When I sat down to do the numbers, I had thought it was a really wonderful week for our portfolio. I figured we’d be at a new all-time high and we were, but the market still trounced us this week. The 4.00% gain was the 5^th biggest week for the benchmark since the fund started and we are too index unaware to keep pace with such a meteoric rise without something unusual happening to one of our larger holdings.

I’ve spent the last few days in Melbourne, visiting with some interesting people and investors, a number of companies we hold shares in, and some we don’t.

We exited a position last week. As is customary, I will deal with this through the weekly blog post.

I may have spotted the future of EGP this week, an “Apprentice Value-Investor” if you will.

I will talk a little about a stock we own this week, and have no intention of selling. I seldom do this, but I believe we are probably finished buying (absent a decent retreat in prices) as it has already grown to our 5^th largest holding. In any case, it is a good instructive example of the type of very good returns available from time to time to the alert. Also, the gains here are primarily income driven rather than capital gain driven, so it is different to many of our holdings.

Some weeks when there seems to be nothing of particular interest to write about in the weekly missive that accompanies your EGP share price update, the market steps in & writes a story for me…

We’ve had a busy couple of weeks, with quite a bit of buying taking place. I mentioned a couple of small positions in the last quarterly (.pdf). I said I would discuss them in the blog after they had played out and one more or less has now, so I will try to explain the thinking in it, and why it was such a tiny position and the type of thinking we use at EGP to try and generate risk adjusted returns for our shareholders.

The Quarterly Investor Letter was emailed to investors Wednesday.

People say you don’t really know how good your fund manager is until they’ve guided you through a “Bear Market”. You may not be aware of this, but since inception, EGP has already experienced one Bear Market, and four corrections in total exceeding 10%.

Capital markets can get their hook into you in a way few other jobs will.

The portfolio metrics based on 30 June 2015 balance date and 11 September 2015 prices:

The markets were again good to us this week. Again, however, it was in relative terms as the market fell by over 4% and we fell by much less.

Well that was a pretty exciting week… If I’d told you Monday afternoon that the market would end the week up, I bet you wouldn’t have believed me…

Despite falls in our 2 largest holdings exceeding that of the market, we again outperformed this week. It was a relatively quiet one in terms of our holdings, however good results from two of our larger & more liquid holdings (Challenger & Medibank Private) assisted our above market result.

We had a good result relative to the market this week. We are within a quarter of one percent of our all-time highs, while the market is more than 8% off its high set back in March.