Archives: Reports
Thursday again saw company earnings/forecasts dominate proceedings with 3 stocks falling between 10 & 12% while the best 3 performers averaged a gain of just over 7%. Unfortunately, It was a reporting day to forget for MM with 3 of our positions in the Flagship Growth Portfolio finding themselves in the proverbial naughty corner. The trend of the last 12-18 months is being magnified to almost extreme levels with plenty of stocks making fresh multi-year lows while a number of winners are nudging all-time highs. We are considering carefully a couple of our standout underperformers as we contemplate whether we should be adding or cutting i.e. will the weak simply keep getting weaker?
A solid session for the ASX today, although some late selling again took some of the sheen off the day. IT stocks continued on a volatile week where ~5% swings have become commonplace, while the results today ensured some big moves under the hood, unfortunately for Market Matters, we were on the wrong side of a couple today!
At MM we are not always contrarian investors but when we see Fund Managers have become the most bullish in 18 months just as stocks start to wobble in August our initial thought is should we start to skew portfolios more defensively? Funds managers are becoming increasingly optimistic around the US avoiding a recession with 31% of managers polled in the August survey now expecting no recession in 2024, up from 19% in July and 14% in June.
Early weakness didn’t last long as resources helped support the index as it rallied throughout the morning. At its best, the ASX was up 0.75% with the bulls looking to regain the ascendancy following fresh 5-week lows set yesterday. Sellers did appear as the market was closing, shaving about half of the gains from the index in the last few hours. Another big day for reporting is in the books as the mixed fortunes of reporters continue.
The ASX200 edged higher on Tuesday as reporting season dominated local stocks although attention is slowly moving towards Jackson Hole where we hope to get a read into the current mindset of central bankers. While we don’t expect any forward guidance from Powell and Lagarde, they won’t be telling us when/what the next move will be for interest rates, there are likely to be clues as to their current feelings, a common occurrence during their closely followed speeches.
The ASX 200 bounced today as generally better than expected earnings, particularly from some key technology stocks reinvigorated the bulls, despite BHP slightly underwhelming.
We are amending two portfolios.
MM is reducing BAP & AD8, selling CAJ, increasing CNI and buying CAT & SFR.
The ASX Telco index is dominated by Telstra (TLS) but through 2023 its been a very mixed bag for the four main stocks with TPG Telecom (TPG) +9.8% best on ground while Spark NZ (SPK) -7.6% has carried the wooden spoon, TLS is down just -0.6% underperforming the ASX200 which is up over +1% year-to-date.
A soft start to the new trading week which sees the vortex of local company results with the next 3 days seeing a significant number of company updates. There was certainly volatility at the stock level today with Iress (IRE) -35% & A2 Milk (A2M) -13.56% on the wrong side of it, while strong updates from Premier Investments (PMV) +12.23% and Breville (BRG) showed there is life left in retail!
