This is the monthly update of my M1 Finance Wolf Pie portfolio for July 2020. I started this portfolio from $0 in August 2019 to show you how to invest your first $1,000 (and beyond) in the stock market. The $1,000 milestone was reached a few months ago. The next major milestone is $10,000.

I’m investing in this portfolio as if I were still a struggling college student working low-paying jobs to pay my way through school. At that time, I had very little to invest after expenses. This is a portfolio that even I at that young age could have followed. Check out all of the previous portfolio updates to track my journey.

I follow a strategy called focus investing. Focus investing is a strategy used by legendary investors Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. For more on my strategy, click here.

In this post, I will cover:

• My general thoughts on the market
• The S&P 500
• My Wolf Pie M1 Finance results
• Changes to the portfolio (if any)

MY THOUGHTS ON THE STOCK MARKET

The stock market seems a little frothy at the moment. SPAC stock mergers are gaining a lot of popularity. Some of these SPACs are gaining 50% or more in less than a week upon their merger announcements.

Meanwhile, coronavirus rages on. The U.S. is reaching record daily counts of infections. My city (Sacramento, CA) has seen approximately one death per day – up from one a week just a few weeks prior.

A few companies have vaccines going into Phase 3 trials in the coming weeks. So at least there’s a silver lining.

THE S&P 500

The S&P 500 last closed at 3224.7, only 5.0% off its highs.

Although the market seems frothy, I learned to never try and time the stock market. It can and will do the exact opposite of what seems reasonable. And it tends to do it for much longer we think.

I have a 10+ year investing time horizon so I will just continue dollar-cost averaging into my Wolf Pie. 

WOLF PIE M1 FINANCE RESULTS (AS OF JULY 17, 2020)

My money-weighted portfolio return is +74.35% since I started it on August 23rd, 2019.

It’s up 3.33% in the past month since June 18th.

These are my 11 holdings and their respective cumulative returns (not money-weighted) since I started the portfolio. My cumulative portfolio return is 28.94%.

These are my 11 holdings and their respective money-weighted returns since I started the portfolio. The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD) is the best performer at +201.62%. NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the worst performer at +7.08%. That’s expected since NVIDIA was just added to the portfolio this past month.

These are my 11 holdings and their respective money-weighted returns in the past month. Beyond Meat (NASDAQ: BYND) was the worst performer at -16.76%. The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD) was the best performer at +13.23%.

CHANGES TO THE PORTFOLIO

CONTRIBUTIONS

There were no changes to my contribution strategy. I continue to invest $50 every 2 weeks. I’d prefer to invest every week, but I want to make sure that I invest enough to avoid having too many excluded trades.

PORTFOLIO WEIGHTS

These are the changes I made to the portfolio targets.

BUYS AND SELLS

I finally decided to sell Xilinx (NASDAQ: XLNX) and replace it with NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA). I feel like NVIDIA is a better bet on the future of artificial intelligence inference. Watch the video (above) for more details.

FUTURE PLANS

I plan to raise my contributions to $60 every two weeks starting next month. This will be the one-year anniversary of the account. Just like I would tell my younger self after getting a raise from a job every year, I plan to steadily increase the contributions in this portfolio every year, too.

BOTTOM LINE

Investing on a budget doesn’t have to be complicated. In this account, I just invest in companies that I know and understand very well. I dollar-cost average. The portfolio reached the $1,000 mark a few months ago. The next milestone is $10,000.

Follow my journey every month. Sign up for the email list for updates and receive my free eBook. Share this story on social media and leave a comment in the comment box to let me know what you think.

DISCLOSURE

I/we own shares of all of the stocks depicted in the portfolios.

Except for Wolves of Investing, I/we are not receiving any compensation from and do not have any business dealings with any companies whose stocks are discussed in this article.