After starting strong equities have backed off and now are closer to breakeven on the day–up a very small amount. Of course the last couple of hours of the trading day can see big moves either way. There is little news to send markets sharply in a particular direction, but maybe some folks will decide to lock down some capital gains–who knows?
Looking around the preferreds today the biggest movers seem to be the Ashford Hospitality (AHT) preferreds are good gainers today and a couple of the Ameren Illinois $100/share issues have moved higher. No chance I will be involved with AHT, but there is decent value in the Ameren Illinois issues if one thinks interest rates are heading lower. Everything else is pretty quiet–i.e. up and down nickels and dimes.
I have cash in my accounts–kind of burning a hole in my pockets, but with money markets at Fidelity at 4.99% (FDRXX) at least one continues to earn some coin. Probably will just watch the end of the day and not do any buying–I know for sure I will not sell anything–I am very happy with what I have in the portfolios right now.
7/15 divs posted over the weekend at Fidelity- a nice change from Schlub.
I do wish their ‘Activity’ bookkeeping wasn’t so damned arcane tho.
I’m at about 40% cash equivalents- using SPAXX for Fidelity cash acct, most is in SGOV, CLIP, and added money from a to a large batch of USFR. Two more
CDs coming due on the 17th & 29th, but will prob add to USFR since it should be better than the 3 mo CDs.
Doing nibbles here & there too.
I am getting a lot of cash from AGM-C and CMRE-E in the next few weeks and I am short of ideas about replacements everything looks too tight to me. I am not convinced that we are going to have low rates for a while given the likely increasing deficits that will come so I am not willing to buy Agency callable paper that has nice (close to 6%)”teaser” rates. When you buy a 30 year bond with calls after 1 year you are not getting paid in my opinion for the option that they don’t call it and rates are much higher in the future.
Don’t forget about the Russell 2000. Small caps have been on fire lately. Up another 2.3% today. Expanding market breadth and small cap outperformance more important for preferreds than NVDA going up another 10%.
Recently added to my already hefty position in RMT (Royce Micro CEF). Quite the move lately. Nice big move and fund discount still an immovable object.
Did some minor trimming, one pfd issue I was overloaded in , SITC-PRA, Site is going thru a weird period where they are spinning off things and are doing a common REIT stock reverse split..stock has been up mkt likes it all– but I was overweight in the pfd and kept what I had in taxable w 21.75 basis since I am tapped out on s/t gains, don’t want anymore, but did sell some from Roth w a 9% gain and a few divs. As much as I don’t want to flip things, pocketing 9% and divs s/term and then getting some yield on the money works sometimes too.. Like Tim notes nothing wrong w still getting about 5% on cash, see what pops up in the months ahead. Few common stock trims of trading shares, again in the Roth. Huge div day today today, 7/15. GLTA have a good week. Bea