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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