Investor Insight basket delivers June quarter milestones and strong FY23 performance

The end of the financial year and quarter also marked the passing of Harry Markowitz – the 1990 Nobel Prize laureate who first introduced Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT).

Today MPT is cannon, but it wasn’t always. In a nutshell, MPT goes like this: if company performance is not always reflected in the share price, then individual stocks’ performances should come secondary to the portfolio’s overall performance, and diversification is key to spread and manage risk.

The Investor Insight basket of 16 stocks – spread across resources, technology and property, and from micro-cap to ASX-50 – performed well for the financial year, up 8% against the All Ordinaries (+7.4%) and the ASX200 (+7.4%).

There were many significant milestones ticked during the quarter, however the Investor Insight basket finished flat, down 6% against the All Ordinaries (+0.22%) and the ASX200 (+0.24%).

VRX Silica (ASX: VRX) was one of the quarter’s strongest performers. After many months of waiting, it’s Environmental Review Document (ERD) for the Arrowsmith North Silica Sand project was accepted for Public Environmental Review (PER). The low-capex, 30-years-plus Arrowsmith North project has a six-month ramp up period before it would be producing high-purity silica sand for glass manufacturing. For investors, the EPA acceptance of the ERD has been a long time coming. For the Bruce Maluish-led company, it is a crucial milestone, not just for Arrowsmith North, but for its entire portfolio of silica sand projects – Muchea, Arrowsmith Central, Arrowsmith Brand and Boyatup.