Investors' portfolios grow despite a week of bad sharemarket news

Jenny Ruth

Sunday 7th May 2006

In a week when all the key indicies went south and headlines were dominated by Telecom shares plummeting the best performing Stock Guru portfolios managed to increase their gains while the worst performers pared their losses.

Telecom shares fell 98 cents to $4.72 during the week after the government announced its plans to end Telecom's monopoly of the local phone wire network and the company reported a net loss of $244 millon for the nine months to March 31 after a $897m writedown of its Australian operation AAPT.

The first of the worst performing portfolios containing telecom was in fifth last position.

Not surprisingly, since Telecom dominates both, the Top 10 Index shed 4.8% and the Top 50 Index dropped 3.7% over the week while the Small Caps Index fell just 0.07%.

Kiwifruit Seeka continued to be the major booster of the two best performing portfolios, even thought he shares slipped 5 cents to $4.10 over the week - they are still up 28% since the current game began.

Courier company Freightways was also another reason three of the top four portfolios did so well, rising 37 cents to $4 over the week. There has been little news from the company since it reported a 20% rise in first-half net profit to $13.5 million and said although it expects lower growth from existing customers, its growth strategies will lessen that impact.

New Image, steady at 4 cents over the week but down 27% since the current game began, continued to drag down the four worst performing portfolios. There were no company announcements, as with point-of-sale equipment company Cadmus which is down 8% since the game began and which is in two of the worst three performing portfolios.

The best performing portfolio at the end of week three was up $5,473, compared with the $4,981 gain for the best performer at the end of week two, while the worst performer was down $4,086, compared with the $7,801 loss of the worst performer at the end of week two.

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