This month’s market overachievers

These stocks are outperforming the market over the last month

I want to look at what stocks in my portfolio are outperforming the market over the last month. Some are outperforming over the last three months. A few have been under performing over the last year.

1. Ingles
2. Fortinet
3. General Mills
4. Marten Transport
5. Ennis
6. Cigna
7. Putnam Municipal CEF
8. IYW
9. Pinterest
10. Universal Forest Products

I’ll be using my ole buddy ITOT as my Total Market ETF standard for comparison

1 Month & 3 month performances

Some Comments about stocks

Ennis and Marten Transport-Top Performers

The biggest outperformers in this group are Ennis and Marten Transport. I recently did articles on both of these stocks. Ennis is one of my favorite under the radar dividend payers and Marten, I believe is poised for incredible growth over the next five years. Every quarter Marten Transport reports RECORD earnings and revenues and just a few days ago they did it again. The stock saw a move of 18% in one day!

Pinterest

I feel silly even mentioning this one because Pinterest stock is down over 70%. You’ll have to dig, but I bought and sold PINS a few times for some nice swing trades and gains before the market started correcting. I have a super tiny position left; I’ve debated selling it many times. However, for now I’m just holding on and riding it wherever it goes. PINS is a hard one for me. At times, it seems like they are making good moves. I know from my own experience that Google seems to like PINS in their search results lately. PINS is making in roads with their features as well and I even find myself using it more lately to promote my other blogs. It’s had a great month at +17%.

Universal Forest Products

This is another one I’ve mentioned multiple times on this blog. It literally is one of my favorite stocks. Incredible growth numbers and a good valuation. I’m fine if no one buys it, that leaves more for me! It’s up over 15% this past month and earnings is here soon. I’ve never known this company not to have great earnings. LONG-TERM HOLD for me!

Fortinet

I’m not big on buying tech stocks. Mainly because I feel like my ETF’s (ITOT and IYW) do a good job of giving me tech exposure. This certainly helped my accounts take less of a hit since the beginning of the year. Anyways, FTNT is one that I began loading up on in March 2020. It’s my favorite tech & cyber security stock. I can’t see myself selling it any time soon. I am up over 250% in the stock. They just had a nice stock split and if I didn’t already own a good portion, I’d buy more to celebrate. FTNT is up 11% over the last month; however, it is slightly under performing the market over the last three months.

Putnam Municipal Bond Closed End Fund

Here is another hidden gem in my opinion. Provided you buy closed end funds at the right time, they are wonderful additions to the portfolio. I’ve bought and sold out of this a few times over the last four years. I tend to buy when it falls below Net Asset Value, hold about a year and a half and then sell out. It’s a closed end fund containing municipal bonds.

With interest rates rising, Putnam Muni CEF took quite the clobber since the beginning of the year. I took the time to add more. I mean it got down to 2008 levels at one point. This was a game of how low can it possibly go. I just don’t believe it can go much lower. In my opinion, the rewards outweighed the risk.

It is up 13.4% over the last month and this isn’t even including dividends. My yield is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5.7%; it pays dividends monthly and is free from FED taxes. It’s beating the market over the last three months as well.

General Mills

This was literally my first stock. I personally feel that the General might be a bit overvalued here. However, I did add a few more shares about a month ago. It had been so long since I had bought any. People were afraid of inflation, so many poured into these consumer staple stocks. I think at some point, the inflation will cool and this might result in GIS dropping a bit. I’m purely in GIS for dividends and a super long-term, sleep well at night play. I play to NEVER SELL regardless of what it does.

Cigna

Cigna Healthy stock is another one of those sleep well at night stocks for me. I personally have Cigna Health Insurance and I’ve been pleased with their service. The way I see it-I invest in their stock, it pays me some nice juicy dividends. Maybe one day I can pay my entire health insurance bill with my dividends. It’s barely outperforming over the one month at 9%. Once again, not a bad place to be in a recession or inflation. Low volatility stock.

Ingles

I wrote about Ingles here recently. It’s, of course, a grocery store. I think this is a growth/value hodgepodge play. It has seen some serious growth, but it also has a fair valuation. Ingles has been around forever. Many of them are in rural southern towns and there just isn’t a whole lot of competition besides Kroger’s. Even though it isn’t a large cap stock, I do view it as another sleep well at night stocks, no matter what happens. I just wished it paid more dividends.

IYW

IYW is my tech ETF play I’ve written about before. It’s barely beating the total market at 10.3%. Is it time to pour back into tech? I don’t know. I haven’t bought any shares in awhile. I think I’m down 11% in most of the ones I own. I’m waiting it out. For ETF’s, I’ve primarily added to ITOT.

Closing Thoughts

Well, those are my over achievers for the month. To be transparent-I do have some under achievers! My XLE that had been doing so well has lagged the last three months. My growth stocks like Chewy and Mindmed have done poorly. However, these are my rays of sunshine in a stock market that’s been a bit of a rough ride this past six months.

If you’d like to see how long I’ve held some of these stocks, here is my article back from the beginning of the ya know what 😉

I will end by saying that I started buying back in a bit more aggressively the last month after sitting it out for a bit. I don’t like to sit on the sidelines trying to time things too long. I’m a firm believer that time in the market is the best strategy.

Anyways, Wishing you the best on your INVESTMENT JOURNEY!