Monthly maintenance purchase time. I couldn’t come up with anything fancy so I bought additional 400 shares of CapMan for 1,946 EUR per share. I’m not a huge fan of the market environment at the moment. This is especially true in Europe with all the EUCO related things but I worry mostly about the long term effects. Short term? Who knows. Global situation in few months time frame could be anything between sun shine and gloom & doom. Second round of COVID-19 will probably come in shape or another. Vaccine might come sooner or later. US elections and BLM might move on and calm down sooner or later. Seeds for dismantling European Union might have been now sown but that remains to be seen and will most likely take quite long to materialise. Having said all that, there’s probably no reason to change my long term plans. Keep buying, focus on quality businesses making profit and try to minimise effective taxes when possible.
Q2/2020 Results
Second quarter was a wild one with all the COVID-19 and BLM related issues around the globe. Both are still very much ongoing but perhaps winding down a bit. That of course can be just calm before the perfect storm but that remains to be seen.
Euro zone is not looking very good. COVID-19 recovery package is being negotiated and seems to be headed to slow spiralling death. I’m sure this can will be kicked patiently quite a bit further it probably should. Eventually however inevitable will most likely happen and euro zone will crumble at least partially. It’s probably impossible to estimate time frame for such event or even the nature of it. Due to to political reasons it might take way longer than it should. Alternatively of course it’s possible that all the issues will be resolved resulting a stronger Europe and currency. Personally I even hope so but don’t see it as a likely outcome.
Dividend income before taxes during Q2 was 1553.07 EUR (Q2/2019 3047.48 EUR). This was statistically a slight disappointment as some of the scheduled dividends were either cut or at least postponed (regulators prevented dividend payments for banking and investment companies).
Recent Buy: CapMan
Tiny maintenance purchase for secondary portfolio to keep the streak going. I bought additional 60 shares for 1,96 EUR per share. Slow build up to medium sized position is in the cards during next six months or so.
Recent Buy: CoreCivic, Inc.
Monthly maintenance purchase and this time around it was CoreCivic. Pandemic has calmed down a bit but is far from over. Meanwhile black lives matter movement has been wreaking havoc especially in US. All this together with the approaching US presidential elections should keep prisons full in coming years. It’s difficult to see how private prisons would be scaled down any time soon. There are long term contracts in place and new ones have been signed relatively lately. Therefore I bought additional 80 shares for 12,27 USD per share.
Recent Buy: Sampo Plc
Not much to say. Everything is down. Occasionally some go up. So much winning. Bought additional 40 shares of Sampo for 28,40 EUR per share. It might go down or up if it doesn’t stay still. It will be trading ex div relatively soon and they have cut this dividend only twice so far. Hopefully they will forget third cut. Long term everything should be fine… maybe.
Recent Buy: EPR Properties
EPR Properties has been hit hard but it has already bounced back quite a bit. I’m putting my money on EPR surviving this COVID-19 panic. Sure, it will take time. Sure, they might have to reduce or even eliminate dividend. Sure, people might permanently stop golfing or skiing. I’m guessing that they won’t. In fact I’m quite sure that once the dust settles, there will be huge demand for that kind activities. Therefore I bought additional 30 shares for 29,90 USD per share. Let’s call this a speculative purchase.
Recent Buy: Fortum Oyj
There has been relatively many positive factors for Fortum lately. Uniper posted solid results, Fortum is getting positive publicity – well some negative as well for the coal usage – and Inderes increased target price today to 17 EUR per share. Share price hasn’t really noticed any of these so I bought additional 67 shares for 14.96 EUR per share. Considering the future potential, company metrics and overall state of the economy this appears to be very acceptable valuation.
Recent Buy: Fortum Oyj
Maintenance purchase since Fortum was trading ex dividend today. Bought additional 13 shares for 14,825 EUR per share. Uniper posted great quarterly results yesterday but that wasn’t too clearly visible on Fortum share price at least today. Could have bought more but I’m still keeping an eye on things and pacing myself.
Recent Buy: GEO Group
Corona is hitting everything and REITs especially. Sure, temporary suspension of dividends is likely but that’s somewhat irrelevant short term noise. Private prison REITs appear to be very cheap as they were first hit by the political risks due to the presidential elections and then with the corona disaster which may very well spread in prisons in uncontrollable manner. This is unfortunate of course but for the long term not much has been changed. I doubt US government will scale down the usage of private prisons who ever may be sitting in white house in any given year. Considering the current economic situation and US way of living, it’s difficult to see any path in which there would be meaningful decrease in crime and punishments that follow. In worst case scenario these REITs could sell their portfolio to the government and I would be perfectly fine with that as well. With this in mind I bought additional 80 shares of GEO Group for 11.57 USD per share.
Q1/2020 Results & FY2020 Strategy
First quarter of the year is over and what a ride it was. First the markets were hitting all time hight valuations and then corona virus hit the global stock markets like a black swan on steroids. In retrospect quick adaptation by selling everything would have been the sensible choice but that doesn’t really fit into the DGI influenced strategy. Real impact on dividends will remain to be seen. Short term there will be a significant hit but there are also long term possibilities. Some of the strong companies should probably eliminate the whole dividend and invest the money wisely. Prime candidate for this would be Sampo Plc which could increase the stake on TopDanmark. For the main portfolio this quarter was quite bad with -37% drop in value. Impact on dividends is not visible on metrics until next quarter. Dividend income during Q1 was 1 302,58 USD and 101,40 EUR before taxes.
Overall this drop was not totally unexpected though it should be noted that exact timing and reason was unexpected to me. In retrospect it should have been quite obvious if one would have paid enough attention on the news coming in from China during January and February. Long term strategy has not been changed. I was always planning on buying at least for one turn of the economic cycle. Therefore I’ve naturally now moved back to normal buying mode. I’m quite well positioned for it unless of course if this economic turn hits my personal finances. Even that should be quite easily digestible event as I’ve prepared for the turn for quite some time now. This was mainly done by reducing the debt load to minimum. It’s quite easy to take this kind of hits without mortgage. This drop also opens the possibility to make some tax efficient moves by e.g. moving certain assets between providers.