The stock market positivity we experienced in May continued throughout June. I was happy to see that, and my Portfolio value reaped the benefits.
For the S&P 500, it’s now established a new high for 2025, exceeding the peak that it had reached in February. Also, it took a bit less than 3 months to recover from the tariff tantrum.
Nearly all the S&P 500 sectors (10 of 11) were in the green in June. Only Consumer Staples was in the red. Two of my five Consumer Staples stocks bucked that negative sector trend. Both Hershey Co. (HSY) and Pepsico (PEP) were positive over the past month.
The Information Technology (+11%) and Communication Services (+9%) sectors led the way for the S&P 500 index in June. All other sectors added less than 5%. The Healthcare sector even managed a positive month in June (+3%) after some recent rough months.
For the year, Industrials and Communication Services are the top two sectors, both up better than 10%. Three S&P 500 sectors are negative for the year: Consumer Discretionary (-3.4%), Healthcare (-2.6%) & Energy (-0.3%).
The S&P 500 as a whole has gained about 5% for the year, and better than 5.6% with dividends reinvested.
Once again, I’ll be covering my normal items in this month’s Portfolio Thoughts post…
- Price Movement – I’ll look at my top advancers and decliners in my Portfolio during the past month.
- Top 10 Review – I’ll update my Top 10 Portfolio stocks and how they changed rank this past month.
- Weightings – I’ll examine the sector weightings within my Portfolio and let you know where I’ve made progress with regard to getting into my preferred weighting ranges.
- Watch List – I’ll share which stocks I’m looking at as I prepare to invest my capital in the coming months.
Here are my Portfolio Thoughts for June 2025…
Price Movement
Note – my price changes cover closing prices from 5/23/25 to 6/27/25.
Not only did the stock market advance in June, but it was even better this month than in May… at least as far as my ratio of advancers to decliners was concerned.
In June, my ratio of stock gainers to stock decliners was nearly 3:1. This exceeded the 2:1 ratio I sported in May. Of my 60 holdings, 44 climbed in price, while the remaining 16 pulled back. Gains were strong. Almost half of my gains (20 of 44) topped 5%. Even better, losses were limited, with only two stocks dropping more than 5%.
Here were the stocks with the biggest moves to the upside and downside…
Of my 44 stocks that climbed in price in June, I had one top 20%. Make that back-to-back months with one stock exceeding 20%. Woohoo! In addition, I had 6 stocks with at least a 10% gain (the usual threshold I monitor for). I won’t forget about the baker’s dozen that advanced at least 5%, too.
My top gainers in June were:
- Nike (NKE), rocketing up 20.03%
- Broadcom (AVGO), surging 17.76%
- Texas Instruments (TXN), popping 17.46%
- Caterpillar (CAT), rising 12.03%
- The Walt Disney Co. (DIS), climbing 11.50%
Information Technology was well represented in my top gainers list with a pair of stocks from that sector: AVGO and TXN. The remaining stocks were spread out across other sectors.
Both AVGO and DIS were stocks that repeated their appearance this month in my top gainers list. AVGO showed up at #2 for the second month in a row, while DIS slipped from #1 to #5.
My top gainer in June was NKE, which popped late in the month in conjunction with their earnings release. Investors were happy to see earnings weren’t as bad as expected, and that perhaps the turnaround for the company had taken root. NKE will need to another good quarter in order to sustain any momentum it’s gathered.
AVGO delivered yet another month with a gain percentage in the high teens. My largest holding just keeps getting bigger and it’s now more than twice the size of my 2nd largest holding. Could a trim of my AVGO position be in order?
Another stock with a strong gain in June was TXN. Most of my semiconductor stocks did well this month, but TXN was the only one challenging AVGO for best of the group.
My Industrials stocks did well this month, but CAT was the clear winner. It gained more than 12% while all my other stocks in the sector had gains of less than 6%, or had losses. CAT has recouped most of the price drop it’s experienced since the end of January.
While DIS didn’t repeat its 21.53% gain from May, I’ll take the 11.5% advance it managed for June. Those are strong returns over each of the past two months. DIS has now reached a new 52-week high and is nearly as high as it’s been at any time over the past 3 years.
Note – 3 sectors in my Portfolio had all their holdings in the green this month: Real Estate (4), Consumer Discretionary (3) & Utilities (3). That’s now back-to-back months for all my Consumer Discretionary and Utilities holdings being positive.
Of my 16 stocks that fell in price, none declined by more than 10%, and only two declined more than 5%. The losses were well contained in June! I’ll take that any month.
My worst decliners in June were…
- Automatic Data Processing (ADP), retreating 5.49%
- Eastman Chemical (EMN), dropping 5.38%
- Accenture (ACN), sliding 4.56%
- Procter & Gamble (PG), declining 3.62%
- Flowers Foods (FLO), slipping 3.09%
My top decliners included a couple of names from the Consumer Staples sector in PG and FLO. This was the 2nd straight month that FLO cracked my top decliners list – not a good thing! The other top decliners came from varied sectors.
ADP was my worst decliner this month, which is unusual. The stock had a strong month of May, and gave back over half of it in June. A few analysts lowered their price targets and ratings on ADP this month. A weaker-than-expected jobs report and concerns about a potential economic slowdown and tariffs could have been a factor, too.
Another stock that didn’t fare especially well in June was EMN. Tariffs and economic uncertainty could be weighing on the stock, while its slight YoY decline in reported Q1 revenue didn’t help either. EMN has not performed well in 2025, down over 16% YTD.
The decline from ACN was the result of a decline in bookings (in consulting and managed services), and this raised concerns about future revenue growth, as well as the company’s ability to secure new business. ACN is also down over 16% YTD.
We then arrive at those two Consumer Staples stocks, PG and FLO. Both were down in the 3%-4% range in June. However, YTD it’s a much different story. While PG is down less than 5% for the year, FLO has retreated 22.7%. Ouch!
Note – no sectors in my Portfolio had all their holdings in the red this month. That doesn’t happen too often.
Top 10 Review
Compared to recent months, my Top 10 was pretty active in June. While there weren’t any new stocks making their way into my Top 10, there was quite a bit of shuffling within the ranks.
Eight of my Top 10 stocks changed positions during the month. Most stocks moved up or down a single spot, however, I had one stock climb two spots, while another slipped two spots. Those were the big movers in June.
I had two pairs of stocks swap places in their positional rankings. I’ll share those coming up.
Only 6 of my Top 10 finished with gains in June. This was a poor ratio considering the advancers to decliners ratio I noted earlier for the entire Portfolio.
Leading my Top 10 were Broadcom (AVGO) and Aflac (AFL). These two stocks are the ones that didn’t change position this month. AVGO continues to easily hold down my #1 spot. In fact, it’s now more than twice the position size of AFL, so I don’t anticipate AFL, or any other stock, will supplant AVGO at #1 anytime soon. Retaining the #2 spot is AFL, which posted a gain north of 2% during June.
Swapping spots at #3 and #4 were Qualcomm (QCOM) and Visa (V) – they did the same last month, too. QCOM climbed one spot in the rankings to lay claim to the #3 spot. The stock gained more than 9% in June. V lost a bit more than 1% during the month as it slipped to #4.
My big mover to the upside moved higher by two spots to settle at #5. Using a gain of almost 8.8% in June, BlackRock (BLK) moved into the upper half of my Top 10, making it 3 Financials in this group.
Slipping down a spot to #6 was RPM International (RPM). A loss of a little more than 1% during June led to its downfall.
Rising one spot to #7 was Fastenal (FAST). FAST has posted gains in 4 consecutive months, so it’s no surprise to see the stock climb in my rankings.
My big mover to the downside slid down a couple of spots to #8. AbbVie (ABBV) posted a loss of roughly half a percent during June. This isn’t a big loss by any means, but when other stocks are posting decent gains, it looks like standing still.
Switching spots at #9 and #10 were JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Procter & Gamble (PG). JPM debuted in the Top 10 in May and rose to the #9 spot after notching a gain of better than 10% in June. JPM has now posted gains for 3 straight months. Meanwhile, PG slid a spot to #10, but it still has a small lead over other stocks hoping to crack the Top 10.
Lowe’s Companies (LOW) is lurking outside my Top 10 and could jump back in with a solid gain in July. Union Pacific (UNP) and Nexstar Media Group (NXST) are next in line after LOW.
From the table above, my Top 10 holdings now comprise 41.95% of my Portfolio value. This is an increase of 0.29 percentage points compared to last month. Price gains in June from my top 3 stocks helped increase the weighting of my Top 10.
As for the dividend weighting of my Top 10, it finished the month at 27.65%. This is a decrease of 0.77 percentage points compared to last month. My $5K, high-yielding Portfolio investment in PCN contributed to the lower dividend weighting percentage of the Top 10.
Weightings
In general, for the Sector Diversification, I target being within +/-3 percentage points of the sector weightings of the S&P 500. For the SuperSector Diversification, I target being within +/-5 percentage points.
The “Weight Diff.” column shows which sectors sit outside my preferred weighting ranges. If I’m overweight a sector, it’s shaded green. If I’m underweight a sector, it’s shaded red. If I’m within my target weighting range, then no shading exists.
You’ll see that I have a new sector that I defined in the table above – Bonds. While this isn’t an S&P 500 sector, I wanted to show my weighting in this area after initiating a position in PCN during the month. It’s a small weighting for the time being. We’ll see if I decide to increase its weighting in my Portfolio. If I do, I don’t expect it to get larger than 3% (roughly 5x its current weighting).
Unfortunately, after June came to a close, I now have a 3rd underweight sector. Communication Services joined Information Technology and Consumer Discretionary with that distinction. During June, my weighting in Communication Services went down while that of the S&P 500 sector went up, resulting in the increased weighting difference. I did make some headway in reducing the weighting difference in Consumer Discretionary though, as nice months from Nike (NKE) and Starbucks (SBUX) helped.
I still have 3 overweight sectors (Industrials, Financials & Materials). While my weighting difference went down in Industrials and Materials, it was not for a reason I liked. My overweight difference was reduced in each due to the poor performance of my holdings relative to the stocks in its S&P 500 sector.
With Broadcom (AVGO) and Texas Instruments (TXN) gaining nicely in June, Information Technology is an even bigger percentage of my Portfolio (22.46%). However, I’m still more than 10 percentage points behind the Tech weighting of the S&P 500 (32.92%). Financials are comfortably my 2nd largest sector, at a bit over 18%, after the good performance of my stocks in June.
Healthcare is still my top sector when it comes to providing dividend income for my Portfolio. However, Financials are starting to challenge Healthcare for that title. Each provide better than 15% of my Portfolio’s dividend income. While my newest Bonds sector is technically the sector providing the least amount of dividend income (2.36%), I’ve got four sectors not too far ahead, all with a dividend weighting in the 4% to 5% range. Real Estate (4.18%) holds a small lead over Energy (4.08%) in terms of avoiding being the smallest income provider in this group.
As always, I’ll keep all my sector weightings in mind as I continue to adjust my Portfolio, and my watchlist.
Watch List
I didn’t buy anything from my watchlist during the month of June. Instead I initiated a position in PCN, a new closed-end fund (CEF) that I’d been watching for a while, but hadn’t discussed here.
The investment in PCN was fairly decent, so I didn’t feel the need to invest more into my Portfolio. With the stock market advancing in June, most of the stocks I was watching only got more expensive anyway. So, let’s take a look as what still might be on my radar, despite the generally higher prices.
Within my Portfolio, here are a few stocks that I’m watching for possible additions…
I might try to add some Salesforce (CRM) shares. This is a small Tech position in my Portfolio that needs to grow. Currently, the stock trades around the price at which I established my position, which is $272/share. It’s traded lower over the past couple of months. Will it do it again?
NextEra Energy (NEE) is a stock that hasn’t moved much higher over time. It rises in price only to eventually give up the gains. I’ve been looking for a price in the mid $60s. It was around $67 last month, and it’s just under $70 now. A brief price dip could bring the stock to the level I’m interested in. I’ll keep watching.
While Chevron (CVX) has moved higher over the past month, above the $136 mark around the end of May, it’s still only a few dollars north of $140. If it dips below that $140 level I’ll consider a small addition.
UnitedHealth Group (UNH) seems to have found a floor around $300 after a brutal month of May. I will consider adding another share or two below $300.
Pepsico (PEP) was below my $130 target level in June, but I deferred any purchase, as Consumer Staples stocks have continued to struggle. An even lower price could be possible. I’m willing to wait for additional weakness.
I’d like to see my new position in PCN become even larger. I could see nearly doubling my position by investing another $4K. Perhaps I’ll look at selling some of my poorest-performing stocks and re-allocating the funds into PCN. Due to the high yield of PCN, I won’t have to worry about a loss of income, regardless of what I choose to sell.
I discussed a few stocks that could be on the chopping block in last month’s Portfolio Thoughts. For different reasons, these stocks include: American Tower (AMT), Flowers Foods (FLO), T. Rowe Price Group (TROW), Skyworks Solutions (SWKS), Omnicom Group (OMC) and Comcast (CMCSA).
As for non-Portfolio stocks that I’m watching…
Zoetis (ZTS) remains the only stock that I’m watching outside my Portfolio. Over the past month, the stock pulled back from $165 to $155, which is much closer to my $150 target. However, there are concerns about one of the company’s arthritis drugs for dogs which gives me pause.
Thoughts?
After two months of gains, stocks still appear poised to continue running up. Are you willing to put cash to work at this time? Have you identified any stocks that haven’t been participating in the recent market uptrend and which you might be willing to add at current levels? Please share your thoughts!