June 2021 Update - A Small Experiment
Background:
Dividend Portfolio - Dividend Growth Stocks.
Speculative Portfolio - Good companies that are richly valued high growth companies.
Both portfolios were started with 10% of my liquid assets each on Jan 1st 2021.
June Update:
Martina Navratilova was an early harbinger of change (see this month's story at the end of this post). I feel June similarly, is an early harbinger of change in the market.
My May update had the following comments:
For the third straight month, the Speculative portfolio continued to bleed while the Dividend portfolio continued to push ahead of even its pre-pandemic highs. The Speculative portfolio has now lost all its gains.
June saw what could be the beginning of a reversal and the return of a risk appetite. The Dividend portfolio did not exactly fall, but it stagnated. The Speculative portfolio did not jump, but it did show signs of life. This is a market looking for direction and my bet is that a shift is imminent.
Stock of the month:
ASAN - One of the potentially useful things that seems to be coming out of this experiment is a way for me to use the relative performance of the Speculative and Dividend portfolios as a signal for gauging risk appetite. I did feel that June is an early indicator of the return for risk assets. I went ahead and purchased my top speculative stock, and it has been up nicely at least for this month.
Numbers since Jan 2021:
S&P 500: 15.25% (UP from 13.55% end of May)
Nasdaq Composite: 14.09% (UP from 8.17% end of May)
Dividend Portfolio: 17.68% (DOWN from 24% end of May)
Speculative Portfolio: 5.9% (UP from 0% end of May)
Long Reads for the month
Martina Navratilova Has Plenty to Say - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
I think at this late stage in my life, when I am not even following Tennis, I have become a fan of Martina Navratilova. What a woman!
Both from the point of view of her opinions about social issues, as well as her attitude towards Tennis, she has proven to be decades ahead of her time.
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