Here’s the damage

This month, managing the Thrifty 30 portfolio has been like playing that fairground game where a gopher pops up out of a hole in a table and you have to smack it back down again with a mallet before another appears from a different hole.

Eventually they pop up so fast you can’t keep up, and the fairground owner keeps the prize.

Alumasc, Vp, and Victoria all raised their ugly heads, taunting me with a serious profit warning, a tender offer, and a shareholder rebellion respectively. Then I had the faintest of brushes with celebrity and embarked on an important mission to deflate the bonus culture. These events require attention, attention that would otherwise be diverted towards the essential work of finding new companies for the portfolio, and reappraising old ones.

This is the portfolio, as of last Thursday:

As is my policy, I won’t talk about share price performance, except to say that Autologic‘s weakness continues to confound me, but I’d prefer to see the directors buying before adding more shares to the Thrifty 30. The only trading in February was on opportunistic bid for more shares in Colefax, a classy company experiencing a lull in trading.

With the median UK 10 year price earnings ratio at 16, high over the period I’ve measured it, the market looks bullish, so it would be wise to take a cautious stance. It’s always wise to take a cautious stance, of course, but particularly so when shares are on the expensive side.

As for my own, performance, well I’m disappointed that I’ve only written two new two minute monologues, Colefax and Autologic, since these are the engines of my decision making process. I have, however, updated the Games Workshop and Vp monologues, and I blame an eventful month, in which some new ideas, N Brown and Hornby, fizzled out as I lost interest, and another Guinness Peat became so complicated I've deferred it for a short-while. 

I’m hoping for a less eventful month, though Alumasc and Victoria are still worrying me. I’ve finally got my hands on the circulars sent to shareholders rebutting the rebels who yesterday successfully unseated two more board members at Victoria. It’s not pretty reading (more to follow).