Evening all.
Finally it’s month end and quarter end. And what a 1st quarter it has been.
Some history was made with substantial losses taken on some major exchanges.
” The Dow and S&P 500 had their worst first-quarter performances ever, losing 23.2 and 20%, respectively. The Dow also had its worst overall quarter since 1987 while the S&P 500 had its biggest quarterly loss since 2008.”
As an equity investor, I take heart in these numbers as my portfolio is down around 9% for the quarter and the taking of profits through periods of strength over the last few months means I’ve secured 6.70% of profit to help counter this historic crash and mitigate the drawdown effect.
So whilst I would obviously have preferred to have made a profit and keep copiers happier, from the strategy point of view of being an no-leverage equity investor, I’m relatively content with where things are right now considering the circumstances.
If I can keep up this level of activity through the rest of the year, combined with the markets starting some kind of sustained recovery eventually, everything will work out well.
If you have any belief that we will win out over the virus then it should end up being a good year, especially if my forecast for $GOLD moving higher comes true as the investments into $GDX will start to pay off handsomely in that scenario.
We enter April with weak looking markets despite the recent bounce. I’ve written a lot recently about what I think is going on and so my expectation is for the next few weeks to be a rough time in the markets and that we have just seen a dead-cat bounce, not the start of a move to new highs.
We have accessible capital if markets want to go and test and possibly break the March lows, and if they do, I know what I want to be buying. A move in the SP500 to 2,130 or lower, if I feel that the bottom is close, will also see me very keen to add some equity and invest in some of my favourite companies that I think will be primed to recovery well when economies start to reopen for business. This is also something I’ve written about already.
We’re all learning that it’s not fun watching equity portfolio’s during a Black Swan event, but if this is one of the worst event in history for the markets and we’re only down this amount in the portfolio then I hope that is some comfort that risk is being managed, a plan being followed and calm action prevailing without any desperate moves being made to try and force a green month just for the sake of the stats.
We’ll come through this terrible virus pandemic, the portfolio will get stronger from what I’ve learnt, and we’ll go on to secure more profits as a new bull rally is born from the carnage.
Stay safe, thanks for your time.
$SPX500 $DJ30 $NSDQ100
