Mundy's Moment: Attribution analysis

We are often asked by clients for a breakdown of our performance by individual stock, ie an attribution analysis.

It would be great, naturally, if we could send them a list of stocks all of which have performed well. However, life rarely works that way. Historically, we have found even those stocks we have purchased that have performed well over longer periods have had variable short-term performance. Add to this list our losers and it is clear we are always likely to be generating a mixture of positive and negative numbers. However, even over longer periods it is very unlikely positive performance will be evenly spread. Like it or not, virtually all investors have a few very good (or lucky) ideas,...