STAR Background

STAR - What it is and where it's going

The Share Tracking and Ranking (STAR) bulletins have been developed over almost 20 years in order to provide investors with a totally impartial aid to selecting and managing shares for private equity portfolios. The background to the STAR methods and the portfolio results over the past 20 years are summarised in the sections below. For independent comment on the STAR value investing process please check out the Press Comments pages.

However, as regular STAR users are aware, Whitechurch Securities has been unable to continue the monthly production of the bulletin because the person at Whitechurch who was responsible for that activity has left the company. As a result the monthly number crunching and editorial of the STAR bulletins has reverted back to the founder.

This unplanned change has actually been the catalyst for a complete alteration in the function and direction of the STAR bulletin. It is now planned that the monthly bulletins will be the focal point of a regular electronic magazine linking all members of the STAR Investors Association. In addition to the existing monthly STAR updates the expanded electronic publication will contain basic market comments, notes on wider investment strategy, letters from readers and analytical profiles on specific listed companies highlighted by the STAR screening process.

STAR Aims and Performance

STAR - Aims and Performance
The STAR sections of the monthly bulletins provide a basic framework to build and manage your own share portfolio, simply and at very low cost. There are two share selection templates:- one for Capital Growth and the other primarily for Income. The aim is to achieve an overall return, for portfolios of ten and twenty shares, that is significantly better than that from the FTSE All Share Index over the longer term. Full guidelines to using STAR are contained in the Stepbystep guidance notes.

The actual results since the mid 1980s prove that this simple but well researched process has indeed worked very well. The average annual price gains recorded by the top ten shares selected for capital growth have in fact outperformed the annual FTSE ASI gains in 20 out of the past 27 years. In this period the STAR selections have risen in price more than 6 times faster than the Index.
For details on the past performance of the 10 share selections please click on STAR 10 Results.
For details on the past performance of the 20 share selections please click on STAR 20 Results.

The STAR Investors Association

It is planned that subscribers to the STAR bulletin will automatically become members of the STAR Investors Association. Members of the association will be entitled to receive the STAR bulletin free of charge as well as being able to participate in investment workshops, occasional company visits and other activities proposed by members themselves.A draft proposal will be circulated to all current STAR subscribers asking for comments and suggestions for taking this idea forward and also for ways in which the membership may be increased in order to add weight to the voice of the association in matters of interest to all investors.

For more information and for a sample copy of a recent copy of the STAR bulletin just email the editor at jpm@companynews.co.uk.