The S&P 500 rose 2.1% this week and remains just 1.6% below all-time highs.

This week there was a strong jobs report with the U.S. adding 196,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate remaining at 3.8%.

In stocks, DowDuPont (DWDP) completed the spin-off of Dow Inc. (DOW) on April 1st.  They plan to spin-off their Agriculture and Specialty Products divisions by June 2019.

Source: Dupont Investor Relations

I plan to keep a close eye on these 3 spin-off companies for a few reasons.

1. Two legendary investors taught me that spin-offs can be very profitable. Peter Lynch favored spin-offs in his book One Up One Wall Street favored. Joel Greenblatt has an entire section related to the merits of spin-offs in his book You Can Be A Stock Market Genius.
2. Two spin-offs in recent memory have been wildly successful. Paypal (PYPL) spun-off from Ebay (EBAY) in 2015 and Zoetis (ZTS) from Pfizer (PFE) in 2013. Paypal is up 173% in 4 years. Zoetis is a 3-bagger, up 205% in 6 years.

There haven’t been any changes to my long-term strategy. As the S&P 500 reaches new highs, I still plan to keep about 25% cash in my individual stock portfolios and wait for another buying opportunity.

My mutual fund portfolios are 100% in stocks since I have a 20+ year time horizon. I continue to dollar-cost average into them.

How are you guys handling the market? Share your thoughts by commenting below.

Disclosure

I/we are long PYPL.

I wrote this article myself and it expresses my own opinions. I’m not receiving compensation for it (other than from Wolves Of Investing), and I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.