“Vaccinated” Dogs of the FTSE + Random Shares

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Time for another progress update on my latest Dogs of the FTSE experimental portfolio which was set up in June.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to time it when everything hit rock bottom in March but who can time the market, in any case?

Bad timing or not, I continue to follow the strategy as an experiment and have been documenting the bad times as well as the good.

Here’s a reminder of the Dogs of the FTSE strategy (which is based on the US Dogs of the Dow strategy):

  1. Choose the ten FTSE 100 shares with the highest yield (subject to my criteria*)
  2. Invest equal amounts in all ten shares
  3. Hold for a year (give or take a week)
  4. At the end of the year, sell the ones no longer in the top ten, replace with new shares with highest yield
  5. Repeat from step 3

[*criteria being that shares already in my portfolio are not included, nor any where a dividend cut has been announced]

Note that this is part of my ‘fun’ portfolio and represents less than 1.5% of my Future Fund – it is not what I do as a main investing strategy. All dividends received are reinvested.

Signs of Life

Finally, some good news to share – the mutts are showing some stirrings of life!

Big upticks in November had most of the Dogs showing some gains, although a few persist in wallowing in the red.

Who knows what a deal/no-deal Brexit will bring or whether mass vaccination will miraculously stop the virus in its tracks and kick-start world economy again, but it will be interesting to see:

Over the same period, the FTSE 100 Total Return was 8.07% so the Dogs are doing worse at 6.91%.

However, if I include dividends received, it’s a gain of 9.80%, so not bad really.

The pooches still have around 6 months to stay the course – I’ll do another update in a few months’ time.

Random Shares

My Random Share Portfolio is made up of free shares awarded to me whenever someone signs up to Freetrade* via my affiliate link, bagging us both a random free share (worth between £3 and £200) in the process.

Out of the Champions League but in my portfolio

Here’s the full portfolio.

I’ve kept most of the shares, occasionally selling when the odd one or two gain by >20% (quite a few did in November).

The money from sales of such shares have been invested into my Winter Rock Associates Fund 😉

Freetrade will imminently be offering SIPPs as well as ISAs (my current S&S ISA is with them).

For a flat fee of £9.99 per month, this seems quite competitive compared to other brokers’ SIPPs, especially when you factor in no trading fees for buying or selling. Comparison here if anyone is interested.

Anyway, thanks to all who have signed up via my link in the past – hope you all got a decent free share!

See you on the Other Side!

I haven’t got anything to write about between now and the end of the year – perhaps I’ll use this time to think about my goals for next year, although these will probably be similar to the ones I set for 2020, only not so ambitious!

So I may as well take this opportunity to say I hope that everyone has as safe and as happy a Christmas/festive holiday as they can under the circumstances and here’s to 2021 being a better year for all of us!

10 thoughts on ““Vaccinated” Dogs of the FTSE + Random Shares”

  1. Hi Weenie,
    Interesting to see how many of your free shares that you’ve sold! Including the one you got from my registration with Freetrade! (I don’t mind, heh.) I’ve kept hold of my free share of Global Clean Energy (up 110%!), which is still my most successful share.
    Great to hear your dogs have been showing signs of life. It’s been great to see my share account increasing too. I do wonder how much is due to the enormous amounts of money our government have been ‘printing’. It’s quite puzzling to see Cineworld and Stagecoach at plus amounts (though I did buy fairly low).

    Happy Christmas and new year! I hope you have a decent break coming up.

    • Hi Firelite

      Yes, a lot of the free shares suddenly showed gains and I thought if I was going to sell them, now was probably the best time!

      No idea what the stock market will be doing over the coming year which will undoubtedly be a tough one economy-wise.

      Cheers and hop you have a happy Christmas and all the best for the new year – I have a 10-day break (including weekends) coming up, I can’t wait!

  2. Is there an option to get a refund on a free share? 😉

    Thanks for the posts this year Weenie, enjoyed keeping up with your posts. Happy Christmas and stay safe 🙂

  3. Great to see some signs of life from the Dogs. Hopefully they surge ahead following a breakthrough trade deal with the EU (I can dream!).

    Merry Christmas Weenie. Here’s to 2021!

  4. Thanks for sharing your updates.

    While I fully get that the Dogs portfolio is a fun strategy, can you give an indication on how they have performed over the past 5 odd years?

    • According to Money Observer magazine (sadly closed in Jul 2020) which first started tracking Dogs of the Footsie Portfolios since 2001, the portfolio has beaten the benchmark in 12 of the past 19 years.

      This is only my 4th one I’m running, so I can only provide my own results for the last 3 years (losses in brackets):

      2016/17: (4.35%) / 1.0% incl dividends vs FTSE 100 Total Return of 0.81%

      2017/18: 8.77% / 16.0% incl dividends vs (2.02%)

      2018/19: (20.09%) / (15.46%) incl dividends vs (9.06%)

      Here’s to 2020/21 being a benchmark beating portfolio!

  5. Finally some good news for your dogs weenie! 😀

    I am not a football guy but if I was I’d sell that Manchester United share right away and buy a Manchester City instead!

    Merry Christmas and happy new year!

    • Hey Tony

      Haha, yes, of the two, I would prefer the blue of City to the red of Man U!

      Merry Christmas to you too and all the best for 2021!

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