Stock Portfolio Review: June 2019

Let’s look at what happened this month with my stock portfolio.

Last month I wrote about my portfolio. For me personally, I consider it a good exercise and part of a learning process. It forces me to look to each position and see the impact of it on my portfolio.

Since I am adding funds to this account every week or so and, therefore, adding to existing positions or opening new positions, it makes sense I review it at least once a month.

My long term focus is a mixed bag of ETFs, dividend-paying stocks, blue-chip stocks, and a few growth stocks to hopefully beat the market in the long run.

Current Stats

# of Stocks Holdings: 31 # of ETFs Holdings: 3 # of Dividend Stocks: 18 Cash Position: 2.09%

Top 3 Holdings:

AbbVie Inc (9.45%)

Telefonica Brasil (6.15%)

Nokia (5.92%)

There were some major changes in my top 3 holdings from last month.

Increased Existing Positions

First AbbVie did a major acquisition when buying Allergan (AGN). For the ones that are not familiar with this company, it owns the Botox brand.

Investors did not like it and the stock collapsed. As a long term investor in the company, I was forced to take advantage of it and increased my position. The sale was over-reacted and the last days the price already recovered more than 9%. My average cost is now at $74.21 per share.

I have also doubled my position on Nokia. This is one of my 5G plays along with Verizon. My average cost is now at $5.51 per share. The block on Huawei is likely to have an impact on Nokia profits as many of the telecom operators are looking to de-risk their 5G projects and go with a “non-troubled” solution.

As for the price, there seems to be some consolidation around the $5 level after the bounce at $4.80. It is also featuring a nice 5.79% dividend yield at the current price.

Farfetch is one of my growth stocks and I did buy more shares this month. At the beginning of June, the stock dipped to the $19 level and I saw it as a great discount.

Seems we are forming a descending triangle and the stock might pop in the coming weeks. At the current price, we are around 35% to the 52-week high so we have quite a good upside potential. If it deeps more, I am likely to add to my position.

Other added positions:

• Brookfield Property REIT (BPR)
• ING Groep N.V. (ING)
• Overstock (OSTK)
• Vanguard S&P500 UCITS ETF (VUSA)

New Positions

Quite a few new positions in my portfolio. Here it the list:

• Disney (DIS)
• Tesla (TSLA)
• iQIYI Inc (IQ)
• Salesforce (CRM)
• Akerna Corporation (KERN)
• Minerva Neurosciences (NERV)
• Fiver (FVRR)
• Slack Technologies (WORK)

Some inputs here…

Disney is a long term play I was on it a few weeks back but I was forced to lock in profits after a gap up. The price seems to have stabilized and I started a small position. I assumed the price would drop a bit more. If it does I will add more shares.

Tesla is the love-hate stock of the market. I think Tesla products are just phenomenal and I do have a quite bullish thesis but truth being said, this stock is a roller-coaster. Whether analysts know to value this stock or not, I do not really know. Bur recent downgrades plus some concern over demand seemed to push the stock down to new lows. I saw this as my entry point and I am now up 23%. I do think all the failed orders of the first quarter will show up on the next one and the stock will pop. We will see if I am right or not.

iQIYI gives me some exposure to China and technology. This is one of the stocks that has been hammered the last 3 to 4 months due to trade wars but it does not make much sense in my view. The Netflix of China has major growth potential and it became one of my growth plays. I saw some consolidation on the $18 price level and decided to get in. I am now up 17% since I bought it and this one could be a runner for the next weeks.

I wanted to add Salesforce to my portfolio for a long time but it was expensive in my opinion. The stock price seems to be in a small downtrend and took a small position. The recent acquisition of Tableau did not bring a major impact on the volatility.

All the other buys are speculative plays for days or weeks. Very small positions in my portfolio so not bringing too much risk. IPOs tend to be quite volatile in the first weeks/months so I’ve been having some success on playing with these.

Closed Positions

Now, let’s see what I have sold:

• iShares Brazil (IBZL)
• Smartsheet (SMAR)
• PagSeguro Digital Ltd (PAGS)

I have sold my position in iShares Brazil and swapped it with iShares MSCI World (IWDA). This is a more comprehensive basket of stocks with far more volume. I closed my position on a 9% profit. I still like my exposure to Brazil but through individual stocks.

I have profited on my play on Smartsheet after it hit a double top. So it was a good technical analysis play and closed on a 29% profit.

Same reason for selling PAGS after a 51% run. I had to lock in profits and this stock is now on my watchlist for a likely pullback. Almost made it my best trade ever in just a month.

Performance

My current indicators:

• Portfolio Forward Dividend Yield = 4.07%
• Portfolio Theoretical YTD Return = +6.46% (includes new positions; excludes dividends, ETFs and sold positions)
• SPY ETF YTD Return = +17.24%

The performance mentioned above is just a theoretical YTD return on my current portfolio which does not reflect at all my real YTD returns since purchase. However, it helps me to blindly compare what would be my portfolio performance against the S&P 500 index ETF performance since the beginning of the year.

As mentioned last month, I want to start tracking my portfolio growth month-over-month so I can see both top-ups and dividends reflected on a nice graph. So the last day of June will be my starting point and next month I will be able to start tracking it.

My Worst Performer YTD: TSLA (-32.85%) My Best Performer YTD: KERN (114.07%)

Plan for July

No special plan apart from keeping adding more money into VUSA and IWDA as these are low-cost index ETFs that bring enough diversification. Also, July might be another volatile month so the new capital will be mostly held in cash waiting for good buy prices.

The recent trade truce might lead to a rally in stocks and money rotation so it is possible that will be more actively trading the next weeks.

For some people managing a portfolio is simply too much work and many times not worth it if we compare with the simple ETF approach. However, I find it extremely useful as a personal development tool and it will hopefully add value to my investing career.

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Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. Always do your own research when investing in stocks.