A successful prediction ..

.. of mine has been a series of very small bets against there being a UK General Election in 2007. There were a number of senior politicians who thought there would be an election. Let me list them:

Prime Minister, Gordon Brown
Education Secretary, Ed Balls
Ed Milliband
Douglas Alexander

Well, it's only £200, but the frustration to these socialists is worth so much more to me.

Two steps forward, three steps back

This title might summarise a horribly difficult late-summer and autumn period for me, where I have made some bad mistakes. Worst has been following quite heavy share purchases by directors of Northern Rock. This alone has lost me more than £10k - my largest ever losses on a single share. My purchases of financials has also proved too early and cost me dearly. My outperformance of the (pathetic) FTSE has disappeared making this my worst year since 2001. As at 2nd Nov:

Me - 5.6%
FTSEAllShare - 6.4%
FTSESmallCos - -1.5%

The reduced market values of UK banks now seem to far exceed even a worst-case scenario of sub-prime infection - see here. So I have continued buying. In the short-run this has been painful.

I should add that I am more pessimistic about the UK economy than hitherto. It is being emasculated by the creeping (creepy) socialism and rampant (and intolerant) political correctness of the Labour government. I was happy to see Gordon Brown and Ed Balls exhibit their idiocy over the election-that-never-was. At least I made some money on betting against there being an autumn election. I have also bet on the UK election being postponed until 2010.

Unfortunately, this all imples two-and-a-half years more damage being inflicted by these high-spending clowns. Against this background, I have recently invested more in overseas markets and reduced holdings in shares dependent on the domestic UK market.

Brown: A Fool with the UK's Gold

Gordon Brown isn't just an average fat bloke. No, he's been Chancellor of the Exchequer (that is, the UK's Finance Minister) for 10 years. Unfortunately, he's useless at finance and economics. As Mark Twain would have said: ".. it's not that he doesn't know any economics, it's just that everything he does know is wrong". Faced with the problem of managing the nation's gold reserves, he and his advisers (bad at economics) ignored the Bank of England's (they're good at economics). See here:

GORDON BROWN is to face questions in parliament after revelations that he disregarded advice from the Bank of England before he sold off more than half the country’s gold reserves at the bottom of the market.

Insiders involved in the decision have broken ranks after an 18-month battle in which the Treasury has blocked attempts by The Sunday Times to make public the official advice received by Brown before he sold the gold.

They have revealed that Bank of England officials had serious misgivings over the chancellor’s determination to sell 400 tons of bullion in a series of auctions between 1999 and 2002, when the price was at a 20-year low. Since then the price has almost trebled, meaning the decision cost the taxpayer an estimated £2 billion.

2007: a difficult, but good, first quarter

Quite a lot of profit disappointments and negative trading statements, and I spent the first few weeks underperforming the FTSEAllShare. And yet, I've had a good quarter: at 30 March my portfolio had made 7.0% capital gain compared to the FTSEAllShare's 1.96% and the FTSESmallCo's 2.76%. That's over £32,000 (nearly $60,000) ....* Quite a chunk of the gains are due to strong gains in Character Toys and Coffee Republic ... plus a takeover for E.Wood, one of my top-ten holdings, effectively brought me nearly an extra £5,000 before breakfast one March morning.

* There's none for that greedy bloated socialist Gordon Brown (and I've gifted quite a lot of it to relatives and some friends) ... and, given our stupid inheritance/death tax rate of 40%, I've got nearly half a £million to spend at 40% off!