Thread moved here from HYP Practical and erstwhile biscuit bar
Well daveh, as a newcomer to these boards I have to say that it seems like you need a PhD in Lemon Fool even to be able to post on the right board. Compared with that investing is surely a simple task !.
Anyway you have clearly done well with your HYP strategy. If I’ve understood your unitisation numbers correctly (also new balls for me) then it sounds like you’ve at least tripled your capital since 2003. At a rough calculation that’s a 7% average gain per year which is more than acceptable.
Especially when you consider the things that you’ve invested in many of which have seen extremely troubled times (assuming that you’ve held them for most of that time ?). Scanning your list all of the following BT, LLOY, PRU, SSE, UU, VOD, PSN, CLLN (!), TSCO, LLPC and PFC have all seen MAJOR setbacks over the years. Just maybe that’s a tribute to the strategy in that you have been able to accumulate both capital and income over the years despite all those headwinds. TBH there are so many disasters there that I am honestly surprised that that the impact on your portfolio performance has not been more significant. But congratulations on your outstanding performance anyway.
Personally I see the frequent major setbacks in single stocks as a major reason to avoid these investments. I have only 6 in my portfolio now BP, RDSB, AV, LGEN, GSK and HSBA all of which I hope I can trust to not suffer the excessive falls that other stocks seem prone to. Or at least if they do then it’s probably worth buying some more of them. About 1/3rd of my portfolio is in what I hope are stocks with relatively stable SPs paying high dividends (preference shares and renewables). The rest is in high yield investment trusts or ETFs to minimise single stock effects and keep ongoing costs to a minimum. My portfolio can be found here if you are interested.
https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=16156#p20052t4
That said having the majority of my investments in equities is new to me as prior to March 2018 I was >80% invested in a range of preference shares. I started those investments in around 2011 and over the years that followed I reckon I almost doubled my money. But my comeuppance came In March 2018 with the preference share crash caused by the redemption threat. That caused a significant loss (and the threat of far worse) so I decided to sell everything and move to an equity income strategy, no small decision at that time. But with interest rates rising it seemed the best course of action. 2018 wasn’t great either but hoping for better things this year.
With my pref investments my annual target was about an 8-10% capital gain pa. With my new portfolio its too early to tell really. But I am not afraid to sell to protect my capital when there is a market downturn. In fact I did exactly that towards the end of 2018 which spared me significant losses at that time. I believe in capital preservation and will take that route over income generation whenever I think that circumstances call for it.
Wishing you ATB with your investments.
Pref