Category: Quarterly Reviews

These quarterly investment reviews document to clients how markets have performed over the previous quarter. In addition to this commentary each client receives a personal valuation. Of course these valuations are relevant at the time, but after a period they will show that like all investors we got some things right but unfortunately we also got some things wrong. At H.J.Scott & Co we offer individually tailored investment advice. It is important you understand these blogs do not offer personal investment advice. Please read our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy
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September 2025 Performance review

We first began moving clients from Nucleus to Transact late 2021. This quarterly review shows our performance versus our industry peer group across our portfolios for a little over a 3 year period. 13 quarters so far.

In all of the charts below, each of our managed portfolios are shown by the bold green line. Our peers performance is shown in blue and purple lines.

Our Cautious Portfolio

Our Cautious Managed Portfolio unfortunately is not a fair comparison versus its peer group as care home fees of several thousand pounds are withdrawn each month for the client in question. This reducing balance has blunted the true performance somewhat.

Our Moderate Portfolio

Our Aggressive Portfolio

Our Very Aggressive Portfolio

Each of the charts above are actual client portfolios.

Our Very Aggressive Portfolio lost a little ground versus our Aggressive Portfolio whilst we exited some speculative positions before we could buy some precious metals and miners.

Commentary

We continue to out-perform our peer groups in all portfolios.

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June 2025 Performance Review

We first began moving clients from Nucleus to Transact late 2021. So we can now show our performance versus our industry peer group across our portfolios for a full standard 3 year period.

In all of the charts below, each of our managed portfolios are shown by the bold green line. Our peers performance is shown in blue and purple lines.

Our Cautious Portfolio

Our Moderate Portfolio

Our Aggressive Portfolio

Our Very Aggressive Portfolio

Each of the charts above are actual client portfolios.

We continue to out-perform our peer groups in all portfolios. Our Cautious Managed Portfolio unfortunately is not a fair comparison versus its peer group as care home fees of several thousand pounds are withdrawn each month for the client in question. This reducing balance has blunted the true performance somewhat.

Charlie and I are happy with our achievements so far. The Transact platform has given us a huge investment universe of direct equities to choose from, with very reasonable custody, currency and trading costs.

The above performance is net of our fees, trading fees and Transact fees.

We remain dedicated to looking after your, and our, life savings.

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask. After all, unlike your friends and acquaintances, you can talk to the investment managers who look after your savings in person.

Obviously I have to say at this point………..Past performance isn’t necessarily a guide to the future.

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The First 6 months of 2024

At the halfway point of the year

Well 6 months have flown by, and so far the returns generated in the portfolio reflect a “normal” investment year. If there is such a thing these days? The first quarter is usually strong, followed by a quarter of catch-up, which is reflected in the returns generated by our main portfolios so far this year. All portfolios remain on target to achieve their annual targets at this point.

What’s a “normal” year?

Veterans of our investment management service know that we generate the bulk of our returns in the 1st and 4th quarters of the year, with the 2nd and 3rd quarter usually only generating less than 25% of the years returns in total.

July to October should drift along nicely with little to show by way of returns, but hopefully without major wealth threatening dramas either. That said, July started with political meltdowns in France which potentially jeopardise the future of the EU as a trading block and of course the attempted assassination of a US President in waiting and the realisation that the current POTUS probably hasn’t been calling the shots for years. Political drama enough already!

Did we navigate the UK General Election in OK shape?

On the whole yes, but as always we could have done better in hindsight. We positioned for the likely result, which wasn’t exactly hard given every man and his dog also guessed the likely colour change in parliament. There was no shock in the markets as was expected by the UK shock index I referred to in my previous blog.

We expected a drop in Big Oils – Shell & BP (Labour’s Net Zero promises) and utilities UU, South West Water, Centrica etc. (The threat of nationalisation) – we have not held any of these shares for some time. However we did not position ourselves as heavily in social house builders eg. Vistry in particular and the others Barretts etc. as the FTSE 100 index does, which was perhaps a missed opportunity.

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