Minor maintenance purchase with a bit more risk this time. I bought additional 100 shares of Apple Hospitality REIT for 8.76 USD per share. Minor addition as the post-COVID era isn’t with us too soon I’m afraid. I’m betting my money on it anyway but not fully – yet. World might look marginally brighter already in Q1/2021 but perhaps real recovery will happen in 2022. By then I might have doubled my Apple Hospitality stake.
Month: July 2020
Recent Buy: Sampo Plc
This was a bit unexpected but Sampo has been dropping now that news about it’s discussion to acquire british Hastings Group hit the news. Apparently these discussions have proceeded quite far but since the possible valuation has not been revealed, it’s really difficult to have any opinion about it. What we do know is the fact that Sampo’s market cap has likely dropped way more that the anticipated price for Hastings Group stake. Apparently Mr. Market doesn’t like this move even though it does make sense in many ways but might put pressure on the dividends and might also raise some concerns about the future of the Nordea stake they are holding. There are plenty of open questions but I bought additional 60 shares for 30,40 EUR per share.
Recent Buy: CapMan Plc
Monthly maintenance purchase time. I couldn’t come up with anything fancy so I bought additional 400 shares of CapMan for 1,946 EUR per share. I’m not a huge fan of the market environment at the moment. This is especially true in Europe with all the EUCO related things but I worry mostly about the long term effects. Short term? Who knows. Global situation in few months time frame could be anything between sun shine and gloom & doom. Second round of COVID-19 will probably come in shape or another. Vaccine might come sooner or later. US elections and BLM might move on and calm down sooner or later. Seeds for dismantling European Union might have been now sown but that remains to be seen and will most likely take quite long to materialise. Having said all that, there’s probably no reason to change my long term plans. Keep buying, focus on quality businesses making profit and try to minimise effective taxes when possible.
Q2/2020 Results
Second quarter was a wild one with all the COVID-19 and BLM related issues around the globe. Both are still very much ongoing but perhaps winding down a bit. That of course can be just calm before the perfect storm but that remains to be seen.
Euro zone is not looking very good. COVID-19 recovery package is being negotiated and seems to be headed to slow spiralling death. I’m sure this can will be kicked patiently quite a bit further it probably should. Eventually however inevitable will most likely happen and euro zone will crumble at least partially. It’s probably impossible to estimate time frame for such event or even the nature of it. Due to to political reasons it might take way longer than it should. Alternatively of course it’s possible that all the issues will be resolved resulting a stronger Europe and currency. Personally I even hope so but don’t see it as a likely outcome.
Dividend income before taxes during Q2 was 1553.07 EUR (Q2/2019 3047.48 EUR). This was statistically a slight disappointment as some of the scheduled dividends were either cut or at least postponed (regulators prevented dividend payments for banking and investment companies).