The Big Picture
The month-long rally in US stock markets came to a halt at the end of rather volatile week of trading. While the bullish narrative is still considered intact, there are various headwinds which could affect the markets going forward, including the fear of a third wave, rising inflation, and stretched valuations.
Biden’s announcement of the capital gain tax hike took a toll on the stock markets on Thursday, however analysts and investors started reconsidering its impact as early as on Friday on the basis of the fact that it is actually old news and that it only affects less than 1% of the investors.
Market Performance
Most of the stock market indices were down up this week: in the US the Dow was the worst performer with a 0.5% decline, while the S&P500 was only marginally lower (-0.1%) followed by the Nasdaq which finished 0.2% down. In Europe, the Stoxx lost 0.8% while the Italian finished 1.4% lower. The Danish OMX20 is on a bullish 7-week streak and gained 1.4% this week. The US Dollar retraced relative to the Euro (-1.0%) for the third week in a row. Crude $oil lost 1.0% and $Gold was flat. $BTC-USD had an ugly week and finished 10.5% lower.
Earnings
While none of our stocks reported earnings this week, dozens of Q1 earnings reports were published: notable ones included $NFLX who beat analysts’ expectations, but missed new subscription expectations and $CMG who rallied on record revenue and triple-digit digital sales growth.
Next week many of our stocks will report their Q1 earnings: $DSV.CO, $DANSKE.CO, $ORSTED.CO, $SYF, $NEM, $PCG and $BRK-B.
Dividends
$MC.PA and $STLA.MI went ex-dividend this week: the former has already paid the dividend whereas the latter will do so next week. Our Danish stocks paid their annual dividends earlier this year. Italian stocks traditionally pay an annual dividend in late May. US stocks distribute quarterly dividends.
Portfolio Performance
Our portfolio gained 0.7% this week whereas the weighted average of the relevant market indices finished 0.3% lower, which corresponds to a 1.0% market beat: it is great to finish up on a down week!
This week’s portfolio winners were $UMC which was up 12% and Italian consumer cyclical stock $ELC.MI which gained 4.5% (+31.6% since initiation).
Our Responsible Investor portfolio is now up 33.8% (34.8% including dividends) in 47 weeks and is beating the market by 3.2% over the same period. We are about 63% in stocks & ETFs and 37% in cash.
The table below summarises the portfolio performance since inception.
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