Way back on February 28th I was writing about what could go right.
Looking back, I was far too early to start thinking about what could go right for the broader market or COVID-19 in general. The S&P 500 bounced in the coming days, but proceeded to dump quite a bit lower after that.
Instead, I should have been paying more attention to this nugget in the final paragraph:
Holed up in our homes, with no commutes, we’ll all be spending more of our attention furiously researching CoVID-19 (Google), staying in touch with friends (Facebook), binge watching more TV (Roku & Netflix), and avoiding unnecessary trips outdoors (Amazon & GrubHub). As time permits maybe we’ll get some work done (Slack and Zoom).
I wish I’d listened to my own sage advice. An equal weighted portfolio of those eight names would be up just over 3% since the first trading day of that post (March 2nd):
The big winners here have been Zoom, Amazon, and Netflix. Surprise factor… zero.
And while a 3% gain since March 2nd doesn’t seem stellar, let’s compare that to the major indices:
The best performer here, the NASDAQ, is down 3.68% over the same time period. An equal weighted portfolio across these indices would have yielded a negative return of more than 15%.
Ouch.
The winners in all of this were obvious. But seeing the obvious and doing the obvious are two very different skillsets.
I need to work on the latter.