A Turbulent Month

June 2007, never to be forgotten for its wet and stormy weather here in Birmingham. Rather a lot of stock market volatility, but because of a decision to do quite a bit of decorating - for the first time in 20 years - I've been too busy to clock up my ups and downs. But 30 June marked the half-way stage of the year and, although my June performance was lack-lustre, the half-year outcome is OK: up 10.4% whilst FTSE100 up 7.2% and FTSESmall up 4.2%.

Lately, I've been buying into mortgage bank, Northern Rock, builder, Bellway, and property agents/consultancy, DTZ as property-related stocks have fallen sharply. Also picked up fallers, Tate&Lyle and AstraZeneca. Have sold off quite a lot of oil explorers, Soco, some Dana, and some BP. Oils and mining stocks, where I'm over-represented have been doing well.

Transactions, week ending 1 June 2007

Up 0.82% this week. Happy with it? No, not when the FTSEAllShare was up 1.55% and the FTSESmallCos, 1.68%. Still, I'm comfortably beating both indices thus far in 2007.

Purchase:
Glaxo*

*After being hit by "bad news" on one of its drugs, and also downgraded by our good friends Merrill-Lynch.

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.