Market & Portfolio Update - February 2018

Market & Portfolio Update - February 2018

Share markets regained ground as February progressed, recovering most of the declines from the start of the month. While portfolios with an allocation to shares finished the month lower, the effect was much less than one might think from reading the newspaper! A Balanced portfolio finished February down less than 2%, well within the normal range of monthly results and still up close to 7% over the last year.

We bought additional shares in James Hardie, the Australian-listed building products company which continues to expand its United States presence, after seeing signs that some constraints on its manufacturing capacity were diminishing.

We also purchased more shares in Inditex, owner of the global fashion brand Zara, taking advantage of some recent weakness in the company’s share price. The purchase was offset by selling shares in Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, which has performed very well, leading to a demanding hurdle for future performance.

On the NZ share market, the demise of construction insurer, CBL Corporation, has been at the forefront of the media’s focus recently. It has rightly grasped their attention given only a month ago it was valued at $750 million and now it looks to be worthless. We can confirm that none of the Booster portfolios ever invested in CBL. We ran our eyes over it and couldn’t get our head around the business. Others are now coming to the same conclusion (albeit a tad late) with it seeming to be a “black box” of trouble.

Disclaimer: This article has been prepared for the purpose of providing general information, without taking into consideration any particular investor’s objectives, financial situation or needs.  Any opinions contained in it are held as at the report date and are subject to change without notice.