This week saw the first group of earnings come in with the financial sector under the spotlight. The big US banks did rather poorly, for the most part: this is for example the case for Wells Fargo, which we own in one of our portfolios, who took a 14.6% weekly loss while the Dow was up 2.2%. On the flipside, our other bank stock, the Bank of New York Mellon Corp (ticker: $BK ) reported better an expected earnings and ended the week with a 0.6% gain. Even within a badly hit sector, there can be outperformers.
But our last week’s biggest winners were Danone (ticker: $BN.PA ) and AstraZeneca, both European stocks, one operating in the food industry and the other in the pharmaceutical sector, who boasted a 9.1% and a 12.1% gain, respectively !
We have made several buys and sells this week. For starters we have locked in a 5.41% gain on Dexcom (ticker: $DXCM ). This company is so promising that I am sure we will be back, but I don’t trust this overly positive sentiment at the moment and, feet to fire, I would guess that next week the market may pause.
The ETF we own which reproduces the German stock market has run a lot lately, after a period of consolidation (those who swear by technical analysis would say “bull flag”), and this week we have exited the position on $EWG with a 7.12% gain in just 2 weeks !
Finally, we have closed our long position on gold, via the $GLD ETF, with a nice 5% gain in less than two months.
From the buy side, we have initiated a long position on Nokia (ticker; $NOK ) which is a potential takeover target. We’ll keep a close watch on it and if it plays out it can result in a significant upside.
If you want to see all the positions of one of my portfolios, you are welcome to follow me on eToro here.
Responsible Investor 