I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
This is my eighty-seventh 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 $2,870,000. This should be capable of producing an annual income from total portfolio returns of about $99,000 (in 2024 dollars).
This portfolio objective is based on an assumed safe withdrawal rate of 3.45 per cent.
A secondary focus will be achieving the minimum equity target of $2,300,000.
Portfolio summary
| Vanguard Lifestrategy High Growth Fund | $831,824 |
| Vanguard Lifestrategy Growth Fund | $42,936 |
| Vanguard Lifestrategy Balanced Fund | $76,298 |
| Vanguard Diversified Bonds Fund | $88,886 |
| Vanguard Australian Shares ETF (VAS) | $508,369 |
| Vanguard International Shares ETF (VGS) | $699,816 |
| Betashares Australia 200 ETF (A200) | $299,113 |
| Telstra shares (TLS) | $2,036 |
| Insurance Australia Group shares (IAG) | $7,855 |
| NIB Holdings shares (NHF) | $8,784 |
| Gold ETF (GOLD.ASX) | $140,016 |
| Secured physical gold | $22,089 |
| Bitcoin | $1,066,628 |
| Raiz app (Aggressive portfolio) | $22,467 |
| Spaceship Voyager app (Index portfolio) | $3,919 |
| BrickX (P2P rental real estate) | $4,543 |
| Plenti Capital Notes Market Loan | $5,000 |
| Total portfolio value | $3,830,579 (+$396,399) |
Asset allocation
| Australian shares | 30.7% |
| Global shares | 28.5% |
| Emerging market shares | 1.2% |
| International small companies | 1.5% |
| Total international shares | 31.1% |
| Total shares | 61.8% (-18.2%) |
| Total property securities | 0.1% (+0.1%) |
| Australian bonds | 1.9% |
| International bonds | 4.1% |
| Total bonds | 6.0% (+1.0%) |
| Gold | 4.2% |
| Bitcoin | 27.8% |
| Gold and alternatives | 32.1% (+17.1%) |
Presented visually, the pie chart below is a high-level view of the current asset allocation of the portfolio.
Comments
This month there was extremely strong continued forward movement in the financial independence portfolio, with a growth of around 11.5 per cent, or just over $396,000.
This represents the largest monthly expansion in the value of the portfolio on record in percentage terms, and by far the largest absolute dollar value increase.
The past five months have exceeded the sustained growth experienced in the last few months of 2020, and into 2021. The past twelve months have add more than a million dollars to the portfolio.
By contrast, towards the beginning of the journey it took fully ten years – between 2007 to 2017 – to accumulate and grow the portfolio by one million dollars.
A further similar perspective is that the portfolio, without any contributions, grew this month by more than an entire six years of accumulation and growth from mid 2007 to mid 2013.
In this exceptional month, the story of portfolio growth was dominated by a surge in the value of Bitcoin – by approximately 47 per cent.
Global equities continued to deliver growth, with international equities appreciating by 4.0 over the month. Australian shares were comparatively more modest in their overall performance, delivering an increase of around 0.9 per cent.
Bond holdings in the portfolio fell around 0.4 per cent, and once again, small gains in the value of gold holdings (0.7 per cent) offset these losses.
Continue reading “Monthly Portfolio Report – February 2024”