A month for head bangers

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.

Continue reading »

T30 monthly review

Monthly performance appraisal: Richard Beddard

True to form I’m not reviewing performance, how much money the portfolio is making and whether the shares in it have gone up or down, until the Thrifty 30 experiment has run its course in 2015. I cannot extrapolate meaning from monthly price movements, and guessing would be a waste of time. Continue reading »

The Thrifty 30 enters its third year

Performance issue needs addressing

Although it’s January, and I feel compelled to review the Thrifty 30’s annual performance, I’ll refrain because I just don’t think it’s productive. There’s another way of looking at performance, though, and I don’t think I did very well in 2011.

Continue reading »

New year, more resolution

Follow the script

Last year ended introspectively, with a failed trade in Armour that was both expensive and misguided, but before then I felt I was losing my grip on some of the constituents in the Thrifty 30 portfolio.

My resolution this year is a simple one to make and perhaps a more difficult one to achieve. It’s:

Only to add a company to the Thrifty 30, or hold a company, if I can articulate my reasons in less than two minutes in words a teenager can understand.

Continue reading »

Confessing to the original sin

Maybe simple statistics do trump judgement

Every time I read a review of ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahnemann, a psychologist who won the Nobel prize for economics, I think I should read it. Especially in the light of a decision that is weighing heavily on me.

Continue reading »