To say the
least, it’s been a challenging year. April was one of the less volatile months with
a loss of only 1.67%. I’m still sitting on ~ 10% cash and waiting for good
values to develop. I see a retest of the recent lows and that may be a good
time to nibble a bit. It’s hard to see this market making any new highs anytime
soon with these rates and elevated inflation.
I focus
primarily on dividend paying stocks these days as this is how you really generate
positive long-term returns. You have to reinvest the dividends and allow it
time to compound. Over the long term, ~40% of the gain is generated from the
dividends. The large pharma sector looks very appealing with the high dividend
yields. Of course, you have a bit of unknowns with potential tariffs and a less
than market friendly FDA head. Pfizer looks interesting with a 7.7% dividend
yield, but the stock price is back to the 1997 level. Just have to wonder how
safe the dividend is even though the company has committed to maintaining it.
Started selling naked short puts again after a brief break. As witnessed from the recent downturn, an increase
in implied volatility can work for and against your options positions.
Fortunately, I had low options exposure during the market downturn.
I would have been cooked if I had full sized positions. In any case, I still
enjoy picking up pennies in front of the steam roller.
2025
Performance = - 5.66% with the running monthly returns as follows:
January - 2.61%
February + 2.79%
March – 4.16%
April -1.67%
