Hello dear Copy Traders and followers, and welcome to my first blog post on my recent Popular Investor trading activity and market analysis.
With nearly five months of the year completed, the world and especially the financial markets are in a much different position now than they were on New Year's Eve 2021.
Stock Market Headwinds
I won't bore you with all the reasons why the world and financial markets are in such a mess as I am quite sure you are fully aware of the situation by reading newspapers and watching the TV, but in summary there are lots of headwinds, lots of problems, and no easy end in sight for any of it in the short term.
Our Trend Following Strategy Portfolio Position
With the aforementioned in mind, and looking at our portfolio results for this month and the full year, I am delighted to see that our portfolio is up very modestly in May (0.90%), and is only down just over 2.6% this year!
When looking at the world markets, some of which are now in bear territory, i.e. -20% declines, such as with the USA NASDAQ and various other indices around the world, I think we have done a great job in holding steady under very difficult circumstances.
When looking at some of my peers on the Popular Investor results pages, I can see many very experienced traders down between -10% and -30% this year already, with a few even worse off! So in short, I am really happy with our strategy so far.
The UK Stock Indices current Position
The UK main market (FTSE100) has held up remarkably well in recent months, circa 7500 as I write this. However, it does mask a more challenging position for most of the market participants.
When doing a market analysis this morning, it is clear that by far the majority of Footsie 100 companies are struggling and their share prices have collapsed quite significantly in the last six months, oftentimes somewhere between 15% to 50%.
The flipside or balancing act of these big declines is that the oil majors such as BP and Shell along with the mining majors such as Glencore and Anglo American have done very well, and their share prices have increased considerably recently, and as they count for more in the Footsie 100 due to their higher weighted average, they are supporting the FTSE 100 current headline figures.
The position of the FTSE 250 (the UK's mid index) is similar. There are many companies that have been in decline for the last six months, with almost perfect downtrend patterns developing.
That said there are one or two mid market companies that do have a positive trend, and it is these we have been keeping our eye on recently with our software filters.
The May 2022 eToro Portfolio Update
After a thorough review of our existing portfolio, I made the decision to eject Tesco, Fraser's Group, Segro and Redde Northgate from our portfolio as their trends had reversed.
I also included Serco, Standard Chartered, Shell, Meggitt, CMC Markets and Qinetic today to try and capture some further upside from these positive trending Co’s as can be seen in the picture below.
Fortunately for us we only need a dozen or so positively trending stocks out of our universe of 350 to choose from, but of course they can get more difficult to find (and remain diversified) when the majority of the market is on the way down.
Conclusion
I very much hope you enjoyed my brief trading update, and that you are satisfied with our current annual position in light of some very unfavourable markets at the moment.
As always if you have any investing questions or want to leave any feedback then please do so either under this blog or on the etoro platform itself as its always nice to hear from you.
I’m also looking to build my followers and copiers, so if you have been satisfied with our results so far, or know anyone else in the eToro arena, then please do share my profile, or etoro review with them.
Best Wishes
Phil
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