The global markets were down this week, especially the European indices which are battling with rising covid-19 cases. The Italian stock market distinguished itself from the others thanks to Moody’s upgrading its outlook from negative to stable while maintaining the rating unchanged at BBB: the FTSEMIB recovered on Friday and finished the week with a 0.7% loss while the Stoxx was down 1.7%. The Danish stock market fell as much as 2.9% as the country saw the Rt growing again, effectively reversing the trend which was initially showing a containment of the second wave: despite this week’s fall, investing in the Danish stock market has been rewarding so far in 2020 as the Copenhagen OMX25 is up 22% YTD.
The US stock market indices were also down this week. Interestingly, the three main indices (Dow Jones, SP500 and Nasdaq) were mostly in sync in the first three trading days of the week, as if they were in waiting mode for the last US presidential debate which polarised the attention of the media and of the world on Wednesday night. While the debate was not as balanced as the ad by the two contenders of the Utah state, it did seems like a decent confrontation between Trump and Biden, especially compared to the first one. The last two trading days of the week, however saw the SP500 recover some of the losses and finish with a 0.4% decline while the Dow and the Nasdaq fell 0.85 and 0.9%, respectively.
$SYF beat earnings on Tuesday and announced a multi-year extension of the financing and credit card relationship with $WMT and Sam’s Club. It also declared a $0.22/share quarterly dividend which corresponds to an annual forward yield of 3.27%. The stock goes ex-dividend on October 30th and the dividend is payable on November 12th. Next week $NEM, $DSV.CO, $GRUB and $PCG will report earnings.
You will remember that we had reduced our $GRUB position last week: the stock is down 2.5% since then, so it was good call. I will be watching its price action to determine whether the time is right to exit the rest of our position. As stock prices follow earnings and earnings expectations it will be critical to see what results the company reports this coming Tuesday for Q3.
Last week we talked about three stock on our watchlist which can benefit from the (post-)pandemic world. Those still apply but again I don’t like the volatility levels and the nearing US presidential election date won’t help in the short term. This week I would like to add a couple to our watchlist: the first one is an EV play, BYD Company Ltd (ticker: $BYDDF), and the other is a semiconductor stock, $UMC, out of Taiwan.
Our Responsible Investor portfolio was down 0.8% this week whereas the market was 0.9% lower which means that we have beaten the market again, however marginally.
The table below summarises the portfolio performance since inception.
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