I am happy with my financial performance this month and this year so far. Net worth increassed $6413 to $318482. It would have been stronger if there hadn't been a bit of a fall in the Australian Dollar. The gain in Australian Dollars was $A12740. I am almost halfway to my goal of adding $100,000 in net worth this year. At the
beginning of this blog I said I would be happy with adding only $50,000 for the year, so I should be really happy now :) Investment performance for May was 0.59%. Doesn't seem much but the MSCI world index fell 3.33% and many stock indices and mutual funds fell by much more. I've noticed quite a few bloggers out there commenting on the decline in their portfolios in May. I am up 8.14% year to date (MSCI 6.35%) and 18.97% for the last 12 months (18.55%). Over the last three years I have gained more than twice the gain in the index. Beating the index is possible. But it takes both effort and skill and maybe luck :)
Other income is particularly high this month because my employer always pays June's salary on the last day of May. Spending was high this month because of the
vacation trip and associated expenses. As you can see investment income on non-retirement accounts was halved by the change in exchange rate (I don't bother computing this for the retirement accounts). In order to increase net worth in June I am going to need to have a higher investment income than my spending (the retirement contributions for June will still occur in June though). That might be hard!
4 comments:
Hey, I like reading your thoughts on this stuff and Thanks for linking to my Investing By Consensus blog. Although, there's not much consensus. And, I know that's certainly not the way to invest :)
By the way, is the 8272.61 Current income you list gross or net (I do understand it includes June's pay)?
If it's net - that's great.
Thanks! I've read some interesting ideas that problems like trading and investing are best done by a group of individuals rather than a single person all alone. Can't remember the source. Running your ideas by other people can therefore help and that's why I go to websites like Silicon Investor. The pay is two month's take home pay after tax, health insurance, 403(b) contribution etc.
Yea, Once I can get some constant readership (in a year?), I'm contemplating putting up some of my money for the group to choose where to put it. Like:
I have 10,000 for the next year. Should I do,
a) Quartterly Treasury Bill ladder
b) Bond
c) Stocks
d) Mutual Fund
Or, maybe more specific like. Which stock should I invest $5000 in for the next 2 years based on current prices:
a) Google
b) Walmart
c) Nasdac ETF
d) Asian Market Fund
People vote and I will do whatever is most popular (attempting to filter out multiple votes from the same IP to keep it a little more honest). It certainly would give me something to write about for the year.
If I had to choose one of those right now, it would be bonds. Rather contrarian of course, but I see a recession probability and the Fed eventually cutting interest rates in the next year, rather than the inflation most are looking for.
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