It didn’t take more than just a few hours after our last weekly update was published for the news that Biden was confirmed to be 46th president to be broken last Saturday afternoon. Yesterday that outcome was further confirmed by the “final” results from a few states where the race was very close. The formal recognisition by China was an equally important milestone achieved by Biden, especially considering that Trump has still not conceded. It wasn’t the US presidential election to dominate the news and the market this week though. Attention swiftly shifted back to the pandemic but the concerning increase of Covid-19 cases was eased by the biggest story of the week: Pfizer’s announcement of their allegedly 90% effective vaccine. That day a massive rotation was observed from the so-called working from home stocks to those that have been badly hit by the pandemic.
Value outperformed growth this week as demonstrated by the Dow being up 4.1% while the S&P500 grew by 2.2% and the Nasdaq finished 0.6% negative. This side of the Pond, the Stoxx index was up 5.4%, the Italian FTSEMIB yielded a 6.4% weekly gain while the Danish stock market lagged and finished 1.8% lower. Our Responsible Investor portfolio was up 3.3%, with six of our positions gaining more than 10%.
$BRK released their earnings last Saturday. The main takeaway is that they bought back 9B $ worth of shares in Q3. Typically, companies implement buybacks as doing so reduces the number of shares outstanding, thereby inflating earnings per share and, often, the value of the stock. Berkshire must have thought that there was nothing else worth buying this quarter. $TRN.MI ‘s earnings were positive and the company will announce their 2021-2025 business plan on November 19th.
We added another technology stock this week, $ADSK, which is already up 2.4% in just two days. I have always admired the ability of this company to innovate as well as their earnings growth rate: their projected annual earnings growth for the next 5 years is 35% which is almost equal to the annual appreciation they have delivered over the past 5 years. To put things in perspective, with such a growth rate the stock could double in just over 2 years.
$SYF and $BK paid their quarterly dividend this week. Our Responsible Investor portfolio is now up 9.7% (10.4% including dividends) over its first 6 months. On my watchlist this week I have $GOOG and $CMG.
The table below summarises the portfolio performance since inception.
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