It is time for my monthly portfolio review, now for the month of July. As usual includes a breakdown, new positions and more. Let’s get straight into it :
Cash And Cash Equivalents – 55.27%
Apple (AAPL) – 8.17%
Freetrade – 5.02%
Unilever (UN) – 4.87%
Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.B) – 4.60%
Caterpillar (CAT) – 4.17%
Bank Of America (BAC) – 4.14%
AT&T (T) – 4.04%
Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (VFEM) – 3.70%
Pfizer (PFE) – 3.41%
Vanguard Corporate Bond ETF (VUCP) – 2.58%
New Positions
I hate to break it to you, but there have been no positions added this month. This is for a couple of reasons.
First I have been really busy with my life in the last month. I have moved to another city, moved to a new apartment, started and quit two jobs, went on like a dozen interviews and signed up for uni, which I am starting in late September. I will be studying culinary arts and I am really excited that I will finally have the chance to study want I want to.
I have also found a job at a restaurant which is suitable for me and hopefully will stick around there until I finish my studies. I am exhausted of looking for jobs and really surprised by the amount of quality restaurants in Sofia – there are a lot less than I thought there are. It is a shame that not many restaurants here are taking advantage of the amazing produce we have in the country, but whatever floats your boat I guess.
Second the market has been going up and up in the last month and I just didn’t have a chance to add to any of my positions. Literally all of them are up at least 5/10% for the last month or two, which is crazy, especially considering that most of them are very conservative dividend investments.
There seems to be some kind of minor euphoria in the stock market right now, which I struggle to justify in any rational way. Everything is going up and making new all-time highs while the economy has not gotten stronger neither in the US nor in the rest of the world. It is hard for me to find any fairly valued stocks hence why I haven’t added any new positions this month.
Plans For The Month
Find Some Value
As I said it has been a struggle finding anything at least close to fair value in the last month or two. What I will do is continue to monitor all the stocks on my watchlist and wait for any of them to move closer to fair value.
I also want to finally get my cash position to under 50%, but it has been quite hard finding anything being fairly valued being it stocks or ETFs.
Follow Earnings Season
There are a lot of companies reporting earnings during the month of July. What I am interested in is how are big international trade companies doing. In my opinion their earnings are showing the state of the world economy in the best possible way. I want to see first how much the trade wars are affecting the companies and second how will the market react to that.
It looks like right now good news is good news and bad news is good news, so I want to see if that continues in the incoming quarter.
Follow Next FED Meeting
It seems that the FED has been very involved in the market movements for the past year at least and probably they will keep being involved going forward. There is a FED meeting in the end of the month, in which we can have some of our questions answered.
In my opinion this should be just a routine meeting with nothing too big happening, but the markets have been expecting a rate cut in the last couple of months. What is interesting to me is first will there be any rate cuts and second how will the markets react in case there aren’t.
Conclusion
A bit of a transition month for me and my portfolio. Nothing much happening stock market-wise for me. After all it is the middle of summer and the general activity in the stock market is on the low side. Still there are some interesting things coming up until the end of the month and I am going to keep an eye on them and hopefully be able to open some new positions.
That is going to be all from me today, if you want to keep updated on new articles don’t forget to subscribe.