Stock Talk - Summer Investment Decisions - Part 3

August arrived with a bang. The market barely had a chance to digest the recent lowering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve, and the subsequent strange messaging that this would be a one time deal. The market did not like that. To make this even more crazy, the Mad King decided to drop the bomb of threatening to put tarrifs on all China imports, only to see China counter with lowering the Yuan and triggering a trade/currency war. The market threw up on the possible scenarios. Then the Mad King walked back the threat. Essentially he blinked, leaving with US with no cohesive strategy. The Chinese are now fine to wait the whole thing out which is may put more pressure on stock prices…until…they started to walk it back and then the market got all happy again.

If that’s not enough the US 2yr-10yr yield curve inverted and all of a sudden the countdown to the impending recession was joined. The Dow Jones plunged 800 points, marking the 4th worst daily drop in history. In early August the Dow dropped the first 6 sessions.

Are you following this? What a time to be investing!

Stocks? Who wants stocks?

I started to go through my wish list to see if anything appealing. There were a lot of stocks on my wish list that started to look really good.  A few items popped up and despite the roller coaster ride the markets were going through, I decided to dip my toe in a few names and I also decided to bank some profits in a few other names. In this episode I share my thought process that went into these decisions.
DECISIONS TAKEN

New Position: Bought shares in Square Inc. (Ticker: SQ)

Bought more shares of Canadian Natural Resources (Ticker: CNQ)

Sold shares in iShares Gold Bullion ETF (Ticker: CGL.C)

Sold shares in Vanguard Consumer Staples ETF (Ticker: VDC) for 19.5% gain (net Forex)

New Position: Bought Shares in Under Armour (Ticker: UAA)