John Phelps’s portfolio

OUR share tips surged to fresh records again last week as the stock market celebrated the Bank of England’s interest rate cut and looked for further moves to stimulate the post-Brexit economy.

Nearly all of our recommendations joined in the fun with our four investment portfolios showing average gains of around the three per cent mark when we reviewed our progress on Wednesday morning.

The biggest rises were companies which earn the bulk of their money overseas and stand to gain when their foreign currency earnings are reported in terms of the much weaker pound. They were led by Smiths Group, the airport X-ray and medical equipment specialist engineer, which scorched to a nine per cent gain after directors told analysts to raise their profit forecasts because of the effect of currency movements.

Other foreign exchange gainers included Edinburgh’s Craneware, Diageo, Halma, Imperial Brands and Reckitt Benckiser while plastics group RPC bounced back after initial concerns over the impact of its takeover of Greenock-based British Polythene Industries.

Building materials group Marshalls was another significant gainer on hopes that the Government is set to increase infrastructure spending. The scale of the stock market’s bounce since the Brexit vote has taken us by surprise and we remain braced for the inevitable profit-taking at some stage soon. We have again raised our stop-loss level on most of our more successful tips and will sell our notional holdings at these levels if there is any major setback.

Even so, we believe shares of Dairy Crest are still worth a risk and made a nominal purchase in the Cathedral City-to-Clover group for our 2014 portfolio on Wednesday morning. The lower pound should help cut the impact of foreign competition on its key Cheddar cheese market while analysts are looking for an export-led boost to its newer ventures into products for the health and baby foods areas.