Market Roundup
Despite the strong start to the week, the US markets ended the week down, as did many other major indices, including the NZX 50, ASX 200, and FTSE 100. Of the three top US indices, the NASDAQ had the highest gain early in the week due to its tech-heavy weighting. In return, it also had the furthest drop but finished the week between the two other indices.
Chart Source- Yahoo! Finance
Global News
New Zealand has fallen into its first recession in years after GDP dropped 12.2% in the 2nd Quarter https://www.stats.govt.nz/indicators/gross-domestic-product-gdp
In the US, Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg has died. She was a stalwart of the US Supreme Court and had been hoping that a Democratic president would be able to choose her replacement. However, Trump and the Republicans will look to use this opportunity to swing the Supreme Court in their favour for decades to come https://youtu.be/mImMi1VNyvw
COVID-19 cases surpassed 31 million and are closing in on 1 million deaths https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/. At the current wait, it will take India approximately 30 days to overtake the US in terms of causes, but with the exponential spread, this could be reduced significantly.
Portfolio Performance
This week, my $3,000 term deposit matured. The rates I was offered on new term deposits maxed out at 1.25%. Due to the poor return, I decided to move $2,000 into my CIP MyStart portfolio and $1,000 into my Sharesies portfolio. This is why you will see the % change for different categories below being so unreasonable (NZ Low Risk is +1390%). However, when you ignore the cash flow, the portfolio values were slightly down.
A noticeable move was the ~6% fall of NZ energy companies MEL and MCY, which caused BRK.B to become my largest holding (not including QuayStreet Funds).
Video Clip of the Week
NZ Finance Minister Grant Robertson discusses the NZ economy and recession with Bloomberg- https://youtu.be/kdAgfQ4tgEo
