Welcome back to the roller coaster that is the Toronto Stock Market. These past few weeks have been punishing to our test portfolio.
The big banks have lowered their expectations of growth for 2015, causing them to shed almost 5% of their market value. Then oil prices collapsed, as OPEC drove prices down on oil to make it less profitable for US companies to bring oil to market. Here's a good explanation of what's happening right now:
So let's see what the impact to the model portfolio is, this month. Recall that this portfolio does not have any direct exposure to any oil stocks. We do Equitable Group which is in the finance sector.
The portfolio didn't lose all it's value as it did for a brief moment back in October, but I would say it has lost about 30-40%, but overall it is still up over 6% since portfolio inception. This month's biggest loser is Stantec, at just under 10%, followed by Equitable group with a mere 2% return.
Here's the YTD graph from May 15th to now. So now we are just averaging under 1% per month as a return. But if you want some positive news, here's how the TSX did over the same period.
From the chart above, we see that the TSX is in negative territory and down 5.63% since May 15.
And this is the chart for XIU, the top 60 stocks in the Toronto Stock Exchange, which is down 2.43% since the middle of May.
