Virtual trading portfolio update

Some of you may remember that I started a virtual trading portfolio back in June 2014, I then updated the performance on two separate occasions to assess it's performance:-

http://michae1mouse.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/vesuvius-set-to-erupt.html

http://michae1mouse.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/virtual-trading-portfolio-update.html

http://michae1mouse.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/addition-to-virtual-trading-portfolio.html

In the short term, the performance of this small portfolio that I had started was pretty poor, and as a consequence I decided that it had just confirmed that short term trading was not for me. I am by nature and experience a long term investor (micro-caps mainly). Certainly a long term buy and hold strategy has worked well for me, although you have to except that not all of your picks will be star performers.

I thought I'd just quickly review the performance of my virtual trades some ten months later to see how they had performed.

Virtual portfolio                 Price paid                      Current  price               Price sold

Vesuvius                            £4.57                             £5.205(+13.9%)
Vodafone                           £2.07                             £2.24(+8.2%)
Morrison                            £1.93                             £1.98(+2.6%)
Rightmove                         £22.96                           £30.51(+32.9%)
Given a equal weighting to each investment the current return is 14.4%. Not too bad given a somewhat dismal start. What does this prove? Well it doesn't prove anything particularly, but it's further evidence to me (not that I needed it) that buy and hold is by far my best strategy, with at the very least a medium term view.

For those that missed it, you might also be interested in the performance of this virtual portfolio:-

http://michae1mouse.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/very-little-research-but-are-these.html

http://michae1mouse.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/hopeless-cases-portfolio-vs-ftse-250.html

It's worth noting that since I last reported, EMG (Man Group) is now above the original purchase price and most of the others have gone from strength to strength.