However, the period includes a strong 're-rating' and the shares have performed better than the underlying business. The longer I hold it, the more the CAGR will come down: if it holds comfortably in the double digits over a decade or more then I will be pleased.

Best wishes


Mark.

tjh290633
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Re: Your Best Investment...

#11832

Postby tjh290633 » December 4th, 2016, 6:16 pm

It's always difficult to establish this sort of performance. I calculate IRR for my holdings, using XIRR, but some short-term holdings give very high returns. For example, I sold PRU in 2010, having held it since 1990 and obtained an IRR of 12.5% but decided to exit because of the proposed massive rights issue. I switched in Brit Insurance (BRE) which was then taken over in October 2010, 5 months later, and gave me an IRR of 129%, which is typical of short term effects.

Looking at longer term holdings, IMI has the best IRR at 44%, having bought in March 2009 at 265p, feeling that they were very undervalued. 12 monrths later they had risen to 641p, becoming overweight, and so I trimmed the holding by 25%, repeating the exercise 12 months later in March 2011 when they had risen further to 992p.

Then they had a B-share issue and a share consolidation of 7 for 8 in February 2014, the price now being 1,565p. I have since added to my holding on three occasions, in October 2015 at 973p, in January 2016 at 798p and finally in February 2016 at 804p. Currently it's my heaviest weight holding, at just 18% above the median weight, and yields 3.9%.

I had held IMI years before, when they spun out of ICI in 1977. I sold them in 1988, having made a lot of profit, to release funds for my 1988 PEP subscription, and by then the yield was fairly low by comparison with the shares that I bought.

TJH

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Re: Your Best Investment...

#11837

Postby Bubblesofearth » December 4th, 2016, 6:36 pm

In absolute money terms my best investment has been the same as for the majority of people of my generation, my house.

Shares-wise probably the company share-save schemes I've had with SB (now GSK) and RB.

Best individual share a toss-up between SGE, ABF and LSE.

Gold between 2006 and 2010 was pretty good as well.

But nothing comes close to the house!

BofE

StepOne
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Re: Your Best Investment...

#11857

Postby StepOne » December 4th, 2016, 7:29 pm

When doing this sort of comparison, for any holding less than a year, I use absolute return, rather than calculating an annual IRR for it.

AndyPandy
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Re: Your Best Investment...

#11865

Postby AndyPandy » December 4th, 2016, 7:58 pm

With all due modesty, myself 20 years ago having the courage of my convictions and executing a MBO from the Company I worked for. I'd been angling to work for myself for years and this was a chance to have a bash.

It was 1997 and the IT Company I worked for could see Y2K looming for one of its products and was happy to get shot of it just in case. I made enough off the back of Y2K upgrades to buy my current property outright, which has since done very well, thank you. That £1 share I bought in my Ltd Company when it was formed at the time has compounded rather well....

In terms of Stocks, the only one that I bought and sold so far for over 100% gain was Lo-Q (now Accesso), thanks to Carmensfella's plugging. Happy at the time, but it has compounded plenty of times since then, of course......

Dod1010
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Re: Your Best Investment...

#11875

Postby Dod1010 » December 4th, 2016, 8:33 pm

It depends over what time but I bought Tullow Oil I think probably around 2003/4 at £1 a share and sold it in November 2012 at over £14. I was strangely enough a forced seller in that I needed to raise some cash and it had about the lowest yield. I do not know what that makes the return but my timing was exactly right, by sheer chance. I do not know how that compares to other shares which I have held for very much longer but I can say with confidence that I have never had a 14 bagger before or since.

staffordian
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Re: Your Best Investment...

#11896

Postby staffordian » December 4th, 2016, 10:13 pm

As far as shares are concerned, my best (luckiest?!) trade was back in 2001

I bought Games Workshop at 142p on 25 January, and sold them twenty days later at 235p

Excel tells me it's an annualised return of 255892% :D

Staffordian

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Re: Your Best Investment...

#11905

Postby SteMiS » December 4th, 2016, 11:10 pm

Back at the end of 2008/early 2009 was a great time to trade shares.

Bought RCG for 34.18p and sold 12 days later for 76.04p - 122% return
Bought Lloyds for 42.31p and sold 10 days later for 94.89p - 124% return
Bought Uniq for 3.88p and sold 20 days later for 13.99p - 261% return

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Re: Your Best Investment...

#11920

Postby CommissarJones » December 5th, 2016, 12:03 am

I think Booker Group (BOK) would have to be my best-performing share. I bought in mid-2010 for about 42 pence a share, at which point the company had paid out a total dividend of 1.27p/share for its most recent fiscal year. The stock neared 190p last year (it's now back to 169p), the total dividend has increased to 4.6p/share, and the company also made a separate return of capital for the third year in a row in 2016.

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Re: Your Best Investment...

#11930

Postby 77ss » December 5th, 2016, 4:59 am

ADrunkenMarcus wrote:What's been your 'best' investment and why? (And yes, 'best' is whatever you want it to be!)



Like Terry, I keep track of the XIRRs of my holdings.

Short term holdings can give rise to large figures. Of my current holdings, my highest XIRR is 99% with Galliford Try, but I've only held it for a few months, so I expect that figure to drop rapidly. Certainly a good start though!

Of my long term holdings the clear winner, in terms of wealth generated, is Rio Tinto, with an XIRR of 28% - over an 18 year period.

First bought in 1998 at £5.25, my one and only ten bagger - at one stage I top-sliced at £65. Pure luck - I worked for them, so benefited from their share save scheme.

Recently sold, so this is now a closed chapter (although I may buy back if the share price falls).

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Re: Your Best Investment...

#11956

Postby Jon46 » December 5th, 2016, 8:50 am

XIRR will return the ANNUAL rate of return. So if your investment has returned 28% over six months it will return 56%, or try to, as we all know, for very short periods.

For short periods, say less than, 3 months, as mentioned in the thread, absolute return is a better measure.

However, to get round this, if timespan is in DAYS, I always use

Corrected XIRR=XIRR*IF(timespan<365.25,timespan/365.25,1)

That way, after a few months, you start to get a much more useful figure, and of course after the year you just get XIRR as normal.

Jon

We always used this at work, it is a practical approach to the problem, so your, say, 299% over 25 days get to look a bit more sensible by the division and converge reasonably quickly to a good answer as months tick by.

thebarns
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Re: Your Best Investment...

#12047

Postby thebarns » December 5th, 2016, 1:09 pm

Many duff ones...... but I think

Baronsmead VCT 3 has been the best because I managed 60% tax relief (a mixture of income tax and CGT deferral) on the original investment and it has then, irrespective of tax relief, gone on to be one of the best VCTs over the last 15-16 years, not massively increasing the current net asset value from subscription in any way, but having returned way more than the initial tax relieved investment in tax free dividends paid out along the way.

However, a few duff VCT investments did make up for this !

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Re: Your Best Investment...

#12233

Postby doug2500 » December 5th, 2016, 7:18 pm

Sorry to diverge, but do you guys who track XIRR include every dividend payment?

I presume you do, but maybe you just follow capital gains?

Thanks

andyalan10
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Re: Your Best Investment...

#12234

Postby andyalan10 » December 5th, 2016, 7:22 pm

I'll say National Grid, first bought March 2006, bought some more in 2009, took up rights in June 2010, reduced slightly October 2010, topped up December 2010, have just collected dividends since. The stake is now worth approximately 5 times my net expenditure, i.e. after crediting dividends.

Would have been nice to have top sliced when they hit +100% earlier this year, they have since come down about 20%, which makes it tempting to buy some more on a near 5% yield.

Andy

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Re: Your Best Investment...

#12253

Postby SalvorHardin » December 5th, 2016, 8:04 pm

Soco International, arguably the success story of the TMF UK boards. A share which made some of us a lot of money; life-changing amounts in some cases. Though the followers of PYAD's methods who couldn't understand that the NAV of an oil company is a poor measure of the actual market value of its reserves weren't amongst us. They did like to laugh at us, as we did all the way to the bank.

First bought in 2001, then considerably added to over the next three years, in 2007-08 they peaked at over forty times my initial purchase price. I sold some on the way up, some close to the top and almost everything left on the way down in 2008-09 (Soco shares are now about 25% of their peak price). My weighted average overall return was about 2,400% over a six year period (yes, a twenty-five bagger).

Soco came about because of several factors. A bombed out market in 2001 made the shares cheap compared to the trade prices for oil companies and reserves in the corporate market. So we started off with Mr. Market giving us obviously undervalued shares. Then the global demand for oil rocketed due to the newly industrialised countries. And there was a supply crunch due to a lack of capital investment and field development in the mid-to-late 1990s, which further pushed up oil prices. Last but not least were Soco's massive discoveries off the coast of Vietnam.

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Re: Your Best Investment...

#12265

Postby 77ss » December 5th, 2016, 8:50 pm

doug2500 wrote:Sorry to diverge, but do you guys who track XIRR include every dividend payment?

I presume you do, but maybe you just follow capital gains?

Thanks


Yes. I certainly include dividends, specials, rights, demergers.......

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Re: Your Best Investment...

#12285

Postby 77ss » December 5th, 2016, 9:47 pm

andyalan10 wrote:I'll say National Grid, first bought March 2006, bought some more in 2009, took up rights in June 2010, reduced slightly October 2010, topped up December 2010, have just collected dividends since. The stake is now worth approximately 5 times my net expenditure, i.e. after crediting dividends.

Would have been nice to have top sliced when they hit +100% earlier this year, they have since come down about 20%, which makes it tempting to buy some more on a near 5% yield.

Andy


I wonder if this isn't a rather deceptive way of looking at things.

Like you, I bought in spring 2006, took up my rights (mostly) and did a bit of tinkering. The stake is now worth approximately 7 times my net expenditure as you express it. The XIRR remains stubbornly modest at 12% however.

I too have noticed the 20% decline in share price since it hit 1100 in July (although I judge that that to be a bit of an outlier) and with the prospective dividend at 5% am pondering a top-up. Particularly since the imminent sale of part of the gas network/return of capital will reduce my holding. A recent article on the matter:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/201 ... e-bidders/

tjh290633
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Re: Your Best Investment...

#12321

Postby tjh290633 » December 5th, 2016, 11:20 pm

doug2500 wrote:Sorry to diverge, but do you guys who track XIRR include every dividend payment?

I presume you do, but maybe you just follow capital gains?

Thanks


Yes I do. If you are rolling up dividends inside the portfolio, then it is not necessary for the Total Return on the portfolio as a whole, but it is for individual holdings.

TJH


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