My Portfolio Update September 2021
There aren’t too many dull moments in the stock market if you’re a growth investors, although sometimes you wish there was. Factors like the pandemic, relations with China and inflation worries caused some big market fluctuations and buying opportunities in my portfolio.
What I Bought
Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) - Bought after dip for growth
Shopify Inc. (SHOP.TO) - Bought after dropping 10% from the amount I set my target price for. Bought for growth
Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) - Bought as regularly scheduled no matter what the market was doing to dollar cost average my position
BCE Inc. (BCE.TO) - Bought after for solid fundamentals and high dividend
Nutrien Ltd. (NTR.TO) - Bought to diversify my portfolio and add more exposure to Basic Materials
I added stocks to both my growth and my dividend portfolio. I like to keep a small amount of cash in my growth portfolio to buy stocks when they drop to attractive levels. For my dividend portfolio, I keep as little cash as possible in it and usually reinvest my dividends the same day I get them into low cost high dividend paying stocks.
My Portfolio Compared to the Market
Graph created using Wealthica Performance. (This does not include dividend performance.)
Graph Explained
From the graph, you can see as of today my Wealthsimple account is down 1.46% and Questrade is down 2.12% compared to the same time last month. At the same time, the S&P declined 1.73% and the NASDAQ declined 3.48%. I can conclude that some of my investments beat the market and some did worse than the market. It’s rare that I significantly beat the market but sometimes my speculative stocks surprise me. There are a few factors that really affected the market in the last month.
September 20th there were growing concerns that the property developer from China Evergrande’s would default.
September 28th the US Treasury yield was raised.
October 4th high inflation was a worry that drove tech stocks lower.
If you are a consistent ETF investor you do not need to concern yourself with the day-to-day fluctuations in the market. If you pick your own stocks, many factors play a role in what happens with your portfolio. I have a mixed approach and long term horizon so even though I follow the day-to-day news it hardly affects my inventing strategy. If there are significant drops of over 5% that’s when I look buy stocks I have my eyes on.