At one stage I thought the old adage “Sell in May and Go Away” was going to be true this year. But, apart for a few days of high drama when the indices “went up and down like a…”, it all ended ‘in positive territory”. The FTSE100 continued its run of monthly gains – up 2.4% in May and 11.6% YTD. The FTSE SCS Index, that we follow most closely, was up a still better 5.8%; making +16.8% YTD. Only the FTSE Telecom Index showed a decline – down 2.6% in May but still up a massive 25% YTD. This was mainly as a result of Vodafone’s 2.2% fall as it decided to use the Verizon dividend to make good its performance shortfall elsewhere.
Invu managed its first profit in 5 years and soared 160% from 0.2p to 0.5p! You’ve heard of penny stocks but it’s still unusual to get a ‘aftpenny’ stock. Anyway, ‘recovered’ would be a better term.
Indeed ‘recovered’ describes Blinkx too. Blinkx put on another 41% to 132p due to pretty strong FY13 figures. See Blinkx building its market. That’s a 103% gain YTD. As I have often declared, Blinkx is part of the Holway Portfolio – indeed the best performer YTD. ‘Problem’ is that we have been here before. I bought at their Oct 2007 IPO at 45p. Since then they have been on a roller coaster ride – indeed reached 158p in Oct 11 before crashing to 32p in June 12. This stock is not one for the feint-hearted! Triad (are they really still around?) also ‘recovered’ by 36% and but even now have a market value of only just over £1m.
At the other end of the scale, Quindell slumped another 36%. This was mainly caused by questions about its accounting procedures. See Quindell responds to ‘misinformed speculation and shorting. IDOX fell 24% after it issued a profits warning following a disappointing first half.
Then we come to Parity which recorded a 23% decline this month as it decided to move from the Main Market to AIM and raise some cash. But the inter month movements were again rather reminiscent of a roller-coaster ride. They started May on 38.5p and had risen to 44p before the 25p fund-raising was announced. But Parity (another stock in the Holway Portfolio) is still showing a 41% rise YTD. Even Mr Miller was impressed with their new technology.
Amongst the global stocks HP continued its ‘recovery’ – rising 19% in May. But we were far from impressed with their Q2 results – See HP Q2 revenues down across the board. Cisco reported ‘record’ Q3 results and was rewarded with a 15% rise in its shares. See Dell, Cisco – a Tale of two hardware vendors. BTW – Dell was ‘unchanged’ as it now looks as though the Michael Dell/SilverLake bid will win the day. If so, we won’t be reporting on Dell as a publicly quoted company for much longer.
Facebook fell 12%. I’m not surprised. See my post Facebook ‘passing fad’?. iGate fell 13% as a result of an investigation into a sexual harassment claim against its ex-CEO who was sacked this month. See Shifting sands in Indian IT sector.
So, as ever, a month of extreme performance all culminating in a set of indices which changed very little