Dear Investors,
We recovered well in July to see off June’s reverse and grow to a new All Time High. Apologies for the lack of updates however I have been quite focused on growing a couple of new businesses so although I am still very much involved in Share trading haven’t had enough time to talk about it.
We picked up even more dividend shares this month looking to capitalise on some great dividend offerings out there from companies with low P/E's.
July Summary
July +5.94%
YTD + 12.52%
2 Yr Return +21.65%
Risk Level 4
Dividend Yield 4.18%
July Total Trades 3
July Profitable Trades 100%
I decided to dip in and buy some more dividend stocks to increase our Dividend Yield to 4.18% which means we good a get return even if our stocks don’t grow. I am focused on long term holding Dividend stocks that can yield us 10-15% per annum. How do we do that by buying down cycles on high paying dividend stocks that can double in value and thus deliver us double the Dividend yield that it currently pays on its share price. Nat West is one such example where we bought the irrational dip after a market drop and have seen the price come back over 100%.
Top Gainers
Endeavour 28.12%
Close Brothers +21.42%
Upstart +18.40%
Paramount +18.10%
Nat West +17.92%
Newmont + 17.20%
Gold and Silver bounced back this month leading to strong gains compared to the month before. Two steps forward and one step back for Gold and Silver at the moment. The UK Markets recovered and the election didn’t really faze the markets. I was glad to see the UK remain resilient as I do feel it is still very undervalued. We had good surges from Tech, Housing, Banking and Precious Metals which delivered us the great growth this month.
Main Talking Points
New Stocks
We brought in new positions in Imperial Brands, Diageo, Prudential, Dr Martens, Reckitt Benckiser, BP and Air France / KLM. We constantly want to be taking profit and refreshing and adding new stocks that we feel are lower than their fair value and can also potentially also yield a good dividend.
US Markets
After hitting new highs at the start, global stocks gave back some of their gains in the latter half of July, with the 'Magnificent Seven' tech giants leading the decline. This shift might be due to increased protectionist talk and a positive US inflation report, which has raised hopes that the Federal Reserve might start easing from September. This has led investors to move away from big tech stocks and favor smaller companies instead. On a brighter note, the US Q2 earnings season kicked off strongly, with the earnings growth rate approaching 10% year-over-year, following reports from about 40% of S&P 500 companies.
UK Markets
So, the UK stock market had a decent July, up by 4.2%. On the consumer price front, inflation stayed steady at 2.0% for the year up to June, which was the same as May. The Bank of England made a move on July 31st, trimming interest rates from 5.25% to 5%. This is a big deal because it’s the first rate cut since March 2020.
US and UK Political
We have seen some big news in the UK and US and with 92.5% of our stocks being from UK and North America these areas are critical to our portfolio.
In the UK the Labour party were elected, or should I say more appropriately the Conservative government was removed. So far there has been nothing major that has happened to spook the markets however we should expect tax rises and the UK to become less competitive externally over the next five years as the focus shifts inwards and in more borrowing and an increase in debt.
In the US Joe Biden pulled out of the Presidential Race allowing Kamala Harris to take over against Donald Trump. Trump was also the victim of an assassination attempt that saw him very luckily avoiding serious injury. After this he surged in the polls but has subsequently been pegged back. It will be a close fought election as ever and as US news is so partisan you never know the real state of affairs.
As always if anyone has any questions please do not hesitate to get in touch as am glad to answer any queries.
Take Care Gavin
$NWG.L (Natwest Group PLC)$BP.L (BP)$SHEL.L (Shell PLC)$GOLD$SILVER$HSBA.L (HSBC Holdings)$ABDN.L (abrdn PLC)$BARC.L (Barclays)... Show More
