There has been plenty of corporate news from portfolio constituents in recent weeks to keep us occupied.

What brokers term ‘newsflow’ can be significant in stimulating share price movements. In this case the movements have generally been downward, in line with the market, so it’s fair to assume that what news there has been has disappointed the market.

Market disappointment takes several forms at different times. The market tends to have a bipolar character. News is either unanimously viewed as positive if the market is in a sunny mood. If it is in a depressed state, even mildly good news can be taken amiss.

Take Compass as an example. It produced pre-tax profits in the first half of the current financial year that were respectable enough (profits up from £459 million to £528 million) and said its expectations were unchanged for the full year. There was solid revenue growth, positive cash flow, an increase in the interim dividend and reasonably upbeat statement. What’s not to like? Yet the market response was lukewarm at best.

Similarly, although Vodafone booked a number of widely anticipated one-off charges in its latest set of figures, revenue and cash flow forecasts were comfortably beaten. But attention has focused more on widely known problems experienced by the company in the Indian and Spanish mobile phone markets. As with Compass, the interim dividend was raised. This generally bespeaks confidence in the future. But the shares have been a lacklustre performer nonetheless.

Among the smaller companies in the portfolio, such as Hansard Global, news such as nine-month new business figures were met with a markdown in the shares. This is pure short-termism on the part of the market.

New business in the first three quarters of the financial year is up 37 per cent on a present value basis and taken on at significantly higher margins than those that have been seen hitherto. The problem here for the market is that new business for a company like Hansard does involve some upfront costs. Even so, most of the specialist calculations used by insurance analysts to assess the company show both profits and assets under administration moving ahead. The dividend was also raised.

Paradoxically one of the better performers in the portfolio over the past four weeks was Cineworld, up by some 2.5 per cent. Here one can perhaps puzzle over the market’s reaction.

The multiplex operator showed revenue in the first 19 weeks of the financial year down by almost 9 per cent. This was, however, largely due to factors outside its control, in the shape of a less active film release schedule versus the comparable period of the previous year. This disparity is expected to be corrected in the remainder of the financial year and the company is confident that it can still deliver growth for the year as a whole in line with market expectations.

On the plus side, market share at the box office increased further and advertising revenue was down by less than the general trend in revenue. The company also expects revenue to be broadly unchanged in the first half of the current year.

Cineworld’s experience notwithstanding, it remains the case that with a sober market background like this, most companies cannot afford to disappoint. If they do, they can expect the consequences for share price action to be adverse.

I am making one change to the portfolio this month, which is to sell the exchange traded fund that gave us exposure to the Gulf countries excluding Saudi Arabia. iShares GCC ex-Saudi has come off the boil slightly in recent weeks and I think that, given the ongoing uncertainty in Libya and recent softness in the oil price, it will do no harm to book a modest profit here and keep the cash in hand to await another opportunity when the market looks like coming out of its recent spell of the blues.

After allowing for dealing costs, selling this share at its current price of £22.45 raises £2,235 and takes our cash balances to £2,725. The profit on the holding was in the region of 10 per cent, which is acceptable, although hardly spectacular.

I have my eye on one or two other candidates for the portfolio, both of which have high yields. With interest rates seemingly set to stay low as a result of the faltering global economy, higher yielding equities should continue to perform and there are some interesting opportunities out there that I think have been neglected.

One of them would take us into the preference share market, which is an interesting area in itself and would give some exposure to an emerging market. More on these two situations next time round.

How the portfolio is performing

The portfolio outpaced the market for the second month running in the four weeks to 9 June, although the trend in both numbers was slightly downwards. The portfolio’s gain since inception was 35.7 per cent this time round (last time 36.4 per cent). The market was up since inception by 44.6 per cent compared to the previous period’s gain of 46.7 per cent.

Stanley Gibbons, a recent addition to the portfolio, produced the best individual performance over the period in question and is now 25 per cent up on our purchase price. Most other parts of the portfolio were in negative territory and in some case in rather worse shape than the market as a whole. There has been no income to credit in the period under review.

Stanley Gibbons’ continuing advance has not come on the back of any specific news, but further optimism on the back a positive statement about first quarter performance at the end of April. The market for collectibles of most types remains firm, and SG is in a good position to benefit.

There have been periodic bid rumours about Gibbons, but if there has been a recurrence of these recently, then I have not heard them. More likely is that the recent good trading has prompted interest from brokers and some modest buying of the shares in a relatively thinly traded market.

You can track the performance of this portfolio here.