There’s quite a bit to write about this month, with the war in the Ukraine ongoing, but the expected Russian capture of Kiev not occurring as planned. The conflict had driven up energy prices and exacerbated an already parlous inflation situation. In our trading portfolio we are already aggressively long natural resources, and added another miner in April. There was some correction in commodities companies towards the end of the month, but we think this will be temporary.
Unfortunately we had to sell Vertu Motors from the long term buy & hold positions: our timing was not good on that one, which broke down off the 65p level in early April and breached our trailing stop loss shortly thereafter. On the upside, our Marshall Motor Holding (+44%) position is more than making up for that loss. Special mention also to cash shell Pineapple Power, which is back on the market and trading, up 27% on our original entry price at the end of April.
Kenmare Resources [LON:KMR]
We added closely followed titanium play Kenmare Resources in April. This is one of those miners that already feels it has too many retail investors, but more seem to be jumping on the bandwagon. It subsequently had a buy rating reiterated on 27 April by Berenberg Bank. Berenberg currently has a 670p target price for the miner, which would be an upside of over 35% based on end of April prices for the stock. Kenmare operates one of the world’s largest ilmenite mines, located in Mozambique. Ilmenite is used in paint and paper production and is an important ingredient in the manufacture of titanium.
Taylor Wimpey [LON:TW.]
Regular readers will know that we are still fans of the UK home building story. Not all house builders are created equally, however, and the market will love some and fall out of love with others fairly quickly. Investors have been troubled by the entire sector, as there was lack of transparency around what the costs of rectify building cladding would be in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire investigation. The UK government required big home builders to sign up to its building safety pledge. This has also helped companies like Taylor Wimpey to crystallise costs on fire safety work, which should take some uncertainty off the table.
Genesco [NYSE:GCO]
We picked US stock Genesco mainly because we liked the fundamentals. Genesco is probably better known for its specialty brands of footwear, and makes the likes of Dockers and also the Schuh stores. The NYSE-listed company has been around for a while – it was founded in 1924 and previously traded as the Jarman Shoe Company. It does not look like we’re alone either. Of the six US analysts covering Genesco, three have it assigned as a buy and one with a strong buy. A number of institutional players have also being buying in, including American fund managers like Bailard and Switzerland’s Zurcher Kantonalbank. Pace Advisors was also increasing its holding, and now has over $7.6m invested. We figure people will still need to buy shoes, regardless of where inflation goes…
DeepMarkit Corp [TSXV: MKT / OTC: MKTDF]
We added DeepMarkit Corp to our venture list in April, as the company was used to effect an RTO of First Carbon, itself now the owner of MintCarbon.io. This is a revolutionary new business concept, which combines the technology of minting NFTs with the growing market for carbon credits. We think there is enormous scope here to connect owners of carbon credits with buyers of NFTs. The minted NFTs can then be bought and sold on trading platforms like OpenSea. MintCarbon.io is already able to mint NFTs and DeepMarkit is in the process of arranging the independent verification and recognition measures for carbon projects.
Sold from the portfolio in April: Vertu Motors
Tactical trading portfolio
These are shorter term equity and commodity trades which we can see playing out within one to three months. We will sometimes keep these on longer if the trade is still quite range bound but we are anticipating further upside. These trades have the tightest risk parameters.
| Company/Instrument | Start price | Current price* | Percentage change |
| Raytheon Technologies | 73.39 | 94.91 | +29.4% |
| Sosander | 15.8 | 25.75 | +63.5% |
| Lloyds Bank | 40.4 | 45.88 | +13.5% |
| Glencore | 272 | 497.30 | +82.8% |
| Hugo Boss | 52 | 53.86 | +3.6% |
| BP | 337.95 | 391.55 | +15.9% |
| SPDR Gold Shares ETF | 173 | 178.33 | +3.1% |
| BHP | 2389 | 2725 | +14.1% |
| Anglo American | 3355 | 3586 | +6.9% |
| IG Group Holdings | 809 | 815.50 | +0.8% |
| Interfor | 37.73 | 36.62 | -2.9% |
| Seplat Energy | 110 | 123.50 | +12.3% |
| Taylor Wimpey | 134.2 | 126.9 | -5.4% |
*Prices as of close of play on 29th April 2022
Longer term buy and hold portfolio
These are positions where we see a longer term growth scenario, usually in the small to mid cap space, but sometimes larger companies. We will typically be keeping these stocks on the list for at least six months and often longer. Consequently our risk tolerance is higher for these positions than for the trading list.
| Company/Instrument | Start price | Current price* | Percentage change |
| Remedy Entertainment | 14 | 31.50 | +125% |
| Harvia | 8.86 | 32.82 | +270.4% |
| Yellow Cake | 211.50 | 396.6 | +87.5% |
| ITM Power | 260 | 331.40 | +27.5% |
| MTI Wireless | 47.0 | 61.0 | +29.8% |
| QT Group | 86.40 | 84.11 | -2.7% |
| Nordnet | 152.20 | 172.10 | +13.1% |
| First Rand | 5229 | 6849 | +31% |
| Turkish Airlines | 13.86 | 41.26 | +197.7% |
| Live Nation | 81.78 | 107.21 | +13.1% |
| Morgan Sindall Group | 2600 | 2175 | -16.3% |
| Marshall Motor Holding | 273.0 | 394 | +44.3% |
| Airtel Africa | 109.6 | 146.6 | +33.8% |
| Riverstone Energy | 566 | 680 | +20.1% |
| VinaCapital Vietnam Opportunity | 498 | 512 | +2.8% |
| Kenmare Resources | 503 | 472.5 | -6.1% |
| Genesco | 62 | 62 | 0.0% |
*Prices as of close of play on 29th April 2022
Venture portfolio
These are companies which we see as having long term and considerable growth prospects. Due to their size and the nature of the business they are in, we feel that our normal risk management constraints should not be applied to these stocks.
| Company/Instrument | Start price | Current price* | Percentage change |
| Nano One | 1.13 | 1.71 | +51.3 |
| Taat Global Alternatives | 1.26 | 0.99 | -21.4% |
| Kodiak Copper | 0.24 | 1.59 | +562.5% |
| Euro Manganese | 0.44 | 0.40 | -9.1% |
| Thunderbird Entertainment | 1.05 | 3.53 | +236.2% |
| Pineapple Power | 3.25 | 4.13 | +27.1% |
| Minnova Corp | 0.35 | 0.08 | -77.1% |
| Red Moon Resources | 0.82 | 1.45 | +76.8% |
| Cloudbreak Discovery | 4.50 | 4.9 | +8.9% |
| EnWave Corp | 1.01 | 0.78 | -22.8% |
| Net Zero Infrastructure | 0.045 | 0.0265 | -41.1% |
| Electric Guitar | 3.22 | 3.10 | -3.7% |
| CleanTech Lithium | 35.2 | 28.50 | -19% |
| Canadian Overseas Petroleum | 32.5 | 20.25 | -37.7% |
| Torq Resources | 0.75 | 0.74 | -1.3% |
| DeepMarkit Corp | 0.80 | 0.65 | -18.8% |
*Prices as of close of play on 29th April 2022
