Transactions, week ending 25 May 2007

A good week - up slightly (0.07%) whilst FTSEAllShare down 1.05%.

Purchases:

Character Group, top-up*
Paragon
Widney

Sales:

Highway Insurance (part)
Henderson Far East Income (part)
MS International (part)

* Purchased at "no-brainer" price of 163p on Monday.

Transactions, week ending 18 May 2007

A poorish week for me - up 0.36% when the FTSEAllShare was up 1.17%. Mostly this was due to the large price falls in furniture retailer, SCS Upholstery, after terrible results (what an idiot to not have completely sold my holdings) and in Character Group, which has this weekend led to some dispute on the investment discussion boards.

Purchases: Braemar Seascope (BMS), more Character Group (CCT), Plasmon (PLM)

Sales: Britvic (BVIC) (partial), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)

Bad day at the office: show some character, lad

Wednesday 16 May was a veritable stinker for me. On a more or less level day on the market, a slight majority of my portfolio holdings slipped and, most significantly, my largest holding, Character Group fell by nearly 10% to 179.5p. This fall seemed to have no logic as two weeks ago the company - awash with cash - was buying back shares at 200p.

My response? Simple, to buy more Character Group both for myself and my mother and my daughter.

Transactions: week ending 11 May, 2007

My only transaction this week was the purchase of more Northern Recruitment Group (NRG), a share offering a yield of more than 7%.

Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs on Hanson. Oh, dear!

Monday, 30 April was proving a sickly day for Hanson (I had about 1% of my portfolio in Hanson, bought on the strength of their reserves of building aggregates). Its share price was down about 3% that morning at £8.30. Merrill Lynch had released a broker note and downgraded Hanson to sell from hold. The note stated that fair value is 614p and 842p on the basis of a takeover. The broker saw little prospect of M and A:

‘High recent takeover multiples and a weakening US housing market should lead to a much calmer period of US takeover activity in our view. ............
Hanson’s share price includes significant takeover premium despite no signs of a takeover. We do not expect a bid in the short term.’

614p? Gosh, I'd bought mine at 830p in late March. Your not-too-boastful-I-hope blogger did not bat an eyelid. Three days later guess what happened: news that a large European company, Heidelberg Cement, was considering making an offer. Whooooooooooooooooooosh. Price by end of trading on Friday: 1070.5p.

End of story? Not quite. Goldman Sachs had had Hanson on its Conviction Sell list! Now after the approach from it changed its recommendation to neutral. It admitted that the shares had gone up by more than a quarter since it formed its bearish opinion.

And to think somebody pays big bucks to these pillocks for this stuff. Ughh.

Twenty Largest Holdings, 30 April 2007

Here are my twenty largest holdings at the end of April (note that IT=Investment Trust and that figures represent percentage of portfolio). Cash stood at about 4%. Additions were made to Coffee Republic (through a share placing), Character Group, and Clarkson. BP was reduced. Gains so far this year - 10.3% compared to FTSE100 at 4.7% and FTSESmallerCos at 5.4%.

Coffee Republic 6.1
Character Group 5.9
Highway Insurance 4.0
Soco 3.1
Renold 3.1
Fayrewood 2.5
RC Group 2.3
Smaller Companies Dividend IT 2.1
Jupiter Dividend and Growth IT 2.0
BP 1.9
Burren Energy 1.8
British Insurance 1.8
Northern Recruitment 1.7
Keller 1.6
Clarkson 1.6
Dana Petroleum 1.5
Henderson Far East IT 1.4
Geong 1.4
Asset Management IT 1.4
Aminex 1.4