The Big Picture
Last week’s drop already seems like a distant memory as the markets field significant gains this week with some indices reaching new all time highs. There is an inherent inconsistency between the stocks, the dollar and the treasuries all going up at the same time, however: at some point something has got to give. Positive Q4 earnings keep pouring in and negotiations for the stimulus bill continue. On the vaccine front, the $JNJ vaccine continues to attract attention and reports postulate that preventative measures as well as vaccinations start to reduce infection rates and hospitalisations.
Market Performance
All indices finished higher this week: in the US the Nasdaq led with a 6.0% gain, followed by the S&P500 (+4.7%) and the Dow (+3.9%). The Stoxx gained 3.4% and the Italian index gapped 7.0% higher as Mario Draghi accepted the task to form a new government. The Danish OMX20 finished 3.9% higher. The US Dollar gained 0.7% on the Euro. Crude oil was markedly higher while $Gold finished 1.6% lower. $BTC-USD gained more than 10% continuing its recovery from the sharp January fall.
Earnings
One of our stocks reported Q4 earnings this week. $DANSKE.CO presented its 2020 annual report on Thursday and the results were in-line. The Danish bank continues on its journey to increase its profitability after the money laundering scandal that hit it a few years ago. The stock was up 6.7% this week.
Notable earnings this week included $AMZN and $GOOG who beat on both the top and the bottom line by a wide margin. The e-commerce and cloud service giant also announced Jeff Bezos stepping down as CEO and passing the baton to the executive in charge of AWS – Amazon’s profit machine.
Next week two of our stocks will report their earnings: $DSV.CO and $OR.PA.
Dividends
$BK went ex-dividend last week, the quarterly dividend is payable on February 12th. Most Danish companies go ex-dividend in March, while Italian stocks traditionally pay a dividend in late May and US stocks distribute quarterly dividends.
Portfolio Performance
Our portfolio gained 5.9% this week whereas the weighted average of the relevant market indices finished 4.7% higher which means that we beat the market by 1.2%.
$WBD.MI jumped 17.6% and is now in the black for the first time since we purchased it. $ADSK gained 10.2% after three consecutive weeks of decline. $SYF rose 10.8% thereby erasing the loss from the previous week.
Our Responsible Investor portfolio is now up 20.6% (21.5% including dividends) in 9 months. We are about 60% in stocks & ETFs and 40% in cash. On my watchlist this week I have $DVA, $CMG, $VIAV, $MSFT, $AMBU-B.CO and $OCDO.L.
The table below summarises the portfolio performance since inception.
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