When I pick the right share, I shout about it. And here’s what I do when I get it wrong…

I have a confession to make. I earn my living advising my readers whether particular companies’ shares are going to go up or down. I have no idea whether an individual share will go up or down. Fortunately, nor does anyone else.

That goes for the analysts, investment bankers, fund managers, accountants and other professionals who work in the City and earn a great deal more than I do. As the scriptwriter William Goldman said, no one knows anything.

My abject failure to predict the future has two consequences. One: I am sitting here typing this, rather than being on a beach somewhere, counting my yachts. Two: the best I can do is get it right more often than not, and when the tide runs in my favour, point it out as often and as loudly as possible.

Last year was an excellent one. The clutch of ten investments I suggested my readers bought rose, on average, by 55 per cent or so, I reported at the end of it. (Actually, it rose by 57 per cent, a kind reader pointed out subsequently. I had forgotten a special dividend on one of my smaller investments. I can’t even get it right when I get it right.)

An increase of 55 per cent, if achieved by a fund manager, would be cause to send off for yacht catalogues. One of my investments, in Thomas Cook, was up by more than 200 per cent. This was not down to any great insight on my part; Cook had got itself into awful trouble, spending a fortune expanding onto the high street just as people were buying their holidays online. It appointed a very tough new chief executive, Harriet Green, whom I knew from when she ran a rather dull electronics distributor called Premier Farnell. I took the view that if anyone could do it, she could.