Thursday, February 02, 2017

January 2017 Report

This month was fairly quiet though there was a strong rise in the Australian Dollar, which boosted our US Dollar returns. Here are our monthly accounts (in AUD):


Spending (not counting mortgage) was normal at $5.7k. Salaries etc. added up to $13.1k (after tax). This will likely be lower going forward as Moominmama is back at work but on a part-time basis and so her pay will be lower than in the last couple of months. After taking into account the mortgage payment of $3.8k (which includes implicit interest saving due to our offset account - the actual mortgage payment was more than $600 less than this) - which shows up as a transfer to the housing account, we saved $3.7k on the current account. We made $3.6k of retirement contributions, and saved a net $1.8k in added housing equity. Net saving was, therefore, $9k across the board, which hopefully will be typical in the future.

The Australian Dollar rose from USD 0.7229 to USD 0.7580. The ASX 200 lost 0.79%, the MSCI World Index gained 2.76%, and the S&P 500 1.90%. We lost 0.81% in Australian Dollar terms and gained 4.03% in US Dollar terms. So, we about matched the Australian market and outperformed the international markets. The best performer in dollar terms Oceania Capital Partners (OCP.AX), which gained $3k. Not surprisingly the CFS Geared Share Fund was the biggest loser (-$8.6k). Private equity was the best performing asset class. Despite a down month, many of our investments are at all time highs in terms of cumulative profit: Unisuper, PSSAP, Platinum Capital, Clime Capital, Oceania Capital Partners, TIAA Real Estate, CREF Global Equities, Generation Global Fund, Boulder Income Fund, 3i, and Woolworths.

As a result of all this, net worth fell AUD 2.5k to $1.713 million or rose USD 59k to $US 1.299 million - a new all time high.