John Phelps’s portfolio

WE dipped into our bulging cash reserves with three share purchases for our investment portfolios on Wednesday morning as we tried to repair some of the damage caused by stock market reversals of the past month or so.

Stagecoach was an easy choice after directors revealed a resilient set of trading figures while Legal & General offers high dividend payments.

We also made a fresh purchase of shares in Aberdeen Asset Management only a fortnight after selling a previous holding under our stop/loss system. But the shares were nearly 20% below our disposal price and we believe the current level fully discounts any further disappointments from AAM’s involvement in troubled emerging markets and the recent fall in the value of its funds under management.

We have set our usual stop/loss target for these latest tips some 10% below their current prices, at which we advise followers to consider selling on any major reversal.

We sold our notional holding in SSE at its own stop/loss level last week while a few other recommendations, including Centrica, Smiths Group and Pearson also came within a whisker of triggering sell signals.

But most of our tips put in another resilient performance with the 2013 portfolio managing a 15.9% gain since its launch on January 6 against a modest 2.5% rise in the FTSE 100 share index over the same period.

The best performance has come from the 2011 selection which has seen its original £6000 of notional investments rise by 24% while the 2011 list has added 13.1% and the 2010 portfolio is up 10.3%.