Halftime !!! I covered now more than 50% of the German stock universe which is around 800 shares. In this post you’ll see still some entries that I have written pre-crisis that I then had to update significantly. Overall these 25 stocks resulted in 6 watch list candidates which is clearly above average.
376. Instant IPO Holding AG
In the first 3 months 2020, the Value & Opportunity portfolio lost -17.7% (including dividends, no taxes) against a loss of -24.6% for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50 (Perf.Ind) (25%), Eurostoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%), all perfomance indices).
Links to previous Performance reviews can be found on the Performance Page of the blog. Some other funds that I follow have performed as follows in Q1 2020:
Partners Fund TGV: -19.5%
Profitlich/Schmidlin: -19,2%
Squad European Convictions -21.9%
Ennismore European Smaller Cos -10.53% (in GBP)
Frankfurter Aktienfonds für Stiftungen -21.6%
Evermore Global Value -32.2%(USD)
Greiff Special Situation -10.6%
Squad Aguja Special Situation -13.8%
So back to the “new normal” with another episode of my German Stock series. Most of these summaries have been written before the crisis hit, so I just added a few comments here and there and updated the numbers.
351. Rhoen Klinikum AG
Rhoen Klinikum is a 1.1 bn 1.2 bn EUR market cap company owns and runs a series of clinics in Germany. I used to own the shares some time ago but more like a “special situation” investment. The company was target of a take-over battle some years ago and sold a large part of its clinics to a competitor and kept the more difficult ones. The stock did quite well for some time but the started to decline with no end in sight:
When Mike Tyson was asked by a reporter whether he was worried about Evander Holyfield and his fight plan he answered; “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
This is how the current crisis developed so far for me personally and that is why i decided to do this more frequent “Panic journal” in order to document my actions and to hopefully learn a thing or two.
Transaction summary:
The last few days were almost “High Frequency Trading” for me with more transactions in 10 days than the 2 years before. Here is the overview (also in the comments) after my “Panic Journal 1” Post including a short assessment. I have also listed the stocks that I bought before the panic as part of my “German” basket, but which I should have clearly bought later.
Overall, I added 10 11 (!!) new positions, sold 3 positions and ended up with a cash position of 14,4% (this is also an effect of the ~-22% lower portfolio value YTD).
I was clearly too early in many case, but what I have learned over the last 20 years or so is the following: In a tanking market you always look stupid in the short term as a buyer and smart as a seller. In the long term, you look smart when you have bought at cheap valuations and you look stupid if you sold at cheap valuations.
This week I need to slow down a little more and think if everything that I did really makes sense ;-). I will try to limit daily transactions to 0.5% of the portfolio in any direction.
My overall assessment at the moment is that some sectors (Travel, events) will be hit much longer than I initially thought. I do think that “The Hammer and the Dance” scenario is a very likely one.
Here is the the transaction list:
Disclaimer: I am an anonymous investment blogger and not a Virologist, so please be aware of this. I also think that Covid-19 is a huge threat and that everyone should contribute to public safety by staying at home and avoiding contact for some time.
The Problem
As mentioned above, I am a “stock guy”, however mostly a fundamental/Behavioural type of investor. If I see a number, I want to know where it comes from and how it is derived.
The current discussion on Covid-19 is, at least in Germany, mostly about numbers. Two numbers stand out and get reported all the time and everywhere:
The official source for this number is the Robert-Koch Institute (RKI) named after the German scientist who discovered the tubercolosis bacterium more than 100 years ago.
Upfront remark:
Although this blog is mostly about investing, I hope that none of my readers will lose any dear ones because of Covid19. Stay safe, stay at home as much as possible and don’t take any unnecessary real world risks especially if you belong to or have regular contact to people who are most vulnerable.
Panic turns into fear
At the time of writing, Spain and France have gone into lock down after Italy last week and the US has implemented a National Emergency and Austria even tries to ban meetings of more than 5 persons. In Germany, Schools and Kindergartens are closed and the coming week will bring more lock downs as well. So it is pretty useless trying to predict what will happen with the economy in the coming weeks/month. It is pretty clear that there will be a recession, but it is close to impossible to figure out how deep and how long this will go.
