April 2007 Report

All figures are in US Dollars unless otherwise stated. This month saw very strong performance, which has been the case for the last several months.

Income and Expenditure



Expenditure was $3525 - more than take home pay ($3,299) due to spending on my brother's upcoming visit to the US. 403b contributions totaled $1,792 and Roth contributions $333.33 as usual. Non-retirement investment returns were again very strong this month ($10,363). Retirement investment returns were also nicely positive ($5,615). The rise in the Australian Dollar again contributed significantly to returns.

Net Worth Performance
Net worth rose by $US17544 to $US423,791 and in Australian Dollars gained $A7451 to $A509,058. The Australian Dollar again rose this month resulting in a relatively large gap between performance in the two currencies. Non-retirement accounts reached $US232,779. Retirement accounts also saw nice gains to $US191,012.

Investment Performance
Investment return in US Dollars was 3.93% vs. a 4.48% gain in the MSCI (Gross) World Index, which I use as my overall benchmark and a 4.33% gain in the S&P 500 index. Non-retirement accounts gained 4.65%. Returns in Australian Dollars terms were 1.11% and 1.87%. The markets were extremely strong this month. My U.S. Dollar returns beat the indices year-to-date and over the last 12 months:



The contributions of the different investments and trades are as follows:



The returns on all the individual investments are net of foreign exchange movements. Foreign currency gains appear at the bottom of the table together with the sum of all other investment income and expenses - mainly net interest. Trading worked out well in the end despite some setbacks along the way. Trades around the Google and Apple earnings reports made good contributions. I again had a positive result for QQQQ/NQ trading ($527). The biggest gain was from a balanced mutual fund - the CFS Conservative Fund. Symbion began to run up in anticipation of the May 1st merger bid. Everest Brown and Babcock suffered a loss this month as the fund of funds sold off in response to the rights issue.

Progress on Trading Goal
Trading in my US accounts netted $3,248 a 10.8% return on trading capital. The model gained 6.4% while the NDX rose 5.4%. My goal for the year is to end up with at least as much in my three accounts - regular trading, Roth IRA, and IB - as I've put into them. The accounts in total gained a net $3,249 and I have now achieved $12,297 of the annual goal of about $19,000. Since the beginning of the year the trading capital gained 56.1%, the NDX has gained 6.3% and the theoretical model gained 36.5%.

Asset Allocation
At the end of the month the portfolio had a beta of 0.04. 41% of the portfolio was in stocks, 42% in bonds, 13% in cash, and loans totalled -9%. The remainder was in hedge fund type and real estate investments, futures value etc. Looking at asset allocation the way I prefer, 25% was in "passive alpha", 66% in "beta", 8% allocated to trading, 7% to industrial stocks, 3% to liquidity, and I was borrowing 9%.