Saturday, October 16, 2021

Moominpapa's 2020-21 Taxes

I am finally able to submit my taxes for this year. Last year's taxes are here. Here is a summary of my taxes. To make things clearer, I reclassify a few items compared to the actual tax form. Of course, everything is in Australian Dollars.

On the income side, Australian dividends and franked distributions from managed funds are  up strongly. My salary still dominates my income sources but is not growing. Interest is Australian interest only and is zero due to no longer holding Australian bonds.

Unfranked distributions from trusts is down strongly because the distribution from APSEC was exceptionally large last year. I have now moved the APSEC fund to our SMSF. Foreign source income is from foreign bond interest and distributions and dividends both from directly held foreign investments and from Australian managed funds. Other income is gains on selling bonds. These aren't counted as capital gains. As we have few bonds any more the amount is small. I used most of my carry forward capital losses this year reducing the net capital gain to zero. I am still carrying forward $28k to next year.

In total, gross income fell 2%.

Increased deductions are mostly due to writing down the loss on my Virgin Australia bonds. This isn't counted as a capital loss and can be deducted immediately. Dividend, foreign source income, and trust deductions are all mostly interest on loans.

Total deductions rose strongly, and as a result, net income fell 9%.

Gross tax is computed by applying the rates in the tax table to the net income. In Australia, you don't enter the tax due in your tax return, but I like to compute it so that I know how big or small my refund will be.

Franking credits (from Australian dividends), foreign tax paid, and the Early Stage Venture Capital (ESVCLP) offset are all deducted from gross tax to arrive at the tax assessment. This time because of the Virgin Australia loss and the ESVCLP offset I should get a large refund.

I estimate that I will pay 24% of net income in tax. Tax was withheld on my salary at an average rate of 31%.

Thursday, October 14, 2021

Cadence Opportunities IPO


Another "corporate action" to consider. Cadence Opportunities Fund attempted an IPO about three years ago, which failed. I invested in the fund at a second fund-raising. Now it is again attempting an IPO and attempting to triple funds under management in the process. I was thinking to buy more shares in the IPO and even moved money from one account to another to do so, but then had second thoughts. Don't get me wrong, this is so far a great investment. I have a 50% internal rate of return on my investment. But after reading the independent report I became concerned that the price might trade below the IPO price and so it would be better to wait to buy shares on market. On the other hand, if the fund keeps performing so strongly, the increase in the NAV might outweigh an illiquidity discount... But given we have 3% or so of net worth in the fund already, I think I will give it a pass.

Wednesday, October 06, 2021

Corporate Actions

Two current "corporate actions". Regal Funds (RF1.AX) announced a 1 for 3 rights issue at the net asset value of AUD 3.79 per share. Price prior to the announcement was AUD 4.47 per share. I plan to fully take up the entitlement. The question is what do I sell in our SMSF to take up the offer as I only have AUD 27k in cash and will also need to pay taxes etc some time... The rights issue will cost AUD 55k.

Australian Unity Diversified Property Fund announced that they plan to merge with the ASX listed Australian Unity Office Fund (AOF.AX). The joint fund will continue to be listed on the ASX. There are four reasons I will vote against this merger:

1. The reason I invested in an unlisted property fund is to not be exposed to stock market fluctuations in the value of the fund.

2. We will receive shares in AOF according to the current NAV of that fund. Its price on the ASX is much below that. That means that the market value of our shares will instantly fall.

3. I invested in a diversified fund because I didn't want to just be exposed to office property. The new fund will be dominated by offices.

4. The reason for the merger is supposedly to allow easier capital raising for the development pipeline while not increasing the gearing of the fund. The gearing will actually fall. I wanted to be in a geared fund.

P.S. 28Oct21

I just read the AOF annual report. It is much less profitable than Australian Unity Diversified Property Fund despite not charging performance fees. Or maybe because of that? It's surprising that they are looking to give up those fees! That is a fifth reason to vote no. I will withdraw our investment prior to listing if the merger is approved. According to the fund we get six days to withdraw after the meeting. Two of them are a weekend. But usually they only allow a maximum of 2.5% of the fund to be withdrawn per quarter. So, now I am seeking clarification on that. The merger document is a bit vague on how much withdrawals will be allowed.

Saturday, October 02, 2021

September 2021 Report

This month world stock markets finally declined. But we gained a little in AUD terms,* showing the value of our alternative assets strategy. In Australian Dollar terms we haven't had a losing month since March 2020. This is an 18 months run so far. The previous longest runs were the 10 months ending in September 2019 and the 10 months ending in April 2013. It could be that one of my late reporting investments comes out negative enough to overturn the positive result, but I'm not expecting that.

The MSCI World Index fell 4.09%, the S&P 500 by 4.65%, and the ASX 200 by 1.49%. All these are total returns including dividends. The Australian Dollar fell from USD 0.7314 to USD 0.7227. We gained 0.11% in Australian Dollar terms or lost 1.08% in US Dollar terms. The target portfolio is expected to have lost 1.27% in Australian Dollar terms and the HFRI hedge fund index is expected to fall 1.86% in US Dollar terms. So, we outperformed all benchmarks, which is exactly opposite to what happened last month (again). The most important reasons for outperformance were the gains in hedge funds. Here is a report on the performance of investments by asset class (currency neutral returns):

Futures had the best performance but hedge funds contributed the most to performance followed by private equity. Australian large cap had the worst performance and detracted by an equal amount to gold.

Things that worked well this month:
  • Regal Funds (RF1.AX) gained AUD 30k, Pengana Private Equity (PE1.AX and the spin-off of PCG.AX shares) gained AUD 17k, and Tribeca Global Resources (TGF.AX) gained AUD 15k.
What really didn't work:
  • Gold lost AUD 18k, Cadence Capital (CDM.AX) AUD 18k, and Fortescue Metals (FMG.AX) AUD 12k.

The investment performance statistics for the last five years are: 

The first two rows are our unadjusted performance numbers in US and Australian Dollar terms. The following four lines compare performance against each of the three indices. We show the desired asymmetric capture and positive alpha against the ASX200 index. We are doing a bit worse than the median hedge fund levered 1.6 times. 

We maintained about the same distance from our desired long-run asset allocation while the allocation to hedge funds rose. Real assets equity is the asset class that is now furthest from its target allocation (3.6% of total assets too much). Our actual allocation currently looks like this:


Roughly two thirds of our portfolio is in what some consider to be alternative assets: real estate, art, hedge funds, private equity, gold, and futures. We receive employer contributions to superannuation every two weeks. In addition we made the following investment moves this month:

  • USD 35k of Ford bonds matured.
  • I sold 5k RF1 shares as their price spiked.
  • I bought 20k TGF.AX shares based on insider buying and thinking that the price was about to break out above the IPO price. It didn't yet.
  • I bought 31k CDM.AX shares following the IPO of TMC. TMC promptly tanked. So neither of these hedge fund purchases was a good idea so far.
* The first version I posted of this month's accounts showed a small loss because I accidentally included an AUD 14k margin loan in our Australian Dollar cash, making it smaller than it should have been. I knew there was a mistake somewhere because the implied change in the value of the portfolio due to exchange rate movements was much too big.