There is one key point missing in my blog - My portfolio details and performance. The omission is by design and there are several reasons behind it.

I have written in the past on my reluctance on sharing my portfolio in detail, especially the performance. I have disclosed my portfolio in the past (see here) and it has more or less remain unchanged since then.

There are several reasons for not sharing my performance. The key reason for not sharing the performance, is that a public display would put pressure on me and would in turn impact my investing decisions. Investing is tough enough and I don’t want to make it any more tough for me.

The second reason for not displaying the performance is that I want the readers to follow my posts based on the strength of the ideas I present and not the performance of my portfolio. The soundness of idea - sensible and rational value investing - does not change based on whether I perform well or badly as an investor. There are some investors who are far superior to me in performance and practise a similar approach. The performance of these investors is a reflection of their superior skills.

In addition to the above reason, I can choose to put any numbers as there is no independent audit of these numbers. I do not want to create a situation where the readers are always wondering whether the numbers on the blog are real or imagonary.

As you can see in the sidebar, I also publish my posts on moneyvidya.com. This association is non financial and i was contacted by the moneyvidya team in past to be a member of their core blogger team. I have posted my stock ideas on the website in the past few months and thought of sharing a  snapshot of the portfolio performance.

A few caveats before you read too much into it.

• The above stocks do not represent my portfolio. They represent a few of my ideas which I decided to post on the website.
• The above is an equal wieghted portfolio of the picks which is not the case in my personal portfolio.
• The portfolio performance may not be a true reflection of my personal portflio in future as I do not have idea of how to take a stock off this model portfolio when I decide to sell it (maybe the moneyvidya team will clarify that for me)

So why publish this portfolio
A few key points stand out.

This dummy ( pun intended ? :) ) portfolio has been in the top 10% for the last 10 months ( I don’t know how that is calculated though by the moneyvidya team). This in a way shows the validity of picking good stocks and holding on to them.

This dummy portfolio has beaten the index by around 20% during this period. This period is too short to reach a conclusion, but is interesting as typical value investors generally under perform bull market and out perform bear markets.

Finally, not matter what I try to claim, there is a certain amount of bragging involved too. The reason why the last few months have been more satisfying, is that I have been able to follow my convictions, ignore the doomsday predicitions and commit my personal capital to my ideas. That is more satisfying than the gains themselves.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Educational. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.