A record of outcomes over time.

As a good friend often likes to remind me, it costs someone nothing to talk about investing if they do not show their own investment performance. I have written about investing for a number of years and managed a portfolio of investments since 2012, although it was not until 2015 that I established my longer-term targets and began collecting and tracking portfolio performance in a detailed and comprehensive way.

In 2020, I took the decision to publish my track record as part of my annual review. I now update that record annually, alongside the additional portfolio measures set out below.

Since 2015, my portfolio has generated an annualised return of 8.5% inclusive of costs.

Prior to this, I held a small number of positions that generated marginal returns. From various notes kept at the time, I believe these were in the region of 3–4% annualised, but unfortunately I was not as meticulous with my record-keeping and cannot be more precise.

The account was subsequently liquidated as part of a transfer to a new broker. During that process, I developed a more precise method of record keeping and performance monitoring after research indicated that I was underperforming the broader market.

To remedy this, I decided to take a more professional and strategic approach to investing. The first part of this was to establish long-term investing targets, a formal investment strategy and regular reporting through which performance could be monitored.

Setting those targets was a little like asking how long a piece of string is. My starting point was to explore rates available to UK cash savers, which when I began investing were around 2–3% annual interest. I researched annuity rates and historical returns from UK equities. I consequently set myself an initial five-year target of 7.5% annualised returns and a longer-term ambition of generating 10–15% annualised returns after ten years.

If I was to outperform a market index — something the majority of investors fail to achieve — I would need some combination of skill, knowledge, competence and luck. It seemed arrogant to assume that I naturally possessed all four, particularly given my earlier results, but I believed that time and hard work could improve at least three of them.

Giving myself a ten-year runway also seemed a sensible way to relieve unnecessary pressure and allow a robust, well-balanced portfolio to be built gradually without taking outsized risks in pursuit of immediate returns.

The two registers below provide a different perspective on portfolio outcomes: the number of profitable months in the portfolio and the proportion of completed investments that generated a profit.

Calculating winning months is straightforward: how many months of the year did the portfolio increase in value? Calculating profitable investments is necessarily more nuanced. Rather than measuring every current investment, the figures measure investments from each opening-year cohort that have subsequently been fully liquidated.

On average, completed positions have been held for just over two years. Across the updated realised cohorts, the average annual cohort profit is approximately 10%.

The figures reflect my preference for selling investments in companies that are failing to perform. These companies tend to be poorer investments generating negligible, or sometimes negative, returns. Selling them can depress the realised average while allowing stronger long-term holdings to remain in the portfolio.

The updated realised cohorts average roughly 60% profitable investments. That figure should not be read as a static hit rate: older cohorts continue to change as long-held positions are eventually sold, while the most recent cohorts may contain only a small number of completed investments.

Average profit also naturally suffers from lag because many investments made in earlier years remain open. The figures on this page are deliberately based on realised positions and are updated as those positions enter the completed record.

Alongside profitability, I am occasionally asked about portfolio size, trading activity and how long investments are typically held. I describe myself as a buy-and-hold investor, a view broadly reflected in an average completed holding period of more than two years.

The holding-period calculation excludes investments that have not yet been sold. As long-term positions mature, the recorded average may therefore continue to rise.