Visiting my two M1 Finance portfolios and seeing how they have fared in the recent market turmoil.

[This March portfolio review about healthcare stocks may contain affiliate links for which I receive a commission at no cost to you. I only recommend products I use and trust.] Healthcare stocks were an ugly sector to be in this month. The reason? A bevy of democratic candidates talking up medicare for all. It’s easy to see why that would be bad for healthcare. After all, there’s a ton of parties making money from our current healthcare system. However, that may change if certain candidates have their way. Uncertainty is rarely good for stocks so we saw a big dip in a lot of big healthcare names this month. That…

[This February portfolio review may contain affiliate links for which I receive a commission at no cost to you. I only recommend products I use and trust.] The last month was a perfect example as to why it’s so hard to time the market. You never know when the stock market gains will return and missing them is a huge hit to your returns. It was easy to feel negative about the market after the shellacking it took in December. After all, look at the performance of my own portfolio and the S&P in the first 24 days of December. As always, the graphics below are from Personal Capital. That’s…

[This portfolio review about 2018 portfolio returns may contain affiliate links at no cost to you] Welcome to the first portfolio review of 2019! The new year is always a good time to look back and see how I did in 2018. My 2018 portfolio returns looked good until about October when the market started to sputter a bit. My last update in December showed a bit of a reduction in portfolio size but it missed the large December drop that followed. I wasn’t too worried about the drop as a long term investor and didn’t mind the lower prices I got via my regular contributions. However, as has been…

[This portfolio review about negative stock returns may contain affiliate links at no cost to you] Negative stock returns and volatility are at the forefront of the conversation lately. At the time of the last update, the monthly return for the S&P 500 was -3.62%. This month, we see an even bigger drop with a -5.32% return for the month. Luckily, my portfolio held up a bit better as shown by the below graphic from Personal Capital. My exposure to foreign stocks actually hurt less than domestic this month! International still had a negative return but that loss trailed the domestic counterparts. My You Index, the results of my own…

[This portfolio review about risk tolerance may contain affiliate links at no cost to you] Guys, it’s time to test your risk tolerance! The test is easy and it’s only one question! Did you seriously consider selling anything in the past month? The market did have one the worst months in quite some time and there was a tiny bit of panic in the air. It’s not outrageous that those who haven’t been tested with a big paper loss might get scared. How about you? Did you panic or were you calm as a cucumber? A month like October can certainly be a good test of your risk tolerance. If…