October 2021

A General Overview

I guess not many people were worried about me not posting in October after all! Yes the family is now of 4 people, plus 1 cat that counts as a human being too. Mila, was born right on the 1st of October!

We are all happy and fine, mum is doing great and so is the baby, so no complaints there.

There are some issues with the older brother now, but as this is a financial blog I’ll skip writing about all the parenting woes.

We are currently on a 3/4 hours sleep routine per day, it’s really really tiring. I forgot how it was apparently, my wife keeps telling me that it was like that, “or even worst” with our firstborn Leonardo.

Add that I resume teaching (which is great) and that in November we are going to have renovations to the apartment WHILE we stay here and you have the recipe for a perfect ultra-stressing period in front of us. I really hope I make it to New Year without too many regrets/stresses..

LH FUND

Explanation of terminology and graphs is HERE.

Let’s see the numbers:

Month	TR	YTER	NYYoC	Forex
31 Dec 2014	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
31 Dec 2015	-3.33%	1.22%	-0.13%	-1.00%
31 Dec 2016	7.06%	1.14%	1.16%	-4.35%
31 Dec 2017	9.94%	1.04%	2.64%	-5.94%
31 Dec 2018	3.28%	1.24%	2.70%	-3.53%
31 Dec 2019	23.50%	1.35%	2.72%	-1.40%
31 Dec 2020	15.76%	1.28%	2.70%	-7.60%
Jan 2021	15.52%	1.27%	2.71%	-7.03%
Feb 2021	17.42%	1.26%	2.71%	-6.69%
Mar 2021	25.19%	1.24%	2.67%	-4.85%
Apr 2021	24.93%	1.23%	2.69%	-6.98%
May 2021	28.02%	1.24%	2.76%	-8.12%
June 2021	27.67%	1.40%	2.61%	-5.59%
July 2021	27.39%	1.39%	2.61%	-5.54%
August 2021	28.79%	1.37%	2.62%	-5.64%
September 2021	29.02%	1.37%	2.68%	-3.84%
October 2021	32.73%	1.36%	2.68%	-3.91%

LH Portfolio Milestones + Monthly current year

TR is increasing (vs. previous month) – Stocks keep rising. ‘Nuff said.

YTER is decreasing (vs. previous month) – A mere BP, but still better than seeing it rising…

Net Yearly YoC is stable (vs. previous month) – Better than seeing it go down…

Forex is getting worse (vs. previous month) – 7BPS, nothing to worry about

Dividends and Options

Income this month was 1102 Euro

Dividends accounted for 1386 Euro (+115% vs 2020) and Options ended up with a -284 Euro score (N.A.% vs 2020).

Dividends

Best October ever in 7 years, what more can I say? There were a lot of special dividends, so it’s unlikely that I can reproduce this score next year, but let’s worry about it in 2022, for the moment there is only to celebrate!

Options

In reality I had more than 200 euros worth of premiums, shame that I had to roll a position on PG that it’s getting quite sticky and in accountancy terms, this month, I’ve lost money.

DCA/Increased Positions

Bought 100 T @ 26 USD

As a result of a put option on which I took assignment. Don’t love the fact that this stock keeps falling and falling, but I don’t dislike it either. The spinoff next year could prove a game changer.

Bought 45 LON:ULVR @ 38.4 GBP

This is the only stock on which I have been adding positions even if it is above my average price.

Bought 61 LON:BATS @ 25.51 GBP

Much under my average price, I like BATS, decent earnings, addictive products, I’ve increased to a better yield.

New Positions – Sold Position

Bought 100 BEPH @ 25 USD

Brooksfield Energy Partners it’s a company that I would invest in if it wasn’t so expensive right now. Decided to go for the ETD because Prudential recalled one of my other preferred, and because I could buy at par price here.

Sold 100 PUK- @ 25.40 USD

Like that, all of a sudden Prudential decided to recall these preferred, due date End December. To me this was a tragic move because I bought them higher than par price, so I made a loss with this trade. The positive thing is that they did not de-listed immediately, so instead of being forced to sell at 25 in December I’ve decided to sell now at a higher price.

Sold 250 BIT:TEN @ 9.88 EUR

Tenaris is linked to oil, as it produces pipes and materials that are used for exploration and transportation of oil. I missed the right time to increase to an optionable size, as I wanted and in the end I was left with a stock on which I have no real plan but to sell in gain if possible (also dividend here is very small). That’s what I did.

The Financial Conclusions

In all honesty, I had not a lot of time to do a lot of finance related readings, research or even trading in October. There was a pullback, which I’ve used to beef up some positions that I wanted to increase in a long time, but either than that, the mantra seems to be “up up up” again.

Even talks of tapering seem not to touch these bulls, so I guess it’s time to let them run even more.

Inflation is on the rise everywhere, and it’s here to stay, no matter what central banks are telling us. The matter imho is how much inflation will increase, and how long countries will be able to keep the great growth rates that they are posting after pandemic.

So, in short, I am keeping on the sidelines. If there are opportunities (and now defensive stocks are falling!) I’ll take them, but with caution, mostly because I feel that once interest rates are starting to go up the markets, as it should be, will fall.

Governments and central banks are trying to delay “the inevitable”, but simply because until they affect the market with money printing they are in control, when inflation picks up they will not be controlling anything anymore.

As Barney from “how I met your mother” would say: “Wait for it…”

As to the Portfolio, I hope I will have some time to review strategies and targets, the macroeconomic situation is changing and I feel I might need to review something, especially when it comes to specific targets that I want to hit.

2021 will probably be a record year for dividends, which is great of course, but in general I was to assess growth metrics now that the portfolio reached maturity and almost full investing. So far I cannot complain, but I think I might need “more” if I want to touch 3% net yield.

But with now because of the babies situation it’s really not possible at all to sit down and do some math…