It is the very essence of stock-picking, and whatever fans of passive investment might say, it works: our portfolios have beaten the FTSE All-Share index in 11 out of the 13 years in which we have run them. During that time, they’ve generated a compound annual return of 13.8 per cent, which means that £10,000 invested in our first bargain portfolio, and reinvested every subsequent year in the following portfolio, would now be worth more than £53,000. To put this smart performance into perspective, the FTSE All-Share has struggled to even post an annual average return of 1 per cent over the same period.