Posted by For the seventh month of 2024 the DOW added 1,724 points, or 4.4%, which was the best month of the year. Interest and dividend income was $2541 for the month. Withdrawals for living expenses came to $1010. Overall, my account balance increased by 1.48% from the prior month. The increase set a new high monthly ending balance. The bad news is that about half of that increase has already been lost in the first two days in August. With 3 positive months in a row, something I haven’t seen since 2021, the market was due for a correction. In the past month, I added another 50 shares of SCHD and sold 50 shares of semiconductor ETF PSI for a $1150 profit. The remaining 50 shares have declined in value by $768 as of today. In this case I should have sold all 100 shares for a $2300 profit before semiconductor stocks fell out of favor.
The market is forward looking, and investors are getting worried about employment data and political news. With a September interest rate cut almost a sure thing, the fear is that it might be too little too late. The number of companies laying off workers seems to be accelerating. This is not a problem until new jobs become harder to find. Because of the coming interest rate cuts, money had been rotating into the stock of smaller companies. But the rotation story has changed in the first few days of August. Now money is rotating out of all stocks. This is often a good buying opportunity, when good stocks get oversold. Yesterday, I had 3 stock alerts get triggered. An alert triggers an email when a stock drops below a set price. It is unusual to get 3 alerts in one day. This is an indicator that the market is in free fall. I haven’t decided if I will act on any of the triggers. There is always a fear that the correction is just getting started. I think we can expect to see continued volatility in the months ahead.