On Friday 17 April all the VEVE holdings were sold after it achieved our target sale price. That concludes the 8th PIP-VEVE cycle since August 2023.
The price had fairly zoomed up over the last few days, having plunged after we originally went in.
Yes, there is war, low consumer confidence, higher oil prices, inflation risk and therefore interest rate tension.
But (and it is a very big but) what matters most to markets, when push comes to shove, is whether or not the US economy is in recession (or showing signs of it).
And by recession we mean negative growth AND unemployment.
There are plenty of red indicators, but not as many as before, and so markets are happy to support higher equity prices. For now.
We will be keeping an eye on US employment figures, if they start turning sour (they are volatile in the best of times) then we can expect more opportunities to arise for your main portfolio.
For PIP-VEVE who knows which ways things will zig or zag. A 3% drop from a high can happen at any time, off the back of any negative or unexpected news.
My gut tells me we will be returning to VEVE sooner rather than later.
On average we have had to wait for 94 days since we first bough VEVE. But we have waited as few as 27 days and as many as 160.
We held VEVE for 39 days this time round, which is around the average, and have a profit of nearly 4% for our efforts.
The Government bonds you might otherwise have held fell by 1.15% over the same period.
A 5% swing in our favour is not to be sniffed at.
The current VEVE high point is around 10048, meaning we will look to buy VEVE again when the price drops to 9747.