Portfolio as at end September
Asset	Bloomberg Ticker
H&T	HAT LN	15.9%
AIG	AIG US	13.6%
Avesco	AVS LN	13.8%
Commerzbank	CBK GY	11.8%
Safestyle PLC	SFE LN	11.2%
Emeco Holdings	EHL ASX	13.4%
Hargreaves Services	HSP LN	6.8%
Dolphin Capital	DCI LN	5.6%
Alternative Asset Opportunities	TLI LN	5.9%
Plaza Centers	PLAZ LN	0.5%
GBP Cash		1.5%
Quarterly Return	Quarterly Benchmark Return
-0.66%	3.1928%
Return Since Inception	Benchmark Return since Inception
18.10%	24.9%
Annualised Return since Inception	Annualised Benchmark Return since Inception
11.70%	16.00%

Portfolio Today

Asset	Bloomberg Ticker
Emeco	EHL ASX	12%
Safestyle	SFE LN	12%
Exova	EXO LN	11%
Avesco	AVS LN	11%
H&T	HAT LN	7%
AIG	AIG US	7%
Commerzbank	CBK GY	6%
Hargreaves	DCI LN	4%
TLI	TLI LN	3%
Dolphin	DCI LN	2%
Plaza	PLAZ LN	0%
Cash		26%

I've been pretty sloppy, I'm afraid, in reporting my Q3 results on the blog.  The reason is that I've made lots of changes in my financial life, including selling my flat and making my pension self managed.  This has meant that my funds have increased considerably, and the composition of my portfolio has changed a lot.  I'll be blogging over the next several weeks about my additions, and also about my decision to introduce leverage into the portfolio, and how I've done it.

I must admit that part of the reason for my tardiness may be my uninspiring results thus far.  Of course, I've thought about this a lot.  Some possible reasons are:

- I'm not very good at this.

- I think a lot about permanent loss of capital so my outperformance will come when the market is down.

- 2 years is a fairly meaningless amount of time to measure one's performance.

Time will tell which of these is correct, so in the meantime I will continue to plug away, and look for things that are obviously cheap.

And when I ponder my results, it is wise to not just examine one's buying decisions, but one's selling decisions as well.  Here, it would seem I've had more success, having been an owner of both Tesco and Imtech in the past, both of which have subsequently collapsed.  The lesson that these have taught me (as well as Hargreaves Services) is not to buy mediocre business because they look "a bit cheap".  Always be greedy in looking for obvious cheapness, if you're not buying a high quality business.