2014 was a good year. My portfolio was up 18.31% at year end which beat the swedish index which includes dividends(the SIXRX) with two procentagepoints. I do feel that by owning companies from Norway and across the pond as well the comparions isn't really fair but I think it should suffice. I should note that I'm especially pleased with the return I've achived despite some sour pickings, which ARCP was the most memmoroble loss but also Awilco Drilling even though the dividends have lessened the downside. I also hade some good profits when selling with 30% return which is nice. Most notably my holding on the London Exchange, Phoenix Group did quite well and I was somewhat heavely invested in them.
It is hard in a bull market to determine if it's luck or skill or a combination of both that has made my investments work out well. I'm still making some mistakes but as I get more comfortable with investing it feels like I'm doing better now than a year ago. I do feel I've made less good choices than the numbers say but if you invest in well run companies they are bound to give additonal favourable news which increases the return one can recieve. Over the year I sold 17 holdings, six of them have been losses and the rest have been gains. A lot of them were pretty small so the overall effect on the entire portfolio isn't as big but it adds upp. Inspired by Lynch I can say that I am happy if I manage to be right 65% of the time in the feature as well. I made around 1300$ from exited positions or 5% of the total portfolio gain. Whilst it is always nice to come out on top it would be better to not feel the need to sell for whatever reason.
I read this ARTICLE the other day which I thought was really good and it shows what I have been doing with part of my portfolio. Or rather, the companies I have found tend to not be as cheap as I would have wanted and when the price apreaciates quickly I see little reason not to sell (i.e +30-50% in a couple of months). What tends to happen is also that as a company I own appreciates another company that might also be well run could depreciate and I could then by the cheaper company and both decres the risk (higher probability of doing well) as well as the possibilty of better returns.
The return for the year looks like the first image below and the second image are the dividends I have collected. As can be notet my capital has doubled in value, mostly becouse of new savings. It is a good step on the way for my feature investement life.
