The seeming truth that cunning times put on
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
To entrap the wisest.
This is my one hundred and sixteenth monthly portfolio update. I complete this regular update to check progress against my goal.
Portfolio goal
My objective is to maintain a portfolio of at least $3,250,000. This should be capable of producing an annual income from total portfolio returns of about $112,000 (in 2026 dollars).
This portfolio objective is based on an assumed safe withdrawal rate of 3.45 per cent.
A secondary focus will be maintaining the minimum equity target of $2,600,000.
Portfolio summary
| Vanguard Lifestrategy High Growth Fund | $998,136 |
| Vanguard Lifestrategy Growth Fund | $49,458 |
| Vanguard Lifestrategy Balanced Fund | $83,617 |
| Vanguard Diversified Bonds Fund | $89,059 |
| Vanguard Australian Shares ETF (VAS) | $680,920 |
| Vanguard International Shares ETF (VGS) | $1,121,833 |
| Betashares Australia 200 ETF (A200) | $348,791 |
| Gold ETF (GOLD.ASX) | $258,017 |
| Bitcoin | $1,012,682 |
| Plenti Capital Notes | $84,000 |
| Financial portfolio value (excluding Bitcoin) | $3,713,831 (-$21,738) |
| Total portfolio value | $4,726,513 (+$28,959) |
Asset allocation
| Australian shares | 30.1% |
| Global shares | 33.3% |
| Emerging market shares | 1.2% |
| International small companies | 1.3% |
| Total international shares | 35.8% |
| Total shares | 65.9% (-14.1%) |
| Australian bonds | 2.7% |
| International bonds | 3.7% |
| Total bonds | 6.4% (+1.4%) |
| Gold | 5.5% |
| Bitcoin | 21.4% |
| Gold and alternatives | 26.9% (+11.9%) |
Presented visually, the pie chart below is a high-level view of the current asset allocation of the full portfolio.
Comments
This month the overall portfolio was relatively flat, increasing only nominally by $29,000 or 0.6 per cent.
In contrast to last month, value of the financial portfolio fell by a small amount – $22,000 – but this was cushioned at the overall portfolio level by some positive price movements for Bitcoin.
The chart below sets out the performance of both the full and ‘financial assets only’ portfolios since the commencement of the journey.
Across the month the largest falls were in the value of global shares, with a capital loss of around 1.7 per cent. Australian equities rose slightly in capital value terms by around 1.6 per cent.
Complicating the story here somewhat, is the fact that distributions from retail funds and ETFs were equivalent to between 0.5 – 0.8 per cent of each funds value, meaning that the global equity capital falls to some extent simply reflected the payout event, a transference effectively from the securities capital price, to the income column. As an indication of this effect, $33,000 of distributions were paid out across this month, from second quarter distributions, constituting more than the headline ‘loss’ of the financial portfolio.
Equity markets appear to be still responding to ongoing uncertainty around conflict and long-term prospects for freedom of navigation in the Persian gulf, as well as higher bond rates, in the absence of strong growth impulses across much of the developed world.
Gold was flat across the month and is at values that were seen almost a year ago. In addition, over the month, bond holdings lost around 4.1 per cent, although once again, this partially reflected the large distributions recently report in the portfolio income update.
The month, as previously, small additional new investments were made in global equities (through the Vanguard exchange traded fund VGS), in accordance with the decision to regularly reinvest excess distributions and cash holdings.
Continue reading “Monthly Portfolio Update – July 2026”
