For gifts beguile men’s mind and their deeds too.Nostoi, Fragment 1
This is my one hundred and seventeenth 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 | $1,016,625 |
| Vanguard Lifestrategy Growth Fund | $50,179 |
| Vanguard Lifestrategy Balanced Fund | $84,517 |
| Vanguard Diversified Bonds Fund | $89,102 |
| Vanguard Australian Shares ETF (VAS) | $692,260 |
| Vanguard International Shares ETF (VGS) | $1,142,404 |
| Betashares Australia 200 ETF (A200) | $353,868 |
| Gold ETF (GOLD.ASX) | $274,881 |
| Bitcoin | $1,209,294 |
| Plenti Capital Notes | $84,000 |
| Financial portfolio value (excluding Bitcoin) | $3,787,836 (+$74,005) |
| Total portfolio value | $4,997,130 (+$270,617) |
Asset allocation
| Australian shares | 28.9% |
| Global shares | 32.1% |
| Emerging market shares | 1.1% |
| International small companies | 1.3% |
| Total international shares | 34.5% |
| Total shares | 63.4% (-16.6%) |
| Australian bonds | 2.6% |
| International bonds | 3.5% |
| Total bonds | 6.1% (+1.1%) |
| Gold | 5.5% |
| Bitcoin | 24.2% |
| Gold and alternatives | 29.7% (+14.7%) |
Presented visually, the pie chart below is a high-level view of the current asset allocation of the full portfolio.
Comments
The portfolio produced substantial growth this month, increasing by around $270,000 or 5.7 per cent.
This represents the fifth largest monthly growth in nominal dollar terms. The traditional financial portfolio also produced a strong result, increasing by around $74,000.
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, international equities grew by around 0.8 per cent, with US markets touching new highs within the month. Gold holdings also increased by around 6.5 per cent, reversing broad falls and flatness over the last two months.
Australian equities also performed well, increasing by around 1.6 per cent, while bond holdings remained relatively steady.
Across the month, Bitcoin rose significantly, by 18 per cent. Interestingly, this month it remains in its longest period as a ‘negative beta’ asset experienced since 2017 – at four months. Correlation between the Bitcoin holdings and the broader financial portfolio is also close to the most negative levels since 2019. In other words, Bitcoin is tending to move in the opposite direction to the broadly equity based portfolio.
The month, a small additional new investment was made in global equities (through the Vanguard exchange traded fund VGS), in accordance with the decision to regularly reinvest excess distributions and cash holdings.
Lessons from 150 years of Australian asset returns
This month I had time to look over a new paper Long-Term Comparative Analysis of The Relative Performance of Australian Asset Classes by Tonkin, Bilson, Brailsford, and Gallagher which uses 150 years of asset returns data to compare returns and correlations across the full set of traditional asset classes, such as equities, property, fixed interest and cash.
Continue reading “Monthly Portfolio Update – August 2026”