It’s been a while since I wrote a post so thought I’d share an update on my investments.
May proved to be a bit of rough ride. Stock markets the world over took a hit as tension between the USA and China intensified. So, once again, buying in the dips, I bought more of the Technology tracker fund I’m a fan of. And I’m glad I did because, June, particularly the last few days has been a lot more buoyant. From what I understand, this is largely thanks to central banks like the Federal Reserve in the US and the Bank of England here in the UK indicating they will hold the current low levels of base interest rates.
Is a recession coming?
Looking out to the horizon, however, the outlook for equities looks a little bleak. Like a canary in a coal mine, a gold ETF that I purchased back in January is in profit for the first time, up 4%. Typically, when demand for gold goes up that means there is fear in the market, which could mean people start pulling their money out of stocks. Disclaimer: I did watch the Big Short today so maybe I’m just being all Michael Burry about things!
A couple of weeks ago, I decided that, despite being exposed to both as part of my tech fund, I wanted to increase my exposure to Apple and Facebook so bought a small amount of both stocks via Freetrade (I didn’t want to pay Hargreave’s Lansdown’s £12 per trade fee). At the time of writing, they are both up 10.98% and 1.75% respectively. As well as being two of the worlds biggest and innovative tech companies, I also believe they both have great “moats” (read what a moat is in my previous post here). And I also did a quick Benjamin Graham formula calculation on both of them which suggested their share prices were undervalued.
My first dividend-paying stock
I have also bought my first dividend stock in Taylor Wimpey. Got to give a shout out to Curtis via his Infant Investors Youtube channel for putting me onto this one. Whilst the share price is currently down 5%, I am set to receive a special dividend payment of 6% in July and, unless the UK housing market completely bottoms out, I’m confident the share will rise over the next few months.
Start-up on my Watch List
Finally, in my last investment post, I said I was poised to invest in Freetrade. Unfortunately, the process they proposed to me to invest prior to their next round via Crowdcube presented a lot of admin so I decided to wait and I wanted to flag to anyone that’s interested that they will be raising capital via Crowdcube again (as last time the demand crashed Crowdcube’s website) at midday on Tuesday 25th June.
If you enjoyed this post then you may also be interested in reading How you can invest in start-ups.