Not all money grows on trees: A&F Investments, second quarter

Looking back at the second quarter, we can easily say that a lot has been learned. How political influence can have such movements on stocks and when do stock prices cross the psychological barrier of being overvalued to an individual. The tech stocks have taken a hit, but A&F Investments was prepared. The S&P 500 has made a 2.59% return in the second quarter and the AEX index has made a -2.00% return. A&F Investments can easily say that it is on the right track.

We have closed some good positions and have taken some good profits the last quarter. We have bought some new interesting stocks that were found via interesting perspectives. One group pitched Diageo because of its drink ‘Old Parr’ whose sales keep growing in a country where inflation has lost control. We don’t know if it’s made of gold but it sure does sound like it. Royal Dutch Shell has also been added to the portfolio. When looking at the financials, this company was easily one of the favorites on the market, and as the saying goes ‘never sell Shell’. Although most investors only talk about the good positions that they have, it is also important to learn from your mistakes. It is really hard to keep emotional thoughts away from rational thoughts when making an investment decision. We’ve also taken a shot in the retail sector by buying Pandora A/S. Seeing the whole retail sector taking a hit, we’re trying to make some profit off the ones who are not likely to fall completely but fell more because of the bad news on the industry. We’ve sold our positions in Safestore with good profit in little time, which clearly states that although Brexit is happening, there is still profit to be made there when investing cautiously.

Overall we can look back at a good quarter, selling a lot of our positions and buying new ones to try and fit our portfolio for a better strategy for the upcoming months. As young investors, we still like to experiment with all sorts of securities. We’ve taken a shot with a straddle on the PPG and AkzoNobel news, although we didn’t get the profit we wanted we can easily say that we’ve profited a lot from analyzing this straddle and have gained a lot of knowledge that wouldn’t have been here if we didn’t make that decision. At the end of the day, A&F Investments didn’t only succeed on staying in line with the returns of the market, it also got great returns on the knowledge invested, which when compounded will give greater returns on our investing decisions in the near future.