July 2015 performance

Sorry for not posting at the end of  June 2015, but we are back now.  Let's recap what's affected the Toronto stock market this past month.  All bad news, sorry.

Low oil and commodity prices
Canada's economy on the verge of a recession
Greek debt crisis
China stock market sell-off

Above is the one month graph of the TSX.  The overall market continues to decline. Booo.

Here's the sector map of the Toronto markets for the past 30 days.  There are 8 sectors with similar stocks grouped together.  Clockwise - [top left corner - Materials] , [top centre -Energy], [top-right corner -Consumer Discretionary], [right centre - Industrial], bottom right corner - Healthcare, Telecoms and Utilities], [bottom centre - Consumer staples), [bottom left corner - Financials], [centre - Technology].  Find this map here. Each square represents a company. The colour of the square indicates if the stock price is negative or positive.

It's pretty apparent from the map above, that materials and energy continue to drag the TSX down. Financials have been neutral last month, but the remainder of the market sectors are positive.

Here's a look at performance of the new portfolio I started two months ago back in May2015.  It's up over 6%, so averaging 3% per month.  Pretty good considering that the May2014 portfolio was only up 1.5% per month this time last year.

We find that overall the majority of the stocks are doing well with the exception of National Bank (NA) and Stella Jones (SJ).  The two winners of this portfolio at the moment are ATD.B and WPK, both with double digit gains.

This is how the portfolio looks graphically.  It was flat for the month of June, with momentum building a couple of weeks ago.

When comparing the May2015 portfolio versus the overall TSX, here's what the graph looks like for the past month.  The portfolio is outperforming the markets by 10%.

If we look at last year's stock selections, they aren't performing as well as this years.  The May2014 portfolio is presently down about 6% from May2015.  All the stocks are still doing well but EQB is still the laggard. If this was a real portfolio I'd consider removing it from the portfolio.  Of special note, GIL dropped nearly 8% yesterday, but I think this represents a buying opportunity.

Overall the May2014 portfolio is still outperforming the TSX though.  Above is the 16 month comparison chart.  The TSX has been flat for the entire time.   If you bought an index fund or ETF that mirrored the TSX, you'd be pretty much in the same boat ...not making any money.

FYI, I've decided to remove the past momentum stock posts from the blog this month so as to focus on the model portfolio performance.

Ok, so that's our look at the portfolios this month.  Hope you enjoyed the read.