Share / Fund Purchases in the Period
During the market dip at the beginning of February I topped up several of my existing holdings, i.e. PHP.L, MYI.L, BNKR.L and Vanguard's UK Inflation Linked Gilt Index fund.
More recently, I've taken new positions in NCYF.L, NESF.L, RCP.L, VERX.L and IUKD.L. These have all been in my Watch List for a while, some of them for several years.
These Q1 purchases have reduced the cash percentage of the portfolio to a 24-month low, but there's still a little dry powder left for an attack in the event of a more serious downturn.
Most of these recent purchases have historically been good dividend payers and so hopefully they can add substantially to the passive income stream.
Share / Fund Sales in the Period
After a very good run over the past two years, I sold out of my JRS.L holdings for an overall ~40% profit (plus decent annual dividends received), despite having initially bought into this fund when the share price was much higher than it was at the time of the sale. Having made regular top-up purchases at times when Russian securities were seriously out of favour, the lower-cost acquisitions have more than compensated for the initial costly entry point.
I sold out before the current political hysteria surrounding Russia, and I see the JRS.L price has been gradually sliding over recent weeks, although it seems to have stabilised in the last few days. If it should really take a nose-dive then I'll likely buy back in again.
Passive Income Index
My passive income index currently stands at 214.1 (baseline 100 on 31-Dec-16), but this should start to rise more quickly in future as my recent acquisitions start paying out dividends.
Commentary
Another all-time portfolio high was hit at the end of January 2018, but after that it was downhill for the next couple of months. Although I'm still in positive territory for the year-to-date despite the general market fall, this is mainly because I've been continuing to add fresh money to the pot.
In late March, I transferred more of the cash into the ISA so I'm now fully subscribed for 2017-2018 before the 5th April deadline.
And I've been thinking again about consolidating some of the lower value components of the portfolio, maybe selling all those with weightings below 2% or instead choosing half of them to sell and topping up those remaining with the proceeds.
There are now 28 individual components and below a 2% cut-off level there's 11 investments which make up 12.6% of the combined portfolio, where only 5 or so may be better.
Something to think about, but there's no hurry ...
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