The Big Picture
On the US presidential election front, Trump finally gave the green light for an orderly transition and there are now signals of him getting closer to conceding: however remote the possibility of surprises in the transition process was, this is good news for the US markets. President-elect Biden announced some of the prospective cabinet members as well as his pick for the US Treasury, the well-known and respected Janet Yellen; this is another good news, first of all because it would be the first woman to cover that role and secondly because she is known to be lenient towards QE.
Market Performance
All the indices we track were higher this week, especially European stock markets which benefitted from an additional trading day as the US celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday. In the US, the Nasdaq was up 3% whereas the Dow and the S&P500 gained 2.2 and 2.3%, respectively. The Energy sector led for the second consecutive week. European stock markets went higher, with the Stoxx index gaining 1%, the Italian FTSEMIB ripping 3% and the Danish OMX20 finishing flat. With just one trading day to go, this November could be the best in the stock market history.
Earnings
The Q3 earnings season is almost over. In the S&P500, 84% of the companies beat earnings; however, there was a 6.6% decline in earnings overall this quarter. Healthcare was the best sector with a 13% earnings growth. Check out this cool infographic by Factset for more.
With last week’s 5% increase, our $SYF position is now 43% since we bought it 6 months ago. One of our most recent buys, $UMC, which is an investment in the semiconductor sector, jumped 20% this week following news of capacity increase of their production facilities. It is also worth noting the 7% weekly gain of $ADSK which is up 11% since our purchase 2 weeks ago, with the recent boost triggered by their earnings beat on Tuesday.
Dividends
This week $TRN.MI went ex-dividend and paid a 4.3% dividend bringing the performance in our portfolio to about 9.1% which is very good considering the defensive nature of TSO companies. Three more stocks of our portfolio go ex-dividend in December.
Portfolio Performance
Our Responsible Investor portfolio is now up 13% (14% including dividends) in 6 and half months. We are about 55% in stocks & ETFs and 45% cash. On my watchlist this week I have $DVA, $ROKU and $GOOG.
The table below summarises the portfolio performance since inception.
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