August 2nd was the first trading day of August so I purchased 5 shares of Capital One Financial Corp., the top performing stock of the S&P 100 over the previous six months from February through July. I bought the shares for $160.03 each, for a total investment of $800.15. I also held $105.18 in cash. These two amounts totaled $905.33, the sum of the proceeds from the stock I bought and sold in July, Ford (ticker: F).
With the end of August, it was time to close out the position and identify the new top stock of the S&P 100. August 31st was the last trading day of the month so I sold the 5 shares of COF for $165.64 each. In addition to that, the stock paid dividends of $6 on August 20th. The proceeds totaled $834.20 yielding a one month gain of $34.05 and a return of 3.8 percent. The Capital One Financial Corp. stock over-performed against the benchmark S&P 500 exchange traded fund (SPY), which returned 2.9 percent in August. This one month gain broke the two-month string of losses this strategy has produced.
Over the first four months, this modified strategy is down 6.2 percent and underperforming badly against the benchmark S&P 500 ETF (SPY) which is up 8.2% from May through August.
COF went up because interest rates ticked up a bit in August, raising the prospects of higher interest income for financial companies in the months ahead.
The Newest Top Stock
The new top performing S&P 100 stock over the last six months is semiconductor maker NVIDIA Corp. (ticker: NVDA). NVIDIA makes arguably the most advanced chips used in graphics (gaming), artificial intelligence, and crypto currency mining.
Today, September 1st will be the first trading of this new month. I will take the $939.38 from the proceeds of the COF sale and buy four shares of NVDA, which closed yesterday at $223.85. This will total about $896 in stock and leave the remainder of about $43.38 in cash. Cash will equal only about 4.6 percent of the total allocation, so this month 5 portfolio will be very stock heavy.
An update will be forthcoming. Please check back in 30 days.