For I say there is no other thing that is worse than the sea for breaking a man, even though he may be a very strong one.
Homer, The Odyssey, Book 8
This is my one hundred and fifteenth 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 | $1,020,192 |
| Vanguard Lifestrategy Growth Fund | $50,793 |
| Vanguard Lifestrategy Balanced Fund | $86,408 |
| Vanguard Diversified Bonds Fund | $92,856 |
| Vanguard Australian Shares ETF (VAS) | $670,009 |
| Vanguard International Shares ETF (VGS) | $1,130,147 |
| Betashares Australia 200 ETF (A200) | $343,341 |
| Gold ETF (GOLD.ASX) | $257,823 |
| Bitcoin | $961,985 |
| Plenti Capital Notes | $84,000 |
| Financial portfolio value (excluding Bitcoin) | $3,735,569 (+$55,028) |
| Total portfolio value | $4,697,554 (-$125,692) |
Asset allocation
| Australian shares | 30.1% |
| Global shares | 33.9% |
| Emerging market shares | 1.2% |
| International small companies | 1.4% |
| Total international shares | 36.5% |
| Total shares | 66.6% (-13.4%) |
| Australian bonds | 2.8% |
| International bonds | 3.8% |
| Total bonds | 6.6% (+1.6%) |
| Gold | 5.5% |
| Bitcoin | 20.5% |
| Gold and alternatives | 26.0% (+11.0%) |
Presented visually, the pie chart below is a high-level view of the current asset allocation of the full portfolio.
Comments
This month saw a sharp a fall in the headline portfolio, of around $126,000, or around 2.6 per cent.
This was entirely due to a sharp correction in the price of Bitcoin, which fell by 16 per cent across the month.
The underlying financial portfolio, however, expanded, growing 1.5 per cent, or $55,000, to reach a new highest value of $3.7 million.
The chart below sets out the performance of both the full and ‘financial assets only’ portfolios since the commencement of the journey.
The strongest contribution to financial portfolio growth was a small positive movement in global equities (of around 3 per cent), reinforced by a marginal increase in Australian shares (of 0.6 per cent) over the last month.
By contrast, gold continued its falls since January, with the value of holdings falling a further 8.0 per cent, despite continued accumulation by developing and emerging economy central banks.
Over the month, bond holdings made a small gain of 0.9 per cent.
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.
Breaking storm? Early trends in second quarter distributions
Prior to the finalisation of this update, the three major exchange traded fund announced provisional distributions.
This permits an early glimpse of some of the portfolio income record, which will be added to and reported more comprehensively across the weeks to come.
Continue reading “Monthly Portfolio Update – June 2026”