$LVMUY $LRLCY $BK $SYF $GILD $GRUB $SQQQ $SCO $PCG | Responsible Investor Portfolio Update, June 20th, 2020

The global markets were consistently positive this past week, with Italy’s #FTSEMIB leading with a 3.9% gain. Our RI Portfolio lagged behind due to the hedges I had put in place. I had increased our hedges as I felt the markets were “tired” of going up but the week was largely positive in the end. Well, we are still showing a positive total return and we are only 3 weeks in since inception ! Also, I’d rather always loose on my hedges than on my core positions..

We have initiated 4 new positions this week, all in the European markets: two consumer French large caps, Luis Vuitton and L’Oreal and two Italian stocks, one in the media sector and the other one in the technology sector. We have also accumulated on Pacific Gas and Electric Company. With reduce and accumulate alerts the relative weight of the open positions change of course.

This week’s winners in our RI Portfolio were Italy-based Terna (+8,4% gain) and Grubhub (+6,2% gain).

The USD lost some ground compared to the EUR (0.9%) while there was no impact of the Danish krona. This means that in a portfolio in USD, the European stocks will have lost some of their value.

We now have 14 open positions, 2 of which are leveraged hedges (inverse ETFs). We are almost half way through along the path to achieve a complete portfolio. The table below summarises the portfolio performance since inception and now includes the investment strategy for each position.

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$BK $SYF $GILD $GRUB $SQQQ $SCO $PCG | Responsible Investor Portfolio Update, June 13th, 2020

Two weeks in, the Responsible Investor Portfolio is up 2.5% while the markets are only up 0.6%: that’s a +1.9% outperformance. As the RI Portfolio has stocks traded over multiple markets, the market performance is calculated as a weighted average.

This past week was particularly volatile and saw a sharp decline in the stock markets on Thursday 11th of June: that day the RI Portfolio was actually up, you can read the details in a previous post. This week’s outperformance is particularly significant as the markets were down 4.9% while our portfolio only lost 0.4% (+4.4.%).

We have made 3 trades this week: we sold CELL.MI for a 7.8% profit and bought $GRUB following rumours about a takeover from JustEat after Uber’s bid hit the wall. So far Grubhub is up 6.9%. The other trade is a hedge on oil.

The relevant currencies (USD, EUR and DKK) were neutral and therefore had no impact on the portfolio.

We now have 10 open positions, 2 of which we intend to keep on a short leash as they are leveraged hedges. There is still a long way to go to achieve a complete portfolio which requires several additional positions as well as a greater diversification across the various sectors.

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 can be accessed via this link.

$GRUB $SCO $SQQQ : was your portfolio up on Thursday June 11th ?

The markets were way overbought and last Wednesday I decided to add a couple of hedges, namely $SCO (a double inverse ETF on oil) and $SQQQ (a triple inverse ETF on the Nasdaq). The relative weight of these positions meant that as the US markets tanked about 5% on Thursday the 11th of June, my Responsible Investor portfolio was up. Only a little, but green.

Photo 12-06-2020, 08.22.10

If on average over the mid to long term the markets go up, and you beat them, you should do well with your investments.

Enjoy the weekend !

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$PCG rising from the ashes

You will remember the wild fires which severely hit Northern California back in 2018. As a result of this natural disaster, PG&E Corporation (ticker: $PCG ), a large utility company operating in Northern California with electricity and gas, had to file for bankruptcy and the stock price tanked. Well, this bankruptcy is different than your average one and $PCG is now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Time will tell if their plan will pan out but for investors this may be a profitable trade.

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I sent a Buy Alert on May 27th and the stock has shot up 9.37% since then: nice start ! In that alert I have indicated a Stop Loss (SL) of 9.5$ (corresponding to a 14% loss from my buy price of 10.88$) and a Target Price (TP) of 15.5$ (corresponding to a 43 % gain). These are my SL and TP values, based on my risk profile: you should assess what your own risk profile is and determine how tight a leash you want to keep.

I also warned that this is a trade, implying an opportunity based on technical analysis and/or momentum, not an investment. A lot will depend on the decision of the bankruptcy judge which is inherently affected by a certain degree of unpredictability. Utility companies do not tend to be cyclical as people always need to buy electricity and gas, also in times of crisis or a pandemic (though large companies will have reduced their consumption, albeit temporarily), which means that cash continues to pour in. But these large companies tend to be under the radar of politicians: if the wind blows in their favour, the future will look brighter for $PCG ; conversely, if regulators get in their way, further moves to the downside may be experienced by the stock.

Make sure you don’t miss my Buy/Sell/Accumulate/Reduce alerts by subscribing to my website.

I currently own another utility, Italian-headquartered $ENEL.MI . My portfolio also has spicier stocks, like $RACE and $VIAV . If you wish to see the long and short positions in my eToro portfolio, please follow this link.

Enjoy the weekend and invest responsibly !

$INDA and $EWZ : two ETFs to invest in G20 stock markets

ETFs are an efficient way of investing in markets or sectors for which one would otherwise have to hold multiple positions to reproduce. This is especially true is you have a limited capital to invest, say up to 10k Euro or Dollars.

We opened a 2% position in $EWZ which reproduces the Brazilian stock market. While the outbreak seems to be nearing the peak only now over there, the stock market fall has been so significant that some of the stocks in that market are greatly undervalued, e.g. Petrobras. As always, we will be vigilant and prepared to act if the outlook changes.

We also hold a 2% position in $INDA which mirrors the Indian stock market. I have opened this one due to a favourable technical pattern, something I do rarely as I am mainly guided by fundamentals when selecting stocks and ETFs.

Brazil and India

At present I have 21 open trades (4 of which at $SQQQ trades bought at different price levels). When I am fully invested, I target having 30-40 open trades with an average percentage of 3% each, though some positions may be higher or smaller depending on the strategy. It is very important to be diversified across the various sectors but also to have enough positions to avoid being severely affected by a major swing in an investment with too high a relative weight. While this limits the potential for greater gains, it does protect you on the downside and makes your portfolio more resilient.

Here are the 4 trades in my eToro portfolio from this past week (May 18^th to May 22^nd):

$AMAT +5%
$XLK +2 %
$DUE.DE +2% (thanks to the positive Zew numbers in Germany, we might be back)
$EWZ +2% (we might be back in this one too)

The US stock market is up about 3% this week and 5 of my positions have outperformed them, namely $KO, $SYF, $USO, $IRM, $VIAV. The European stock markets have also grown by about 2%.

In my eToro portfolio I am 35% in cash, 8% in hedges and the rest are long positions in stocks and, to a lesser extent, ETFs and cryptocurrencies.

$SQQQ as a hedge proved to be a winner

Over the past two weeks the market has been quite choppy, especially intraday, but overall it has continued to hold. In fact, the Nasdaq has gained 4.4% and the S&P500 1.1% while the Dow was basically flat at -0.2%.

The difference in performance can be explained by the stocks which compose these indices, with the Nasdaq obviously being packed with many technology stocks which have been outperforming most indices. To give a couple of examples, one of the technology ETF $XLK is up 5.1% this past two weeks, and the so called FAANG stocks are all above 4% with $NFLX up 9.4%.

The relative lack of technology stocks in the European indices, which are dragged down by many bank stocks ($XLF), is the main reason why the European stock markets have been laggards. The financial sector was already suffering from the dovish monetary policies of various areas of the world, with negative interest rates in Japan and Europe for example. The pandemic has only increased their pain as money printing continued everywhere, including the US.

Some say that March 23rd is when the markets bottomed: since then the 3 main US indices have recovered a lot of the previous losses due to the pandemic crisis with a gain ranging between 27 and 31%, while the European stock market has only rebounded by 14%. When they say that it is a market of stocks rather than a stock market, what they mean is that you have to pick the right indices if you want to invest in ETFs, or the right stocks if you want to have more chances of beating the market.

Here are my top 3 winners for these past two weeks:

$SQQQ +6.96% (this is a hedge)

$AMAT +5.07%

$BMY +4.51%

The earnings seasons is not over but its pace is certainly slowing down with a lot fewer companies reporting earnings next week: the one I will be watching most closely is $BABA on Friday.

If you want to see which stocks, ETFs and currencies I own in my eToro portfolio, please follow this link.

Have a great weekend everybody and invest responsibly !

Featured stock of the month: $CHTR Charter Communications

Charter Communications (ticker: $CHTR ) is a media sector company which provides cable services to residential and commercial customers in the United States.

It offers subscription-based video services and also provides internet services as well as other media-related services.

The company was founded in 1993 and is based in Stamford, Connecticut.

As of the end of last year it had 29 million residential and small and medium business customers.

It has a market cap in excess of 100 billion USD and can therefore be categorised as a large cap stock.

While it is currently trading at a trailing P/E of 61, it has a forward P/E of 26.6 which does not make it expensive considering that it is a growth stock with excellent track record.

In fact, based on current estimates, it is expected to grow its earnings by 45% over the next 5 years which corresponds to a 5 year expected PEG ratio of 0.84, implying that it is currently trading at a discount.

As it is a growth stock it does not offer a dividend. Despite that, it has profusely rewarded its investors over the past years, with more than a 36% capital appreciation per year in the last 3 years and a stunning 30% per year over the past 10 years. For comparison, investing in a S&P500 ETF over the same 10 years would have yielded a 9.4% annual return.

YTD the stock is actually up, sporting a 3.9% increase, while the S&P500 is down 11.8%.

Charter communications is also a primus inter pares (first among equals) as it has fared better than its peers and outperformed $XLC (a popular communications services ETF which also features the stock amongst its holdings) by 36% over the past year.

The stock has a beta of 0.8 which makes it less volatile than the stock market average.

The company reported Q1 earnings on May 1st missing expectations. However, it showed a significant rise in customer numbers as well as in revenue which made the stock go up after the earnings release.

From a technical analysis perspective, the stock is well above the Fibonacci 61.8% retracement line from its mid February 2020 highs which may indicate further short-term upside potential.

CHTR

If you want to find out which other long positions I hold in my eToro portfolio, please follow this link.

$CSX, $VIAV and $RR.L are my top 3 winners this week

Seven winners this past week ! Out of these, 3 were opened and closed in the same week and the rest I owned since earlier in 2020.

The top 3 winners where $CSX with a 10% gain in 5 days, $VIAV with a 5.01% gain in 2 weeks and $RR.L with a 4.90% gain in one day. While the future remains uncertain for Rolls Royce, I will look for opportunities to go back into CSX Transportation in the near future; also we still hold a 2% position on Viavi Solutions.

This week we have also gone back into Coca Cola (ticker: $KO ) which is a long term investment. The stock has dropped a lot and seems to have now stabilised with a potential breakout in sight. The dividend yield is 3.6% at these valuations and the stock goes ex-dividend early in June.

Aroundtown (ticker: $AT1.DE ) has been badly hit during this corona virus crisis, just like most of the real estate companies. We have previously invested in $AT1.DE and made a decent profit out of it. As the sector stabilises, it seems a good moment to go back in as it offers capital appreciation potential and sports a 5.2% dividend.

Just as the sentiment was turning on Thursday, I added to my $SQQQ position which played out really well as a hedge: the US markets were down between 2.5 and 3.2% on Friday, whereas my eToro portfolio was only down 0.39%. This highlights the importance of having hedges in times of volatility as the market can quickly change its course.

At this time, I am 58% in cash and have 5% in hedges (inverse ETF): if you don’t have enough cash, you won’t be able to take advantage of bargain stocks that will come your way in the future.

If you want to find out about all the positions in my eToro portfolio follow this link.

Four more winners, $TWTR and..

In a mixed week for the US stock market, ended on April 24th, we have made four more successful trades:

$TWTR +4.1%

$SYF +3.5%

$VLO +2.0%

$LH +2%

For some of these companies, under normal market conditions, I would continue to hold, rather than sell to lock in a small profit, however these are no normal conditions ! There is so much complacency right now and the market seem to price in not only the Fed interventions but the possibility that, if things get worse, the buying could extend to securities also.

Having said that I remain only 50% invested in my eToro portfolio so that a sudden market drop would not hurt as much and would give me enough fuel to enter more long positions after it stabilises again.

We have also initiated the following long positions last week:

$SQQQ this is a hedge for the reasons above

$PTON this is to attempt a ride on a popular stock

..plus another one which you are welcome to check out in my eToro portfolio.

The earnings season is in full swing: enjoy and invest responsibly !

A successful short term trade on $EHTH

Another week of consistent recovery for the US stock market as well as for many others around the world. I remain cautious and still hold onto some hedges because this sudden reversal cannot be fully trusted and due to it being reportedly fueled by a short squeeze for the most part.

While I like to make investments for the long term, I do occasionally perform short term trades and this week I have managed to pull two off! One of them could be traded on eToro and related to eHealth (ticker: $EHTH ). What happened is the classic short selling amplified by the media, with a stock which was trading at 136$ until last week and dropping to below 100$ on Wednesday. I took the opportunity, bought at 99$ and exited at 114$ over the course of two days ! I believe the stock has the potential to go even higher and if I was a more aggressive investor, I would hold on to part of it, but decided to lock in the profit this week.

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There were two more positions we closed this week, on two of the food-related stocks owned in my eToro portfolio, both with a 5% gain, Conagra Foods (ticker: $CAG ) and General Mills (ticker: $GIS ). These were both sold with the automatic sell function available on eToro. I am ready to get back into these two but when any my positions goes above a 10% gain, I have a take profit ready at 5% in order not to give up all the profit if the stock price goes down passed that mark. I then set up a price alert to be notified if the price goes up again past the sell price and re-evaluate my view on that particular stock.

I am also very satisfied with this week’s recovery in my $WFC position, with a 26% jump in just 4 trading days.

So now I am 49% in cash on my eToro portfolio and continue to look for more investment opportunities. One from my watchlist I am prepared to jump into is $BABA , but that will depend on how next week goes.

Enjoy the long weekend and for those who celebrate it, have a happy Easter !