February Review

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Introduction
Another poor month for stock markets generally on the back of on going inflationary worries & the Russian invasion of Ukraine which unsettled investors and added to those inflation concerns. As a result it seems that my concerns that this years returns might be poor after bumper returns last year are so far being realised. 

Performance Review
The ​UK stock market actually held up relatively well against that background given it was not as expensive as some others having lagged behind in performance terms in recent years. This was due to heavy weightings in old non tech type sectors like oil & mining which all did relatively well as a result of rising commodity prices. Consequently the FTSE 100 continued to outperform this month & thus it and the broader FTSE All Share, which it is a large part of, maintained their existing bullish trend - for now. In contrast the Mid 250 and Small Cap Indices fell further behind and both are now in bear trends. 

For the Scores Portfolio these trends hit the performance again this month as having benefitted from being overweight Mid Cap, Smaller and AIM names previously this is now weighing on performance. Subscribers can see some monthly attribution figures towards the right hand side in the Portfolio sheet. Also worth noting that a summary of all the Scores has been added here for easy checking along side the triple trend momentum buy, hold, avoid & sell suggestions.

The impact of this at the portfolio level is shown in the table above with the fall back in the last 6 months and year to date reducing some of the outperformance achieved last year. Nevertheless the longer term performance remains good. Please seen the link to the table of returns under the Portfolio menu for the full performance history or click here if that is of interest. 

Monthly Screening
A couple of sales and purchase this month as I held onto a few stocks where the Score had slipped on the basis that they have updates or results due soon. Subscribers will be able to see the details of these in the Portfolio sheet of their Scores file. 

Summary & Conclusion
Another poor month in what is so far shaping up to be a poor year for stock market investors after good times for the last decade or more albeit with other sell offs along the way. Obviously the current situation in Ukraine is another fairly extreme concern coming so soon after the Covid shutdowns etc. and the debt / asset bubbles that have been blown up on the back of that. On top of that we have the inflation problems and the complication of Central Banks trying to deal with that in the face of the Ukraine war. 
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Thus it is probably not a time for taking too much risk but equally maybe best not to panic either as in the past crises have tended to blow over and markets have often been higher 12 months later. No doubt as events develop there will threats and opportunities & I'm sure the Scores may help to identify some of those along the way, but however you do it mind how you go and good luck with your investments this year.