Month Eleven Performance - 20.17%

It is now mid April and markets have been on a tear.  There has been a lot of fear about a looming stock market correction.  Oil is still down, around the $50 per barrel range, but I have noticed an uptick lately with respect to oil and energy stocks.

The model portfolio has recouped it's losses of last month. So now it is showing a 20% return as it did mid February.  My opinion is that the market is buoyed by the performance of the energy sector.

It also seems to me that there is a rotation away from consumer stocks back into oil.

Over the course of two months, WFT has lost almost 20% of it's stock value. Recall it was up 45% in mid-February.  This loss was offset by Great Canadian Gaming (GC) gains, now at 54% return.  Most other stocks gained ground other than the two laggards EQB and STN.

Late March, Gildan (GIL) split their stock so that the original number of stocks doubled from 100 to 200.  The stock price was halved to about $38.  Unfortunately, Google Finance doesn't handle stock splits, although their FAQ and blog says that they do.  I had to manually adjust my number of shares and purchase price in order for it to be properly reflected in the portfolio.  Even having done that, the percentage return graph, I've been using is broken, and I haven't figure out a way of hacking it to show the proper percentage.

Case in point, here's how google finance is showing the default performance graph, as reflected by the split in Gildan's stock price from mid 70s to mid 30s.

Here's how the graph would normally look, except that I had to remove GIL from the portfolio otherwise it would look like the graph below.

Anyways, below is how the YTD vs TSX performance graph looks (without GIL). 

Note that the YTD return of eleven months for the Toronto Stock exchange is only about 5%. The model portfolio average monthly return is about 1.8% per month.

There seems to be a delay or flaw in google finance with respect to dividend reporting as well.  Google finance did not update the March dividend information for the majority of stocks that paid dividends.

Above is the latest dividend info, so it should be showing the March dividends for EQB, STN, WFT and GIL. 

Next month, will be the one year anniversary of this blog and the model portfolio.  I'll review the portfolio for one last time.

Took this  from Centre Island.