Settling in at home after wandering the country a little, provides an opportunity to reflect on my observations, discussions and tenor of the people I engaged with. I thoroughly enjoyed the visits and sometimes lively discussions and following are a sampling of these. There is but one potential action item for my portfolio review – which is less than normal for these adventures.
FI Fighter returned from his self-imposed exile with a renewed passion. Now I’ll be the first to admit that his investing style is a little (ok, maybe a lot) more on the fringe than mine, but his concepts and theories are well-reasoned. Perhaps the downside to his methods as the timing – not in the sense of timing the market but in having a measure of foresight in developing trends. Being ahead of the curve tends to have drawbacks as Elon Musk can probably attest.
He returned May 18th with a series of three posts/podcasts, one of which garnered my attention. His views on metals – in particular Lithium – seem to resonate with me. I agree with his general view of market direction, our disagreement would be in the investment manner. In short I prefer a greater margin of safety with a ‘proven concept’ where he’s all-in on a ‘plausible theory’.
The month was fairly normal until the final week with Italy followed by Trump’s tariff rollout. In between we saw the on again – off again negotiating style with North Korea and China. Other than a couple of down days it appears the market is learning to ignore the noise. Again I used the dips to my advantage and stayed the course. May saw a rise in the S&P of 2.16% while my portfolio outperformed the index by registering a rise of 2.24%. YTD I still lag the S&P by 0.35%.
Portfolio Updates:
DIVIDENDS
This is where my main focus resides. Market gyrations are to be expected but my goal is to see a rising flow of dividends on an annual basis. I’m placing less emphasis on the quarterly numbers as the number of semi-annual, interim/final and annual cycles have been steadily increasing in my portfolio.
Notes: the Q/Q shows an increasing trend line due only to timing of dividend payouts (pay date shifts). Y/Y is only on par with dividend increases as dividends received were used to purchase next quarter (rather than current quarter) dividends.
Spinoffs:
GE‘s rail unit to spin then merge with WEB
Mergers:
XRX merger with Fujifilm cancelled.
SHPG to merge into TKPYY
Summary
Any month with increasing dividends and beating the S&P has to be considered a good one.
Hope all of you had a good month as well.
