A little over 7 years ago (late 2011) I started to build a UK High Yield Portfolio (HYP). It was a much talked about strategy back in the Motley Fool forum days and today still gets plenty of attention on the Lemon Fool forums. I continued building the portfolio until July 2015 by which time I’d amassed 17 shares across multiple sectors. That included a token amount of Royal Mail Group (ticker: RMG) during the initial public offering in 2013 and the spin-off of S32 by BHP in 2015.
Today the portfolio is down to 16 shares because of the forced Amlin sale in 2016. It was set up to be close to a low tinker portfolio with only a few mechanical rules that would be triggered if there were big changes to a share. For example if the actual value of a holding became 50% larger than the median share holding I would sell 25% or if the actual dividend yield dropped below 50% of the FTSE All Share (I’m looking at you Pearson, ticker: PSON, although I didn’t follow my own rules when they cut the dividend in late 2017 and the share price is up 27% since making me think my rules might actually be rubbish).
There were no buys (or sells) in 2018 (making the maths pretty easy this year). The complete HYP and the respective values of each share are shown in the chart below. The purchasing rule that I followed was the amount of the next purchase was the median share value of the current portfolio (with the exception of RMG and S32).
Today the portfolio is down to 16 shares because of the forced Amlin sale in 2016. It was set up to be close to a low tinker portfolio with only a few mechanical rules that would be triggered if there were big changes to a share. For example if the actual value of a holding became 50% larger than the median share holding I would sell 25% or if the actual dividend yield dropped below 50% of the FTSE All Share (I’m looking at you Pearson, ticker: PSON, although I didn’t follow my own rules when they cut the dividend in late 2017 and the share price is up 27% since making me think my rules might actually be rubbish).
There were no buys (or sells) in 2018 (making the maths pretty easy this year). The complete HYP and the respective values of each share are shown in the chart below. The purchasing rule that I followed was the amount of the next purchase was the median share value of the current portfolio (with the exception of RMG and S32).
Click to enlarge, Retirement Investing Today High Yield Portfolio
