All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.
J.M.Barrie, Peter Pan
This is my seventieth 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 $2,620,000 through 2022. This should be capable of producing an annual income from total portfolio returns of about $91,600 (in 2022 dollars).
This portfolio objective is based on an assumed safe withdrawal rate of 3.5 per cent.
A secondary focus through 2022 will be achieving the minimum equity target of $2,100,000.
Portfolio summary
| Vanguard Lifestrategy High Growth Fund | $678,031 |
| Vanguard Lifestrategy Growth Fund | $36,524 |
| Vanguard Lifestrategy Balanced Fund | $66,842 |
| Vanguard Diversified Bonds Fund | $85,539 |
| Vanguard Australian Shares ETF (VAS) | $336,849 |
| Vanguard International Shares ETF (VGS) | $372,579 |
| Betashares Australia 200 ETF (A200) | $254,676 |
| Telstra shares (TLS) | $2,052 |
| Insurance Australia Group shares (IAG) | $5,828 |
| NIB Holdings shares (NHF) | $8,922 |
| Gold ETF (GOLD.ASX) | $115,862 |
| Secured physical gold | $18,365 |
| Bitcoin | $333,214 |
| Raiz app (Aggressive portfolio) | $18,111 |
| Spaceship Voyager app (Index portfolio) | $2,993 |
| BrickX (P2P rental real estate) | $4,635 |
| Total portfolio value | $2,341,022 (-$63,972) |
Asset allocation
| Australian shares | 38.2% |
| Global shares | 29.6% |
| Emerging market shares | 1.6% |
| International small companies | 2.0% |
| Total international shares | 33.2% |
| Total shares | 71.3% (-8.7%) |
| Total property securities | 0.2% (+0.2%) |
| Australian bonds | 2.6% |
| International bonds | 5.9% |
| Total bonds | 8.5% (+3.5%) |
| Gold | 5.7% |
| Bitcoin | 14.2% |
| Gold and alternatives | 20.0% (+5.0%) |
Presented visually, the chart below is a high-level view of the current asset allocation of the portfolio.
Comments
Losses in the portfolio worsened this month, with a futher fall of around $64,000 in the value of the portfolio. This resulted in a contraction of 2.3 per cent in the size of the overall portfolio.
This means that the portfolio now sits just above a level orginally reached in the early months of 2021. In other words, a period of more than 20 months has passed, with no sustained increase in portfolio value.
The portfolio continues to sits well under the overall revised portfolio goal of $2.62 million.
The largest losses this month occurred in the Australian shares segment of the portfolio, with falls of around 6.3 per cent in the value of holdings. By contrast international shares fell by slightly less, only losing 3.9 per cent.
Bonds also continued to fall in value, as yields sharply increased through the month. The value of bonds declined 3.4 per cent, and total holdings fell to under $200,000 for the first time since the second half of 2015.
In a break from past months, Bitcoin has defied recent correlations with equities markets and slightly gained in value across the month, rising by 1.9 per cent. Similarly, gold as a defensive asset has moved from recent losses to increase by more than 2.5 per cent on a monthly basis.
Continue reading “Monthly Portfolio Update – September 2022”