Portfolio Hits New Highs Despite Global Equity Jitters

Since our last update at the start of the month, global equity markets have taken a tumble, largely due to an escalation in the US/China trade war.

Whilst President Trump has started to retreat from his aggressive move to slap an additional $10bn worth of tariffs on Beijing (delaying some until mid-December), the S&P remains 6% below its summer highs, the FTSE 100 is off more than 8% and the AIM All-share Index is down 7% in August.

In the context of the wider market sell-off, our AIM Investor Portfolio is holding up well, hitting new highs earlier this week as Trans-Siberian Gold (TSG) burst through the £1 barrier and last week’s addition, Johnson Services Group (JSG) hit the ground running.

On a less positive note, Keystone Law (KEYS) saw its shares drop sharply on August 7^th. With no newsflow or statement following the sell-off, we can only assume that this was a bout of profit taking. We’ll of course be keeping a close eye on Keystone’s price behaviour to see if the selling pressure gathers momentum.

It’s been a very quiet period for portfolio-related stock-specific newslow and this is often the case during August. Given the wider market weakness we will continue to keep our quality filter high and look to add stocks which have had strong summer trading updates.