April 2025 Report

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%