Our Late Bloomers screen is the worst-performing of the stockpicking methodologies that we have followed for at least five years.
Since we started tracking it a decade ago, its headline total return (that is, including reinvested dividends) has been 47 per cent, equal to a compound annual growth rate of 3.9 per cent. An investor who had simply stuck with the often-disappointing FTSE All-Share index would, by contrast, be up 72 per cent on the same measure.
Note the word ‘headline’, there. Factor in a 1.5 per cent annual charge to reflect real-world transactional charges and the wide bid-offer spreads that can sometimes crop up, and the return drops to a frankly woeful 26 per cent.