Another wild quarter has passed. Global economy is still facing pretty much same issues: COVID-19 tails, war in Ukraine and inflation/interest rate issues. On the positive side Finland and Sweden were finally invited to become NATO members but I’m sure Turkey will have additional tricks to use when the process moves forward. I personally don’t see huge risks in this as long as critical member states ratify the membership. This is very positive development in otherwise dire situation. Pandemic can of course take new directions and there’s also the monkeypox situation going on but probably this is something than will keep on fading into the background noise. War in Ukraine seems to be evolving in a positive way, or at least West and rest of the world has been providing enough resources for Ukraine to defend themselves. Russia is bleeding but probably this will take a long time to truly play out. Then there’s the inflation and interest rate issue where ECB seems to be late – as usual – on everything. FED seems to be doing a bit better but I guess situation is far from ideal in US as well.
On personal side this quarter was solid bounce year over year. Market overall has been taking a beating but my portfolio has performed reasonably well as main portfolio only dropped 1.45% during the quarter. Compared to to overall market this is partially explained by the fact that my portfolio bounced back from COVID-19 impact way slower in general. Bounce back was even more visible with received dividends. Q2 dividends before taxes were 5715,66 EUR compared to 2684.31 EUR year before.
What’s next then? I have allowed my cash buffer to grow lately and done some purchases, mainly as dividend re-investments and smaller maintenance purchases. This is likely to continue while waiting for for bigger opportunities. I still have pharma and medical sectors on my radar so I might still add on Abbvie and Gilead Sciences but I might also open a position in Medtronic. Let’s see how things evolve.