
What a difference a week can make. My Great Expectations screen has been a real high flier since I started running it for this column in late 2011. However, when I conducted my stock screen review for the previous issue of this magazine it was having a terrible 12 months with a negative total return of 17.7 per cent compared with a negative 10.7 per cent from the FTSE 350. Fast forward a week, and the 12-month performance, while still disappointing, is better described as poor relative to the market than terrible: a negative total return of 9.9 per cent compared with a negative 7.2 per cent from the index.