Repurchased Independence Realty Trust in Zip Portfolio

Apartment REIT Independence Realty Trust (NYSE:IRT) was sold from the 2015/2016 Moderate Duration Portfolio with Zip about a month ago at $9.68/share and significant profits harvested.  After announcing a secondary share offering a few weeks ago share prices fell all the way back to the $8.40 and we took the opportunity to repurchase some shares in the Zip portfolio at $8.64/share yesterday (Thursday).

Recall that this portfolio has performed excellently in the last 14 months with a gain of around 10%–excellent for a lower risk portfolio that is seldom traded.  This portfolio is primarily shorter duration term preferred stock or baby bonds with a couple REITs or MLPs added for a little “zip”.  When we sold our 2 REITs last month we said we would be looking to add a couple new issue in and while we didn’t know at the time it would be IRT again it makes sense since we are familiar with the REIT and it has a current yield of over 8%.  We still plan to purchase Tortoise MLP Fund (NYSE:NTG) as noted in this previous note, but we continue to wait for a favorable entry point.  We can’t wait too long as our returns will be hurt with too much cash.

The Zip portfolio can be found here.