Jan 2011: Virtual Portfolio update

Busy week last week what with company news flow and mundane things like work, so I took a little time out over the weekend to revisit my virtual portfolio, which I have called the "Merchant Adventurer's" index (see earlier post: 2010 Virtual Porfolio Performance!), and check out its performance through January.

For this diary, it also seems like a good idea to try to plot it monthly, and will serve to give me some perspective coming up to the end of the tax year (5 April).
I also made some changes in February which I will show in an update for February (see earlier post: Portfolio housekeeping and additions: Talk Talk, Invesco Perpetual, Vodaphone, and Tesco.).

It is also easy to forget about some of the less publicity seeking holdings that make up the virtual portfolio given the more attention seeking share prices such as BP, now seemingly the Katie Price of the FTSE 100 complete with celebrity wedding to Rosneft and disgruntled partner, TNK-BP!

So, here it is:

Merchant Adventurer's Index		Forecast	1 month
	% holding	Div. yield	% gain
R-R	30.04%	2.66%	2.41%
National Grid	17.31%	6.59%	-0.09%
Invesco Perpetual High Inc. Acc.	6.74%	0.00%	-1.99%
BP	5.06%	4.07%	4.14%
Aviva	5.36%	5.80%	12.67%
IG Group	3.41%	4.32%	-11.37%
Apple	3.89%	0.00%	3.56%
Centrica	2.86%	4.30%	-3.53%
BG Group	2.91%	1.06%	8.10%
Microsoft	2.56%	1.92%	-2.22%
Scottish and Southern	2.28%	6.40%	-5.39%
Morrisons	2.39%	3.47%	-0.41%
BAE Systems	2.43%	4.97%	3.64%
William Hill	2.41%	4.38%	6.33%
Cisco	2.29%	0.00%	2.92%
Talk Talk	1.96%	3.50%	0.81%
Cash	6.10%	0.00%	7.10%

	100.00%	3.33%
			1 Month	13 Months
Virtual Portfolio gain incl. dividends			1.71%	28.58%
FTSE gain excl. div.			-1.81%	8.31%

1 month - 5971.01 to 5862.94
13 months - 5412.88 to 5862.94

I have also tried to plot the performance of the virtual portfolio relative to the FTSE 100 in the following chart.
More luck than management but it seems that the MA index has edged up slightly in Jan as opposed to the FTSE 100 falling back slightly. This is probably down to the portfolio having little or no exposure to Mining and Banking at this stage although, I did have a nice little dividend from National Grid in January.
Swings and roundabouts though, and I fully expect that, with the Mining and Banking sectors being heavily geared to recovery (and on newsflows alone), the FTSE 100 is reversing that situation in February.

The forecast dividend yield for the portfolio (if held for a full year) has also edged up slightly due mainly to the welcome resumption in BP's dividend payment.

Anyway, onwards and upwards (hopefully!).