Summary of January 2017

January was an interesting month since it contained salary increase, bonus, stock options and back payment due to salary "error" for a six months period. I have since a long time been against bonuses but I must say that receiving share options was very enjoyable.

During January I also ended up travelling to the far east on business and stayed for a week rolling my thumbs. The trip was however highly important and with a successful outcome my team will be kept busy for months to come. I strongly dislike when I need to travel somewhere for support and to bring in some well selected words and sentences at the correct moment but I do not think that there is a way around it. I was hit very hard with jet-lag and slept maximum three hours per night. Very exhausting.

In the next couple of weeks I might even end up travelling back home to Sweden on business. I hope that I will be able to combine it with some holiday but we shall see if that can be done... I doubt it...

I have not yet managed to take up sports but I have decided to go, every now and then, for walks during my lunch break also here in the UK as I did every day in Germany. It is a start.

I managed to finish the Business Administration course of Organisation and Leadership. It was interesting but afterwards I must admit that I do not remember much of what I read. However me and my course mate managed to get the highest grade on the essay which was probably only possible because the third member of our group decided to leave us. Amazing how useless and annoying some people can be when you need to anonymously work with them online.

For the previous summary please visit Summary of December 2016 and here you can see my stock portfolio as it is.

The total invested value is now up at: 86,715 € (the decrease comes from me selling Adidas and not investing the full amount yet) including a realised loss of -356 €. I bought Hugo Boss as well as Nike.

The value of the portfolio is today: 89,469 € and spread out I now have around 7,700 € in cash on the account. The combined unrealised and realised loss is now at: 2,754 € (3%) which is not as good as one would have liked.

DAX have more or less been standing still during January 2017 and went down to 11,543 points which means a decrease of -0.5% which is worse than the +1.0% that my portfolio managed to accomplish.

Conclusion: DAX did bad and I did better. I sold Adidas at an ok moment. The two stocks that I bought instead can be discussed.... My assumptions are a 30% gain for Nike and a 30-50% gain for Hugo Boss in share price during the coming 2-3 years. The fact that I make such a specific gain increase within a specific time frame added to it makes warning bells go off all over the place. Horrible! I hope that my statements will become utterly wrong to prove the point that such statements should never be given because they should never come true.

Stocks bought January 2017: Nike and Hugo Boss

Nike is one of those American giants that are present and making sales pretty much world wide. Today Adidas is being valued at a P/E of 33-35 while Nike is valued at a P/E of 21-23. I do not consider Nike to be cheap today but neither is it very expensive. Back in December 2015 the board gave the management the right to buy back shares to a value of around 12 billion USD during the next four years. We are now in Q1 2017 so two years later and the managers of Nike have still around 9 billion USD to buy back shares for during the next two years. I do not expect to own Nike more than two to three years.

I bought 40 shares of Nike to the total cost, including fees, of 2,018.30 €.

To find out more about Nike please see this very old analysis of Nike.

The share price for Hugo Boss have taken a serious nose dive since Q1 2015. Not that long ago the managers went out with the statement of decreasing the price for their garments with around 30%. From my personal point of view the quality of Hugo Boss is poor. Back in the days when I was not keeping as good track of my finances as today I bought a Hugo Boss suit for around 450 €. I have never worn suits daily and for this reason I was slow to discover it but within wearing it for maybe ten times the garment has already started to fall apart. For me this meant never ever buying another suit from Hugo Boss even though I find their design very beautiful. 45 € per wear is simply too much for me. I additionally do not like to pay for a name and here I ended up paying far too much for the name Hugo Boss on the garment. With the new strategy of the managers the price for the Hugo Boss garments are getting closer to their level of quality. Like I said... they make beautiful things and with a 30% reduction in price I make the assumption that more people will buy their garments as well as people spending more money in the store. I look upon this as being a temporary effect especially if they have not done any changes to their quality / quality control. I therefore do not expect to own Hugo Boss for more than two to three years.

I bought 35 shares of Hugo Boss to the total cost of 2,136.44 € (including fees).

To find out more concerning Hugo Boss please see this old analysis of Hugo Boss.

I will try to remember to update the Stock Portfolio with the next monthly report that is actually already due.

Stock sold January 2017: Adidas

As I previously mentioned I should have sold my Adidas position last summer when they were up around 158 € per share during a day or two but I did not manage to get my thumb out quickly enough and the share price dropped down again. This time I had already come to terms with that Adidas is fully valued. Yes, they will have a bright future but the share price increase will from now on be ticking up with their earnings and not due to a realisation from Mr. Market that the future of this company is maybe not to go bankrupt which they seemed to think in January 2015 when I bought my shares. I was then also looking at other companies such as Nike that were trading well above a P/E of 30 which I therefore considered to be the valuation that Adidas hopefully also one day should have. They did and they do which meant that I sold them.

This holding was unfortunately very short with only 24 months and it pushed down my sold shares portfolio time to 25.6 months.

I sold my 35 shares for a total value of 5379 € (fees removed). I additionally gained 108.5 € in dividends during these 24 months and on my invested 1978 € I therefore made 177% and it has been my best investment as of yet.

Dividend from ABF and Enel: January 2017

For my 177 shares in ABF I received 53.43 € in dividend that was directly added to my broker account as cash.

To find out more about ABF then please visit analysis of ABF 2015.

For my 450 shares in Enel I received 40.50 € in dividend and from that was taken 10.53 € as taxes to support the Italian government. The remaining 29.97 € was paid out as cash to my broker account. I could be that Enel have started to pay out dividends twice per year because they usually pay out only once during summer.

To find out more about Enel please click on analysis of Enel 2016.

To see my total dividend flow then please visit the Stock Dividends page that has now been updated. 

Summary of December

This time I try to be on time with my report! The Christmas and New Year holidays have now been completed and I hope that all of you had an as good time as I did. This year we went to see my wife's family in the south of Germany for one week and it was a very relaxing time.

With all this relaxation I must be ready for work again and I think that I am!

For the previous summary please visit Summary of November 2016 and here you can see my stock portfolio as it is.

The total invested value is now up at: 87,939 € including a realised loss of -3,757 €. No stocks were bought.

The value of the portfolio is today: 89,871 € and spread out I now have around 2,546 € in cash on the account. The combined unrealised and realised loss is now at: 1,932 € (2%) which is bad but better than it has been for a long, long time.

DAX had a very strong ending of the year 2016 and went up to 11,598 points which means an increase of +2.8% which is better than the +1.7% that my portfolio managed to accomplish.

Conclusion: It became a funny rally in the end of 2016 which I find very hard to understand. Banks in Italy are once again causing serious problems. Trump keeps writing on twitter. IS is making attacks all over Europe and in the middle East. UK keeps pushing forward on their BREXIT plans... I really wonder... what were the highlights that caused this dramatic increase in share value?