July 2017 Performance

July turned out to be decent month with Constellation Brands (Ticker: STZ) and Visa (Ticker: V) marching to new highs following their strong earnings reports. I also received a nice dividend payout from the Syngenta acquisition.

I continue to be very cautious with the merger arb / special situation plays. I did manage to execute several small merger arb / special situation trades this month: (1) Panera Bread – I would call this a wussy arb trade as the annualized return was only in the mid-single digits. I bought some common and sold the out of the money calls. This was a super safe deal. (2) Alere – I sold some out of the money puts. I recently closed out the position with a small gain. (3) I traded around Scripps Network Interactive. The gains were modest as I did not go in big. I’m always a bit leery with stock + cash deals.

So that really sums up the month of July. Yes, it was another dull and boring month with very few trades. Sometimes it’s good to just sit still and wait for opportunities to show up…

2017 Performance Year to date = +26.95% with the running monthly returns as follows:

January -4.50%
February +10.18%
March +5.1%
April +4.34%
May +5.67%
June +1.34%
July + 2.76%