Apologies:
Mike Arkless, Andrew Smillie, Julie Grundy, Steve Spence, Roy Brown, Cynthia
Brooke,
Ann Nurse, Di
Lane, Rod Wood, Debbie McDonnell, Paul Holden
The long awaited ExEC Christmas 2000 Party turned into a very enjoyable
evening in the hotel for the 3 members and a couple of partners who made the
journey up to Leeds on the Saturday. Understandably, therefore the meeting
got off to a slow start on the Sunday afternoon.
The meeting welcomed Ron and hoped to welcome Paul, but it seems other
events / commitments prevented Paul attending in the meeting in the end.
As we had not held a meeting in September or October, we had 3 months worth
of subscriptions available to invest amounting to £1350 and with this in
mind allied with only 2 possible new company recommendations we discussed
our current portfolio.
Clearly the events of September 11th have had a significant effect on our
portfolio since the last meeting in early August, but since that date the
portfolio has been recovering, as have the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250. In fact
our portfolio outperformed both those indices in October when we saw our
unit valuation improve 8% to almost 81p, or more than £800 in absolute
terms. In the same period the FTSE 100 increased a mere 2.8%, and the FTSE
250 increased by 4.8%
We have been assisted by some good dividend payouts in the last few months
such as United Utilities.
Of our 20 shareholdings, at the end of October, 2 were showing a profit
(GlaxoSmithKline and MacDonald Hotels), with 4 more almost breaking even
(Avon Rubber, BG, Centrica and Lattice). Of the remainder, only 3 didn't
improve in the month (Iceland, Scottish Power and United Utilities).
Considering each company in turn, we came up with these recommendations:
Advance Visual Comms Hold
Avon Rubber
Hold / increase
BG
Hold
Carlton Communications Sell if the price
drops to 180p, review this if the price goes up.
Centrica Hold
Computacenter Hold
EMAP
Hold / increase
Energis
Hold / increase
GlaxoSmithKline Hold
HSBC
Hold / increase
Iceland
Hold
Lattice
Hold
MacDonald Hotels
Hold
Psion Hold
and wait for improvement
Scottish Power
Sell if the price drops to 375p,
review this if the price increases
Thus
Hold
United Utilities Hold
/ increase
Vodafone
Hold / increase
Wiggins
Hold
Lastminute.com
Hold
There was one recommendation for Boots, which is currently perceived to be
cheap
There was also a suggestion for another Hotel group, with De Vere being
mentioned, and after considering the merits of the companies we already have
holdings in, we decided to:
Invest in 100 Boots shares
Invest £400 in United Utilities
Invest £300 in Energis
We will also investigate De Vere and the hotel sector for next month.
The next meeting will be on Sunday 2nd December at the
Nottingham / Derby
Holiday Inn (formerly Posthouse) at Junction 25 of the M1, following the
Energy Centres Reunion Christmas Meal on the evening of Saturday 1st
December