August turned out to be another great month for my Portfolio. The stock market has marched higher once again – make it 4 consecutive months! This time stock market gains were fueled by a thirst for AI-related stocks, and also the prospect of lower interest rates coming soon.
Over the past month, the S&P 500 climbed marginally… up a little more than 1%. The Communication Services sector led the way, up more than 5%. Nearly all sectors were in the green, with Industrials being the only outlier (down about 1.8%).
On an annual basis, the S&P 500 is up nearly 10% (not including reinvested dividends). Communication Services (+17.2%) is the pace-setter, with Industrials (+15.1%) not too far behind. Healthcare (-0.4%) is the only sector in the red for 2025, and Consumer Discretionary (+1.6%) the only other sector without at least a 3% gain on the year.
Of course, my ever-growing dividend income continued to roll in as well, as did more dividend raises. The steady growth of my Portfolio over the years has been awesome to watch.
Next month I’ll be retiring from work, so I expect to be making changes in my Portfolio soon. Come the beginning of next year, I’ll be turning off my drips and use the dividend income to help cover my expenses. New investment will drop dramatically, too. Portfolio growth moving forward will have to come from dividend raises and capital appreciation.
Anyway, exciting changes are ahead. I look forward to navigating those changes as they come my way.
As usual, I’ll be going over my standard 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 August 2025…
Price Movement
Note – my price changes cover closing prices from 7/25/25 to 8/29/25.
It was another good month for my Portfolio, as it notched gains for a 4th consecutive month. I don’t know how long this will continue, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
Once again my ratio of stock gainers to stock decliners was solid. In August, it was nearly 2:1. Of my 58 holdings, 38 climbed in price, while the remaining 20 retreated in price. There weren’t any wild gains or losses this month, as only a small handful of companies moved more than +/-5%.
Here were the stocks with the biggest moves to the upside and downside…
Of my 38 stocks that rose in price in August, none advanced by 20%. On the other hand, I did have 5 stocks that managed at least a 10% gain (the usual threshold I monitor for). Beyond that, I had another 7 stocks that advanced at least 5%, too.
My top gainers in August were:
- Lowe’s Companies (LOW), jumping 13.78%
- Altria Group (MO), popping 12.32%
- AbbVie (ABBV), rising 10.57%
- UnitedHealth Group (UNH), advancing 10.25%
- Alphabet (GOOG), gaining 10.02%
My gainers were led by Consumer Discretionary holding LOW. The company’s 2nd quarter earnings revealed a return to positive comparable sales, growth in its professional customer segment, and an upward revision of its full-year sales forecast. LOW has now risen in 4 straight months.
MO had a monster month in August. This Consumer Staples stock usually doesn’t move much in price, but it did this month… by double-digits. MO also had a strong Q2 earnings report, providing an earnings beat, improved margins, and narrowed EPS guidance. MO recently traded above $68 for the first time since early 2018.
Next up on my top gainers list were a couple of Healthcare stocks in ABBV and UNH. ABBV announced strong Q2 financial results and favorable drug pipeline updates. Meanwhile, UNH bounced back from the depths it reached in July (when it was part of my top decliners). Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway disclosed a significant investment in UNH during August, helping to shift the negative narrative surrounding UNH stock in recent months.
Last but not least, GOOG also rose by a double-digit percentage… just barely. GOOG has increased in price for 5 consecutive months and recently touched a 52-week high.
Note – 2 sectors in my Portfolio had all their holdings in the green this month: Real Estate (3) & Energy (2). That’s now back-to-back months that my Energy holdings have met that distinction.
Of my 20 stocks that fell in price, just a pair fell by more than 10%, and just an additional three declined by more than 5%. Losses were well contained in August, which is always a good thing.
My worst decliners in August were…
- Intuit (INTU), plunging 15.13%
- Eastman Chemical (EMN), sinking 10.18%
- Accenture (ACN), dropping 8.19%
- Starbucks (SBUX), retreating 6.60%
- Amgen (AMGN), pulling back 6.16%
For yet another month, I’ve got a completely new set of top decliners. Most of this month’s top decliners came from different sectors, although I do have a pair of Information Technology names in INTU and ACN.
INTU was by far my worst decliner, dropping over 15%. Despite decent 4th quarter earnings, disappointing guidance for the coming year got investor’s attention. Revenue growth targets for 2026 came down. The August price drop ended a string of 5 straight months of gains.
Starting the month with one of its biggest single-day price drops (nearly 20%) was EMN. The company came up short on 2nd quarter earnings, disappointed with 3rd quarter guidance and continues to face persistent business headwinds, including tariff-related uncertainty and customer cautiousness. The stock has rebounded a bit since early in the month, but EMN still ended up being one of my worst decliners in August.
Ongoing concerns about growth for ACN have hurt the stock in recent quarters. The stock took another step down (roughly -8%) in August, reaching a 52-week low. I ended up buying some ACN during August given how far the stock price has dropped this year.
Decreased Q3 earnings and shrinking profitability at SBUX led its stock lower by 6.6%. Negative sales comps and weakness in key markets suggest challenges will remain in the short-term. SBUX is still down significantly from its highs in February. The stock has basically traded sideways over the past 3 years.
Rounding out the top decliners was AMGN. Immediate concerns include competition for its key drugs, the cost of new drugs in development, and significant investment in weight-loss drug MariTide. There’s also the upcoming price-setting under the Medicare Part D re-design. Regardless, growth prospects for AMGN look good, so hopefully this price decline is just a downward blip in a long-term upward trajectory.
Note – no sectors in my Portfolio had all their holdings in the red this month. That makes it three months in a row now… I’ll take that!
Top 10 Review
Top 10 activity was fairly insignificant in August. First, there were no new stocks in my Top 10. Second, movement up and down the ranks was light, too.
For a 2nd consecutive month, 7 of my Top 10 stocks held their positions compared to last month. All the movement consisted of one stock slipping a couple of spots, allowing two other stocks to climb one spot each.
One item of note… 9 of my Top 10 stocks finished in the green in August, which is 1 more than last month. Impressive! Visa (V) was the lone decliner in the Top 10, falling almost 1.5%.
Broadcom (AVGO) once again sits at my #1 spot, with a weighting more than double my 5% preferred weighting for any stock. It’s also more than double the weighting of any other stock in my Portfolio. The stock has climbed so much in price that its yield is well under 1%, despite double-digit dividend raises in each of the years since I bought my shares.
Aflac (AFL), Qualcomm (QCOM), Visa (V) & RPM International (RPM) all remained in their #2, #3, #4 & #5 spots, respectively. Outside of V, the other stocks had similar gains during August, hence the lack of shuffling in the ranks among these stocks.
The two climbers in the ranks were Fastenal (FAST) and AbbVie (ABBV), which settled at #6 and #7, respectively. Each moved up one spot. The 10%+ gain from ABBV was notable, but the 4% gain from FAST allowed it to hold off ABBV, at least for another month. That’s now 6 straight months of gains for FAST – keep it going!
BlackRock (BLK) recorded only a marginal gain during August (0.34%). Despite the gain, it lost ground in the rankings to FAST & ABBV, slipping down two spots to lay claim to the #8 spot. However, the small percentage increase did allow BLK to secure a price gain for the 4th month in a row.
Remaining in the #9 and #10 spots were JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Lowe’s Companies (LOW). LOW was my best gainer of the month (close to 14%), while JPM failed to gain much (< 1%). However, it wasn’t quite enough for LOW to overtake JPM in my rankings. It was good enough though for LOW to reach a 3% weighting in my Portfolio. All the stocks in the Top 10 now sport at least a 3% weighting.
Nexstar Media Group (NXST) and Procter & Gamble (PG) remain outside the Top 10 still, but are hanging around. Yet, the distance is notable. It would probably take gains from NXST or PG, in addition to a decline from JPM or LOW, to get there.
From the table above, my Top 10 holdings now comprise 42.91% of my Portfolio value. This is an increase of 0.15 percentage points compared to last month. Solid gains in August from nearly my entire Top 10 helped increase their weighting. However, this was partially offset by my purchase of Accenture (ACN) outside the Top 10.
As for the dividend weighting of my Top 10, it now stands at 26.84%. This is a decrease of 0.51 percentage points compared to last month. The dividend weighting of nearly all my Top 10 stocks dipped slightly in August due to my investment outside the Top 10. However, the dividend weighting for JPM did rise a bit due to a recent dividend raise, just not enough to wipe out all the weighting reductions in the other Top 10 stocks.
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.
The most noticeable change this month is that I now have one more overweight sector, Healthcare… but not by much. Healthcare went from being in my preferred weighting range to being just outside of it. My Healthcare stocks performed well in August, while the sector within the S&P 500 didn’t fare as well. I can live with that. 🙂
Outside of that, most of my weightings didn’t change too much. For the differences that did change the most, for the overweight sectors, I got closer to my preferred weighting ranges in Financials and Materials. Unfortunately, this was due to my under-performance in those sectors.
In the underweight sectors, I got closer to my preferred weighting range in Communication Services. Even though I performed poorly in this sector in August it was better than the performance of the index during the month.
Industrials continued to be my most overweight sector, with Information Technology still being my most underweight sector.
As for dividend weightings, the Healthcare sector still leads the way, at just under 16%. Financials, Information Technology & Industrials are big contributors, too, each providing in the range of 12%-14% of the dividend weighting. The smallest contribution to my dividend weighting comes from my Real Estate sector.
As always, I’ll keep all my sector weightings in mind as I continue to adjust my Portfolio, and my watchlist.
Watch List
While I only bought one stock in August, I leveraged my watchlist to come up with the stock to buy. I had Accenture (ACN) as undervalued at $274 last month. Well, it declined and traded below $240 when I added some shares. I was ready to act and was able to take advantage of the dip.
With the stock market climbing higher in August, it seems there are fewer stocks trading at preferred prices. However, there always seems to be an undervalued sector or two. Thus, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for those stocks, as well as any others that may be under-performing in the short-term, regardless of its sector.
Within my Portfolio, here are a few stocks that I’m watching for possible additions…
FedEx (FDX) remains my smallest position, and I’d like to add here. My target remains at $220, with the stock currently trading around $231.
One stock that’s drifting away from me is NNN REIT (NNN), my 2nd smallest position. I’m hoping to add below $40, but it moved above $43 in August, though not far enough for it to leave my watchlist
I’m always looking at Tech stocks, and I’ve got three that I’m considering adding to. These include Salesforce (CRM), Amdocs Ltd. (DOX), and Accenture (ACN). The target for CRM remains below my last buy at $258. DOX is looking undervalued at its current level under $86, so I could commit to buying some DOX at any time. As for ACN, I bought some in August, so I’ll target anything under my last buy of $237.38. ACN has bounced a bit from that low, as it currently trades more than $20/share above that level.
Still potentially on my chopping block for cash-raising purposes prior to retirement are the following stocks: T. Rowe Price Group (TROW), Skyworks Solutions (SWKS), Omnicom Group (OMC) and Comcast (CMCSA).
As for non-Portfolio stocks that I’m watching…
No change here… it’s the same 3 stocks.
Zoetis (ZTS) rose over the past month and has exceeded my $150 price target. I’ll keep watching and see if drops from its current $156 level.
Costco (COST) also crept up in price in August, but not too much. It currently trades around $943 (up from $930). A price below $900 is still my target, even though that price would still have the stock in overvalued territory – where it usually resides.
Energy company Cactus Inc. (WHD) is hovering above $40, my target from last month. This looks like fair value to me. However, I’m dropping the target to $38 to provide some extra margin should I initiate a position.
Thoughts?
Is the stock market due for a pullback after months of gains? We are entering the historically poor-performing month of September next, with the extra-volatile month of October after that. Please share your thoughts!