Investments

Nordea has bounced back a little bit so I decided to sell all my 162 Nordea shares held in the secondary portfolio for 8,81 EUR per share. Quick trades in and out don’t typically pay off but that’s what this secondary portfolio is currently for. I was originally looking to replace these with Telia shares but Telia also bounced back already. XXL ASA is also looking very interesting for a quick trade. Let’s see how both will move in the coming days.

Maintenance purchase for the secondary portfolio in the form of 8 Loudspring shares bought for 1,336 EUR per share. Tiny transaction but acceptable in the secondary portfolio as the fees are so low with Nordea.

This is a purchase I have mixed feelings with. H&M was similar and so far it hasn’t served me too well but let’s see what the future brings. Europris ASA appeared too cheap to pass and I had the currency (NOK) already available from the Gjensidige exit, therefore I bought 1500 shares for 21,50 NOK per share. With this cost basis I can expect above 8 per cent yield which appears to be very high but also sustainable. I still haven’t made up my mind if this is a long term dividend investment or short/mid term capital appreciation play. This increases my debt level but not too much leaving me with multiple options going forward. I most likely will sell my stake on BHP Billiton at some point (due to the cyclical nature of it) for which I could currently offset the taxes by selling my not-so-succesfull stake in H&M. That would lower the debt level significantly but I can also manage the debt component with new capital.

Oops, I did it again as I bought additional 60 shares of Nordea Bank for 8,12 EUR per share for my secondary portfolio. Nordea announced today that they are buying a Norwegian online bank from Gjensidige Forsikring ASA, a company I still recently had position on, for €578 millions paid in cash. Interesting developments in general – Sampo being a major owner of Nordea and Gjensidige being a competitor of Sampo. I suppose we will see plenty of M&A activity in insurance & banking sectors in the coming years.

See: https://www.nordea.com/en/press-and-news/news-and-press-releases/press-releases/2018/07-02-06h00-nordea-to-acquire-gjensidige-bank-and-enter-strategic-partnership-with-gjensidige.html

I can’t help myself so I decided to stop trying and bought additional 24 shares of Nordea Bank for 8,135 EUR per share. Valuation appears too cheap and yield too high to pass.

Maintenance purchase for secondary portfolio with a purchase of 6 additional shares of Nordea Bank for 8,225 EUR per share. Rather insignificant as such but keeps the fees away for a quarter.

Lockheed Martin is a long term play of mine. I have a short term interest in the traditional military aspect but long term interest in the space exploration and, as a Skunk Works fan, technology R&D aspect in general. Therefore I decided to buy 8 additional shares for 299,50 USD per share. Many stocks are down today and Lockheed Martin is in the news with F-35 related bonus payment issues – hard to say what’s the impact on the share price today but that’s irrelevant in the long term. US decision to create a new space force branch for the military is also very interesting.

See: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/18/trump-space-traffic-debris-630189

AT&T has been down lately due to the litigation for Time Warner merger. They got a favourable decision and the merger is moving on. It’s a move which is very difficult to value as the such mergers tend to come with pros and cons – huge debt load being one of them. Other telecoms are making similar moves on smaller scale but this is big enough to really move the needle. I personally share some of the doubts people are having about this but overall I view this as a positive change. Therefore I bought additional 40 shares for 32,55 USD per share.

See: http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/12/media/att-time-warner-ruling/index.html

Sampo rarely trades below or even close to fair value but when it does, I’m ready to make some unplanned moves. Today I decided to exit from my Citycon and Gjensidige positions and deployed some of the money back to Sampo. While at it, I also decided to increase my stake in VEREIT which is starting to settle the ongoing legal issues. There are still plenty of unknowns there but based on my personal projections the stock appears to be significantly undervalued.

• Sold 1200 shares of Citycon for 1,902 EUR per share
• Sold 220 shares of Gjensidige Forsikring for 130,10 NOK per share
• Bought 40 shares of Sampo for 41,79 EUR per share
• Bought 200 shares of VEREIT for 7,296 USD per share

Small re-balancing for the portfolio as Diageo appears to be quite fully valued at the moment: I sold 20 shares out of 50 for 145,49 USD per share. I used the profits to buy 13 shares of Johnson & Johnson for 119,138 USD per share and 4 shares of Lockheed Martin for 316,8008 USD per share. Johnson & Johnson is a core holding of mine trading at the low end of the 52 week range and has a yield close to 3 percent – that pretty much explains my timing here. Lockheed Martin Corporation on the other hand has a huge backlog but isn’t particularly cheap. However it fits my strategy in many ways, space exploration related actives being one of them.