COMMENT
A Great Start For Champion Shares

By Ed Bowsher (TMFArkle)
January 3, 2006

The Motley Fool has often argued the case for long-term investing, and we're not alone. Warren Buffett has held many of his shares for decades. For example, he first bought into Washington Post Co (NYSE: WPO) in 1977 and he still has a holding now.

My colleague, Maynard Paton, is another man for the long term. He used to manage the Fool's educational portfolio, the Qualiport. Its aim was to buy shares in quality companies that would then deliver strong returns over a period of several years.

Yet even though Maynard was picking shares for the long term, he still delivered market beating performance in the short term. Indeed, the Qualiport outperformed the market in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. Maynard's winners included London Stock Exchange (LSE: LSE), Emap (LSE: EMA), and Halma (LSE: HLMA).

Maynard now edits our investment service, Champion Shares, and he's pulling off the same trick once again. For Champion Shares, Maynard is recommending stocks with an intended holding period of two to five years. In other words, they're investments for the medium to long term.

Yet the Champion Shares portfolio has already begun to out-perform in less than four months. Look at this table of the portfolio's performance so far:

	Date of Recommendation	Gain to 30 December 2005 %	FTSE All-Share %
1.	September 2005	5.3%	6.6%
2.	October 2005	- 14.6%	6.8%
3.	October 2005	18.8%	6.8%
4.	October 2005	12.6%	6.8%
5.	November 2005	- 1.4%	4.6%
6.	November 2005	37.1%	3.2%
7.	December 2005	13.2%	2.2%

Champion Shares has delivered an average gain of 10.2% since September. The equivalent figure for the FTSE-All Share is 5.3%.

If you'd like to know which shares Maynard has recommended, this article gives some clues. Or even better, why not take out a FREE 30-day trial to Champion Shares itself and you'll be able to read all seven of Maynard's recommendations in depth. He doesn't just tell you the pluses; he outlines the bear points too.

If you sign up now, you'll also be able to read Maynard's next recommendation as soon as it's published on January 11th.