Meeting:

Monthly Meeting - August 2007

 

Held at:

The Brocklebank

Date:

29th August 2007

 

 

Time:

17:10 – 18:40

Prepared by

Dave G

 

Chairperson:

Adrian T

 

Present:

Adrian T

Chris B

Dave G

Kit P

Richard W

Simon B

 

 

Apologies:

None

 

 

Chairman’s Acceptance of Minutes

 


_____________________________________________


____ / _____ / ____

Signature

Date

 

 

 

1           NEXT MEETING

Proposed dates for future meetings are:-

Thu Sep 20

Thu Oct 18

Thu Nov 15

Thu Dec 20.

2           Minutes of previous meeting

A few errors were identified in the July minutes

§     Action CB/0621/02 should have been shown as “Completed”, not “Dropped”

§     New highs should have been recorded for CWR (368) and IFFF (2293)

§     Action had been omitted on Simon to complete the audit of accounts for (i) year to June 05 and (ii) year to June 06

.

3           ACTIONS FROM PREVIOUS MEETING

3.1          Actions Closed Since Last Meeting

Ref.

Description & Progress

Status

ALL/0621/06

Consider buy proposal of ETF Grains

0720: Carried forward to August meeting

0829: Agreed to drop the proposal

DROPPED

ALL/0720/03

Progress a vote to appoint Auditors for 2007-2008 year.

0829: Richard and Simon were nominated as auditors and unanimously accepted

COMPLETE

3.2          Actions Carried forward to Next Meeting                         

See end of these minutes.

4           Treasurer’s Report

4.1          Monthly Report Summary

See separate report for detail. 

Highlights/Lowlights:  A very poor month with holdings down £5524 (-8.8%) against FTSE fall of -6.7%.  Unit value has moved down from 867.359 to 807.567.

We now have a significant cash pile with nearly £26k being in cash or cash-alternative investment trusts though £9k of this is reserved for the mechanical portfolio. 

Overall club assets stand at £71,894 with profits of £32,400. 

4.2          Matters Arising From Report

Persimmon is incorrectly shown in the report as “Permisson”.  Also, SB and CB should be shown as the champions for Tesco and Wipro respectively.  Chris to correct for next month.

5           PORTFOlio Management

5.1          Monthly Money Management Checks

The Fundamental portfolio is still far “too low” with 12.7% held in this portfolio against strategic minimum of 25%.

There are only 4 holdings in the Fundamental portfolio and two of these exceed the strategic maximum of 30% in any one stock.

Alliance Trust is still above the strategic limit for any single temporary investment vehicle (13.5% v 10%) though this was acknowledged at the time of deciding to buy so is acceptable.

Overall, the percentage of assets held in common UK stock was now at only 72.9% which is below the 75% strategic minimum.

Fundamental buy proposals are strongly encouraged.

5.2          Mechanical Portfolio

It was another poor month with the portfolio dropping by 6.3%.  Despite it now being 3 consecutive poor months, the mechanical portfolio is still 30% up for the last 12 months and is showing an annual equivalent return of just under 26%.

The main movers were Renold (-10%), Royal Dutch Shell (-11%), Lookers (-11%), SCS Upholstery (-13%), Jacques Vert (-14%) and Oxford Instruments (-18%).

Cable & Wireless was sold last month from the Value side and replaced by Persimmon.  Jacques Vert reaches its anniversary this month and will be sold.  This now leaves 2 vacancies in the Growth side and the two top replacements are Empresaria and Ukrproduct Group.

The table below now reflects the sell situation for each mechanical holding.  The appropriate sell condition (i.e. “Anniversary” or “Sell If Below”) is shown in bold.

Company

Annivers-ary date

Purchase Price

Target Price

Trailing Stop Loss

High

Target Met?

Sell If Below

Jacques Vert

Aug-07

18.00

27.00

2.70

26.50

No

27.00

Lookers

Nov-07

167.72

251.58

25.16

219.75

No

251.58

Oxford Instruments

Jan-08

273.73

410.60

41.06

309.00

No

410.60

Royal Dutch Shell B

Feb-08

1702.53

2553.80

255.38

2167.00

No

2553.80

ScS Upholstery

Feb-08

422.90

634.35

63.44

437.50

No

634.35

Renold

Feb-08

131.96

197.94

19.79

143.00

No

197.94

Taylor Wimpey

Mar-08

402.44

603.66

60.37

469.30

No

603.66

Character Group

May-08

175.00

262.50

26.25

185.00

No

262.50

M&C Saatchi

May-08

169.00

253.50

25.35

166.50

No

253.50

Alexon

Jun-08

260.16

390.24

39.02

260.00

No

390.24

Persimmon

Jul-08

1178.31

1767.47

176.75

1178.31

No

1767.47

 

5.3          Monthly Reports For Each Company in Fundamental Portfolio

SciSys

HOLD – Not yet met sell criteria (see table in 6.6 below).