Market Report: May 2017

I plan to share a monthly market report to track the performance of a select number of major indices. I hope this analysis proves to be helpful in managing my 401k allocations and non-retirement account investments. Please note all returns below exclude dividends.

Seeing what IXUS has done so far this year has me rethinking my US centered portfolio approach. IXUS has almost doubled the S&P’s return to date and with Trump’s erratic approach to being the “leader of the free world” (evidenced today by him leading the US to exit the Paris Climate Agreement) this might be a good time to get some international exposure.

That said, the US Consumer has proven to be unfazed by Trump and all the goofy politics and thus jacking up IYK’s YTD return to almost 10%. Everyone knows about Amazon, Netflix, Google, Facebook and so on so it’s no surprise to see the Nasdaq providing us the highest returns for the year so far.

Breaking it down month by month further illustrates the strength of global markets, the Nasdaq and the US Consumer. You can see below these sectors have continued to hit new 52 week highs into May.

Next Steps:

I’m going to take a closer look at some international investment options, I’m currently 100% invested in US equities and I can see I might be missing out on some additional returns. I already have plenty exposure to the Nasdaq and Large Cap stocks (S&P 500), the question is should I have more? I don’t want to buy at these elevated levels unless I’m confident the trend is still upward and to the right.

I also have plenty exposure to Mid Cap and Small Cap stocks and I think I’ll leave that as is for now. I’m currently working on a larger long term project analyzing the returns over time for Large, Mid and Small Cap indices. The US Consumer discretionary ETF is definitely an interesting play, but it’s a little too narrow of a focus for me right now. I have a lot of other ideas I would like to analyze before I get into such a narrow investment.

I’m still extremely concerned that this could all come crashing down into a bear market, especially after such a long bull market and with Trump and all his issues. However, so far The Market has proven to be resilient so until I see some serious cracks I’ll keep looking for opportunities to go long.

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