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17 July, 2019
It was a beautiful year for A&F investments. Now that we are heading into the summer, it is time for a review of the past quarter and year. We have no reason at all to complain. A&F Investments has bought stocks in amazing companies, and sold, had informative guest lectures and we were invited for a company visit. And last but not least, we beat the European indices last year!
“All in all, we created space for new good ideas and we are heading into the summer with a clean portfolio.”
Let’s first take a look at the transactions of the past quarter. At the beginning of the quarter we sold Galapagos and Consumer Staple ETF. We only sold a part of Galapagos, because their medicine Filgotinib had positive results, so we could cash in some profit on our large position. We lost our interest in the Consumer Staple ETF and its performance was lackluster. To replace it, A&F Investments bought a coffee ETF. The price of coffee is historically low and due to the poor weather conditions in South-America we expect the coffee price to rise. Furthermore, we bought Robeco Fintech ETF to take advantage of the Fintech trend. We took profit on our oil ETF as well, because we didn’t see any more room for it to increase in value after the strong run it had. Finally, we sold our stocks in Kion and Red Hat and closed the positions in the European and Pacific ETFs. Our position in Kion was too big, so it was partially sold. We sold Red Hat because it had reached the take-over bid price of IBM, and there was no more room for a further rise in price. We had held the Pacific and European ETF for a long time, but it added, to our opinion, little value to our portfolio. All in all, we created space for new good ideas and we are heading into the summer with a clean portfolio.
(A&F Investments vs. AEX)
To finalise, we got to follow an interesting guest-college of First Dutch and enjoyed an inhouse day at IBS Capital Allies that we concluded at restaurant Loetje in Amsterdam. We ended the quarter with our usual strategy meeting, where we gained knowledge on Real Estate and took a good look at our portfolio. To celebrate the end of the year, we held a pubquiz in De Nachtwacht and toasted to the past year. As we are heading into the summer, this means we also have some leaving members. We wish the leaving members a great deal of luck with their internships, masters and further careers! On the other side, we welcome our new members into our group.
