As the half year has now ended and the market seems to be slipping into a period of apathy, it seems appropriate to update all other club members as to the current state of play at H&G, The Brass Monkeys and The Dirty Harrys. No doubt this will give you all confidence as you can see that your own club portfolios aren't going so badly after all!

H&G

We'll start with a look at the "Boom-or-Bust" section of the portfolio. One clear winner here, and that is Pan Andean Resources (LSE: PRE). Drilling is now underway and the price has increased to 63p from an all-time low of 5p last year. It will take about another 30 days for drilling reports to come through, and the price could rocket, or it could plummet. Oh well...

Gold Mines of Sardinia (LSE: GMN) and African Gold (LSE: AFG) are doing nada, but Atlantic Caspian Resources (LSE: ACA) seem to be fairly active (it's the old "Resources in the name" ploy).

On to our more serious investments, and let's look at some TMT (telecomms, media and technology) stocks. We are holding ARM (LSE: ARM), Baltimore (LSE: BLM), DCS (LSE: DCS), Kingston Communications (LSE: KCOM), NXT (LSE: NTX), Redstone Telecom (LSE: RED), Retail Decisions (LSE: RTD) and Vodafone (LSE: VOD). Basically, all are down on last month due to low volumes and bearish sentiment. Pretty heavily weighted in this sector? Maybe, but we are in most of these stocks for nothing having taken profits earlier this year. So we are just holding, and holding, and holding. We are quite happy with all of them, and our expectations are low in the short term. We have a reasonable holding in stockbroker Charles Stanley (LSE: CAY), mainly on the basis that in either a bull or bear market the broker wins regardless.

The Banking sector now only has one representative, Royal Bank of Scotland (LSE: RBOS), following last month's decision to sell Lloyds TSB (LSE: LLOY) in order to pay off a departing member. We have a serious mining stock, Petra Diamonds (LSE: PDL), and the Pubs and Breweries sector flag is waved by SFI Group (LSE: SUF) and Springwood (LSE: SWO). SFI last week announced the takeover of Slug and Lettuce (LSE: SLU), which in my opinion is a good long term move. The market treated it rather harshly in my view, slamming it by 20%.

Overall, we are happy with our stocks.

The Brass Monkeys

A lot of the stocks are duplicated but of the rest we do have a Pharmaceutical stock, Shire Pharmaceuticals (LSE: SHP). That is on a bit of a rally at present. We have another stock from that sector, Maelor (LSE: MLR), which is going sideways at the moment. We favour Tesco (LSE: TSCO) as the out-and-out Retail sector leader and are impressed with their go-ahead approach and worldwide operations. We have additional technology exposures with Sage (LSE: SGE) and Misys (LSE: MSY), Marconi (LSE: MNI) gives us some electronics exposure and we also have a small stake in Reflec (LSE: REF), the reflective ink manufacturer.

The "Curse of the Monkeys" seems to be well and truly behind us now although it is a couple of months since we have seen any upward movement in the unit valuation. Still, we were lucky enough to take profits on our holdings in March and therefore the majority of our technology stocks have cost us very little, if anything.

The Dirty Harrys

More of the same really, although we do have BATM Advanced Communications (LSE: BVC) and Kewill Systems (LSE: KWL) from the TMT sectors, and a small retailer, Merchant Retail (LSE: MRT) as well. The latter is one of Jim Slater's favourites. This portfolio has been treading water a bit lately, but then I suppose they all have. Actually, very slightly drowning if the truth be known.

We are now in the third consecutive low volume month and there are no signs that July and August, traditionally quiet, are going to be any different this time around. It is sometimes difficult to get much positive enthusiasm at this time of year, and this is especially true after the period from October 1999 to March 2000, but we are using the opportunity to seek out prospective new stocks to buy in the Autumn. This Fool feels as though there may well be a bargain or three around by then! We have in the past been tempted to sell out for the Summer but have not yet actually done it and this year we are fastening the seatbelts for a potentially bumpy ride. We will NOT, repeat NOT be selling out of our stocks just because the price drops. No, very unFoolish, that. We have to have some major bad news about a specific company before we dump our holding!

Where Next?

• Investment Clubs discussion board
• The Fool's Guide to Investment Clubs
• Fool Books -- The Fool's Guide to Investment Clubs
• TMF Staff Investment Club discussion board

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