Happy holidays everyone !
The Big Picture
President-elect Joe Biden was certainly not attempting to sweeten the pill for the American people when he said that “darkest days in the battle against Covid are ahead” earlier this week. He also urged Americans to remain vigilant and prepare for tens of thousands more deaths from Covid-19 in the months to come, despite new vaccines. He went on to promise the distribution of 100 millions of vaccine shots in his first 100 days in office.
US President Donald Trump seems to want to go out with a bang after having rejected the long-awaited stimulus bill earlier this week, a move most were not expecting, regardless of whether his reasons were well founded or not. The pardoning of people close to his entourage and family added more controversy about his political demeanor.
A Brexit deal was finally agreed between the EU and the UK after months of excruciating negotiations, four and a half years from the referendum. Two weeks ago the parties seemed to be very distant but over the past weekend their positions became closer and led to the goal being achieved on Christmas Eve. It is too early to say which party gained the most and the real test will now be the UK’s future economic data which will ultimately tell whether or not Brexit was a good decision made by the British people.
Market Performance
It was a short week for the stock markets with European indices only open the first three days and US markets benefitting from an extra day of trading. The Nasdaq was up 0.4% whereas the S&P500 was mildly lower (-0.3%) and the Dow finished marginally up (+0.1%). The Stoxx was flat while the Italian index gained 0.7%. The Danish OMX20 finished 0.7% lower. The US Dollar recovered some ground relative to the Euro and gold finished marginally higher.
Earnings
No notable earnings were released this week. The next quarter’s earning season will start in mid January 2021.
Dividends
The next dividend payments for our stocks are due in March, which is when most Danish company go ex-dividend.
Portfolio Performance
Our portfolio declined 0.3% whereas the weighted average of the relevant market indices finished flat.
$UG.PA keeps moving higher: with this week’s 2.4% gain it is now up 53.5% overall. The financial stocks behaved well as $SYF added another 5% and $DANSKE.CO 3.7%. On the Chinese front $TCEHY fell 7.4% dragging our portfolio down.
Our Responsible Investor portfolio is now up 14.9% (15.9% including dividends) in 30 weeks. We are about 56% in stocks & ETFs and 44% in cash. On my watchlist this week I have $DVA, $CMG, $COUP, $CRWD, $AVGO and $ADBE.
The table below summarises the portfolio performance since inception.
If you don’t want to miss my alerts, please subscribe to Responsible Investor or follow me on Twitter. I also run an eToro portfolio which currently has 35+ positions and can be accessed via this link.
Responsible Investor 