2014 review

Given how this new year has started in France, I guess it can only get better. Best wishes to everybody anyway.
I will refrain from making comments on the recent events, as this is an investing blog.

My portfolio is up 11% in 2014 vs 35 % in 2013.
I have no real benchmark, but I invest primarily in French small caps, so it makes sense to compare with the following benchmarks :
- the mid&small caps index (MS190) is up 8.4%
- investment funds with the same universe (value, small caps)
- Amiral Gestion Sextant PEA up ~12-13 %
- HMG Decouvertes up ~12 %
- Moneta micro entreprises up ~8 %
- Independance et expansion up ~16%
So my performance is more or less in line, but certainly not spectacular.

I do track my operations/porfolio on Excel but one issue I have is that I'm not able to quantify which positions/decisions have contributed the most to a given year performance (if I understand correctly this is called performance attribution).
I think the most positive contributions went from my biggest existing lines (Precia and Installux), but certainly not from the stocks I talked about in 2014, namely GEA and SII. I'll do an update on those later.

The place to be in 2014 for French small caps was biotech (Cellectis +430 %, Genfit +322 %, Adocia +709 %, Innate Pharma +60 %, DBV Technologies +305%...), way outside my (admittedly narrow) circle of competence anyway.
On the other side, some companies in the oil service sector (Technip, CGG, Vallourec,...) have been trashed. I have the feeling that all this is a little silly and temporary, but will not venture further.

I've spent most of the year with a quite important cash position ~20%, because of insufficient opportunities. A short window opened mid oct when the market went down but I still have a large cash position.

The creation of the PEA-PME seems to be rather unsuccessful, which is fine for me (less money inflow, so less competition).

I'm heavily invested in French stocks for good reasons (tax deferred account, less broker fees, probably much less domestic/foreign competition than, say, the US market, less efficient market) and bad (domestic bias, lack of time,...) reasons.
One of my new year resolutions is to diversify more, which means investing in an area relatively decoupled from the Eurozone.