Underperformance

I hate to admit it but my mortgage portfolio is underperforming. It is up about 3% in 6 months compared to a 10% rise in the FTSE100. Ooops.

A large portion of the blame goes to Vodafone. The share price is taking longer than I thought to recover to its pre-November levels. Despite a nice rise to 132p last Friday it was unable to retain that level and a disappointing report from France Telecom on Thursday sent the SP back down to the mid 120s.

Vodafone was also downgraded to "underperform" by one broker. Well as the tons of broker recomendations last year didn't help the SP hopefully this downgrade will be ignored as well.

With 35% of the portfolio invested up in Vodafone, its performance this year will determined largely by the efforts of Sarin and co. Oh dear. I have been here before. In 2004 50% of my growth portfolio was in Vodafone. As the Vodafone SP went nowhere in 2004, so did the portfolio.

Should I invest all my mortgage portfolio in the FTSE100 ETF? Possibly but that would be soooo boring. I would rather have some defeats and victories on the way and learn more about investing in the process.

Vodafone Key Performance Indicators are out on the 24th Jan. Lets hope for some good news!