Investing $2,500 - Round 2

Tech and things

Yesterday was the second purchasing round of the 2021 investment schedule. I’ll first cover the positions and then go through a bit of the thought process behind it.

Main Fund Purchases

#. Company / Stock Name (Ticker) - $ Amount | $ Cost Basis / Share

1. Apple (AAPL) - $600 | $129.70

2. Microsoft (MSFT) - $600 | $213.65

3. Intuit (INTU) - $600 | $367.00

4. SVB Financial (SIVB) - $300 | $457.69

5. Target (TGT) - $300 | $197.50

6. iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF (IEF) - $50 | $118.25

7. iShares Gold Trust (IAU) - $50 | $17.55

8. Residual Cash - $0

Some Qualitative Thoughts

I loaded up on tech here. Apple, Microsoft, and Intuit have strong fundamentals and have historically outperformed the S&P. I think that will continue. And, I will need that additional lift as my round one purchases two weeks ago were relatively conservative.

Tech’s performance has been pretty muted this year and all three of these stocks are sitting off their recent highs. If it was a few months ago, I would’ve been more interested in other sectors like energy and financials but those have had a really strong start to the year, so, overall, it seemed like a good chance to pick up these solid names.

For Target and SVB, these are two picks that I’m kicking myself for not purchasing in the first buying round. They were the first two names that didn’t make the cut and both have ripped much higher than the stocks I actually bought. I’m cautious given their outperformance, so I only went $300 on each. If they pull back from their recent run, I’ll be happy to pick up more shares.

As gold and bonds have underperformed since the start of the year, I grabbed a little more than last time and decided not to float any cash. I could’ve gone either way with buying less and holding cash but it’s a small allocation, so I didn’t overthink it.

The biggest disappointment this round came from my timing. Futures were red prior to the market open and, when the market instead rallied in the first few minutes, I placed most of my orders out of concern that the market would continue to rise and force me to chase on price. Not long after I placed orders and got fills, the market dropped around 1% and I missed a really easy set of lower entry points. Despite that, the positions still ended the day better off than the market as a whole.

On a final note, I was quite on the fence about whether or not to jump into energy, since it had such a strong start to the year. I’ll continue to monitor the sector but, right now, I don’t want to overpay for stocks with much weaker fundamentals than what I could get elsewhere just because of a fear of missing out. In the short term, seeing energy take a big hit today felt like a small amount of validation.

Overall, I’m feeling good in the decisions for both rounds thus far. It’ll definitely be interesting to see how these moves pan out in the coming weeks and months.