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LONDON -- It's been nearly two months since our end-of-2012 valuation update, so how is the Beginners' Portfolio doing?
In short, it's up 22.6% since we made our first purchase of Vodafone Group (LSE: VOD ) (NASDAQ: VOD ) on May 18 of last year. Since then, Vodafone has been on a bit of a rollercoaster ride. By August it was nicely up, but the tail end of the year saw a slump as low as 154 pence -- partly based on tough conditions in Europe leading to falling service revenues. But data revenue is up, and Vodafone's global reach helped it gain a new contract with German giant ThyssenKrupp last week. Ace U.K. investor Neil Woodford famously sold Vodafone this month, but I'm happy to go against the guru, and I still think Vodafone is a buy.
|
Company
|
Shares
|
Buy price
|
Total Cost (pounds)
|
Bid Price*
|
Proceeds (pounds)
|
Price Change
|
|
Vodafone
|
289
|
168.5 pence
|
499.51
|
163.5 pence
|
462.52
|
(7.4%)
|
|
Tesco
|
159
|
305.5 pence
|
498.23
|
373.6 pence
|
584.02
|
17.2%
|
|
GlaxoSmithKline
|
34
|
1,440.5 pence
|
502.22
|
1,474 pence
|
491.16
|
(2.2%)
|
|
Persimmon
|
79
|
617.9 pence
|
500.55
|
898 pence
|
699.42
|
39.7%
|
|
Blinkx
|
1,319
|
36.9 pence
|
499.68
|
93 pence
|
1,216.67
|
143.5%
|
|
BP
|
112
|
434.5 pence
|
499.01
|
452 pence
|
497.25
|
(0.4%)
|
|
Rio Tinto
|
16
|
3,048.4 pence
|
500.18
|
3,519.5 pence
|
553.12
|
10.6%
|
|
BAE Systems
|
146
|
332.3 pence
|
497.59
|
350 pence
|
501
|
0.7%
|
|
Apple
|
2
|
$458.40
|
605.98
|
$452.60
|
548.25
|
(9.5%)
|
|
Dividends
|
|
|
|
|
91.62
|
|
|
Total
|
|
|
4,602.95
|
|
5,645.02
|
22.6%
|
*Bid prices are from mid-afternoon Monday while markets were open so I could get accurate spreads.
The winners
In Tesco (LSE: TSCO ) , I sided with that other guru, Warren Buffett, who dipped in for a large helping when the price slumped last January in response to a poor Christmas period. Subsequent updates from the U.K.'s biggest supermarket have shown that the company's turnaround plans are bearing fruit, and the share price has regained a good deal of its loss. We're up 17% on Tesco since our purchase on May 23, and it is definitely still a buy for me.
Our biggest winner so far is clearly Blinkx (LSE: BLNX ) , the video technology developer, whose shares surged more than 20% earlier this month when the company told us that full-year sales could be ahead of target. I have been pleasantly surprised by the rapid rise we've seen from Blinkx, as I was expecting growth to be a bit slower. But these things can happen with high-tech growth shares, and we should just smile and be grateful when they do.
Persimmon (LSE: PSN ) has also done well for us, as the homebuilding sector has recovered strongly over the past six months. The share price did dip a bit on Monday to 898 pence despite full-year results showing a 52% rise in underlying pre-tax profit, with a 6% rise in completions and a 6% rise in average selling price. Persimmon is due to pay a 75 pence-per-share dividend on June 30, but that will be it until a planned 95 pence payout two years later.
Valuation
Since the last update, we've had a final dividend from BP to add 10.08 pounds to the pot, a final dividend from GlaxoSmithKline of 7.48 pounds, and approximately 3.50 pounds as a quarterly dividend from Apple. The extra cash all helps take us to that 22.6% rise -- and that's offer-to-bid, with all charges accounted for, representing what such a portfolio would actually raise should it all be sold.
It's still early days, and we're in this for the long run, so valuations are not that important now -- but it is nice to see things going well!
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