Stock Portfolio ‘Window-Dressing’ At Work As Investment Managers Sell Unattractive Losers And Buy Trendy Winners

Stock Portfolio ‘Window-Dressing’ At Work As Investment Managers Sell Unattractive Losers And Buy Trendy Winners

An investment manager-adviser selecting stocks to buy and sell When the quarterly reports go out, stock managers and advisers want their investors to get positive vibes when examining their portfolio holdings. Thus, toward each quarter's end, there can be some "window-dressing" selling and buying designed to spruce up the holdings list. Obviously, selling to weed out any big disappointments is important - particularly if there was negative news tied to the poor performance. So, how about on the positive side? Investors like seeing the leaders. This quarter there are many good-looking choices. They can be found by screening the databases. For example, here is an S&P 500 search for stocks that meet the following criteria (Data source: Financial Visualizations - FinViz. com). One thing to note: There are many well-known companies that do not meet those criteria. That doesn't mean necessarily that they are sell candidates. Instead, they simply didn't classify as "trendy winners" using this particular screening. To illustrate the selection sensitivity, only 3 (10%) of the 30 DJIA stocks met all four criteria: American Express, Goldman Sachs and Microsoft. Among the five FAANG stocks, only Alphabet/Google and Facebook made it, leaving behind Apple, Amazon and Netflix. Even popular