August 2019 – Normal market jitters

Performance (as I saw it at weekend):

  • SIPP -2%
  • ISA -1.5%

Apologies for rough nature of this – but expected really to have a retraction in August due to Brexit and market wobbles. Ref: Top-ups, followed normal 70/30 split, where 70% was targetting the new investments still (which should now be “cheaper) and 30% going to cash due to the current market conditions, where I’m hoping to make a trade soon-ish.

My large-ish position in BP in the SIPP was a large contributor to the SIPP drawback. Overall I’m not unhappy here, and will likely be targeting top-ups whilst BP is trading around 500p level – Oil varys in price, and this is more an reinvested income share than a capital growth one. I am not however topping up any US based (or higher percentage US based) business due to the current “poor” USD rate (BP benefits inversely from that).. For that reason both Vanguard Lifestrategy (which has a high US percentage) is not being topped up at moment.

Other “larger” shares in the run-up to Brexit that have passed my “buy” threshold are Aviva, Lloyds, and strangely Direct Line. The issue is I’m too highly concentrated in banking right now, so Aviva is the likely recipient of a top-up this month.

Reviewing all my holdings this morning one has shone out though in terms of out-performance over 12 months from my personal expectation – Capital Gearing Trust is doing a stellar job of increasing capital over last 2 years with very very low variance “movement”. If I find nothing better to do with the cash, I suspect the above 30% top-up cash will find it’s way to CGT by end of year. (CGT has the advantage I can sell it, buy another LSE share “quickly”), at the cost of stamp duty and trading costs alone. In general terms keeping my money in CGT has been better than leaving in the trading account or the bank.