Ken Fisher (founder/CEO of Fisher Investments) recently asked this on Twitter:
Is the amount of ink and time spent on [this] “Bear Market” relative to the total time down below -20%—bullish or bearish?
He was referring to that short period of time in June-July (about a month) when the S&P 500 went below 20%. While the financial press has been fretting about an imminent bear market drawdown since the beginning of the year.
I don’t know where it will go next: up or down. But staying true to my investing philosophy, I was buying stocks as they were going down throughout the first half. In June I shared what I had bought until then. I bought more stocks as the market went down further in mid-June. Here is the roll-up of all my stock purchases this year:
The bottom group (shaded light green) is what I had bought last. Earlier purchases I had already shared in previous blog posts. I have used up 36% of my dry powder cash to buy stocks this year, so far. Since June, I have had no further opportunities to buy more. The market has risen gradually since its June low.
Just looking at this year’s dry powder purchase performance, my June buys have the highest return so far (17.8%). May purchases, when I bought the most, are also up a good amount (9%). The only laggard group is my earlier purchases (January through April, when stocks were off by about 10%). Those still show a 10% loss.
Overall, my dry powder purchases this year have so far returned 7%. We will see how the rest of the year turns out for stocks. I don’t have strong view on market’s near-term direction. As always, I stay invested.
Epilogue: Can one bear market wipe out your portfolio? Here’s a timely reminder from Ken Fisher on why it can’t. So long as we carefully construct our portfolio appropriate for our long-term objectives.
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