click on the graphic for a larger image ...
Share / Fund Purchases in the Period
A few things to report this period, after a long spell of trading inactivity ....
I doubled up on my GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L) holdings in October at 1,381p gross. I first bought into GSK in June 2014, and the share price has basically gone nowhere in over three years although I have received 19% of my original investment back as dividends.
Despite posting an October trading update generally in line with expectations, the GSK share price fell around 10% over the following three days on speculation that the ~6% dividend might be under threat because the company is considering bidding for the consumer healthcare divisions of either Pfizer or Merck. However, there's nothing at all agreed as yet, and GSK could well decide against making an offer, and even if they should submit a bid then there's no guarantee they'd be successful - there's a host of other potential bidders out there such as Reckitt Benckiser, Nestle, Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi.
I also trebled my Centrica holding (CNA.L), at 138p gross. My original shares had lost around 40% of their value since I bought them in early 2014, and they took a further plunge in November 2017 after a trading update in which they announced yet another exodus of British Gas retail customers. My capital loss over the last four years has been somewhat offset by the dividends received (>20%), so again this latest purchase is another dividend gamble ...
And finally, I doubled up (or down !) on my holdings in the Woodford Patient Capital Trust (WPCT.L) at 89.7p gross. There's no doubt that this investment trust has performed very poorly since its inception in April 2015, and Woodford himself has come in for a lot of flak over this and his other closed-end income fund. However, the price at which I bought in this time represents a discount of >8% to the trust's net asset value, i.e. the value of the underlying investments, so I'm happy enough to increase my stake and wait it out for a little while longer.
Share / Fund Sales in the Period
None
Passive Income Index
With the index finishing the year at 196.6, I was just shy of making exactly the same amount of passive income as I did in 2016, in cash terms, but obviously I totally failed in my goal to double it !
Except for a limited amount of trading activity in this final quarter, I still haven't been on the expected spending spree for high yield assets simply because nothing much has seemed cheap enough this year.
Commentary
2017 turned out to be a steady year, if unspectacular. I still managed to add a reasonable amount of fresh money to the pot, which currently stands at another all-time high. There have actually been new portfolio highs in ten out of the last twelve months and an almost unbroken run upwards since the doldrums of 2015 - just how much longer can this trend continue ?
In 2017, the total combined portfolio return in absolute cash terms was +4.3%, just about enough to outpace inflation but well down on the +15.7% return of 2016.
There's now only three months of this year's ISA season remaining, but I'm still waiting on the sidelines with cash ...
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