The Banana Zone

So I wore this shirt to lunch with a couple of friends today:

After the first friend left, I was saying how I hated buying clothes (because it is hard to get stuff that fits), but the shirt I was wearing was new. So, he asked me about the Banana Zone. After I explained, he asked whether he should invest some of the extra money he wanted to put into superannuation earlier or wait for the end of the financial year. I told him that it really mostly applied to cryptocurrency. He mentioned that he was trying to reach the transfer balance cap. I said: "I've gone over that". He was surprised as I had only had $1.6 million when we had recently discussed this.* "What did you do?" "Cryptocurrency!" Then he was like: "You need to sell now, Warren Buffett would never do that." (I'm paraphrasing). I said that I did plan to sell this year... "Why are you making such risky late moves?" "To buy a $4 million house".

The $4 million house is an inside joke. We recently visited our friends' newly built house that was mentioned in the linked blogpost. It cost them a total of $4 million in the end, but probably isn't worth as much now. Buying and knocking down an existing house destroys value and property prices at the high end here have softened.

* At that time, I said I didn't want to make much more in non-concessional contributions, as I'd probably hit the transfer balance cap by investment gains anyway, and Labor's plan to tax balances over $3 million was looming.

Updated Annual Performance

I said that I would update the annual performance numbers after receiving all private investment returns for the year. The final number for 2024 in AUD terms was 23.30% up from 23.18%. Aura Venture Fund II made a nice gain in the final quarter but Aura Venture Fund I was marked down a little due to ongoing management costs probably.

The Australian Reports on Superannuation Fund Performance for the 2024 Calendar Year

The Australian reports on the best performing super funds for 2024. They focus on lifecycle, balanced, and sustainable options. I am sure there is some retail super option invested in international shares that did better than these. How did we do? I compute our SMSF returns pre-tax, while super funds report post-tax results. But anyway, our SMSF gained 34.1%! Estimated pre-tax numbers for Unisuper and PSS(AP) balanced options were 14.3% and 13.4%, respectively.

Annual Report 2024

We are still waiting for the Aura venture funds to report, but I am guessing their values will be unchanged. So, now we can compute reasonably accurate annual accounts. All $ signs in this report indicate Australian Dollars. I'll do a separate report on individual investments. I do a report breaking down spending after the end of the financial year. I'll probably do another report on our SMSF performance then.

Overview 

Investment returns were positive and net worth again increased. We did a lot better than in 2023. This was a direct result of my dis-satisfaction with the 2023 result and my determination to do better. We came in way ahead of the best case net worth projection I made in the 2023 report of $6.7 million with an end of year total of $7.4 million. We took a vacation in Maroochydore, Queensland in July and in December we travelled overseas for the first time since before the pandemic to China and Thailand. I did some short business trips to Sydney during the year as well. My 60th birthday was in December and I started a transition to retirement pension in that month.

Investment Return

In Australian Dollar terms we gained 23.1% for the year while in USD terms we gained 12.1%. The big gap is because the Australian Dollar fell. The MSCI gained 18.0% and the S&P 500 25.0% in USD terms while the ASX 200 gained 13.2% in AUD terms. The HFRI hedge fund index gained 9.6% in USD terms. Our target portfolio gained 19.2% in AUD terms. The new Vanguard 60/40 AUD benchmark only returned 12.4%. So, we under-performed the US Dollar stock indices but outperformed the other benchmarks. 

This chart compares our portfolio to the benchmarks in Australian Dollar terms over the year:

 

I can be happy with this. Beating US tech stocks is hard! The following chart shows monthly returns in Australian Dollar terms:

 

This shows that our out-performance mainly came towards the end of the year. We beat the target portfolio in seven of the twelve months and the 60/40 portfolio in eight of the months.

 

Here are our annualized returns over various standard periods:

 

There is a big improvement over last year. We beat the ASX 200, HFRI, the target portfolio, and the 60/40 portfolio over the last 5 years. We also beat HFRI over the longer time horizons and are close to the target return over 10 years. But we performed much worse than the US stock indices over all time horizons and the ASX 200 and the target portfolio over the 20 year time horizon. The positive news is that our performance is better in the last 10 years than in the previous 10 years. Though not shown here, we also match the target performance over the last 15 years since the GFC. As a result, I have begun to use the returns of the target portfolio over 20 years to project our future returns. I lost big in the GFC due to using too much leverage. I now use only 10-15% leverage and much of that is our mortgage.

Here are the investment returns and contributions of each asset class in 2024 in currency neutral and unlevered terms:

 

The contributions to return from each asset class sum to the total portfolio return. The portfolio shares are at the beginning of the year. Rest of the world stocks did best, because of the performance of Defi Technologies, followed by futures, which includes bitcoin, and gold. These three also made the largest contributions to the total return. All asset classes had positive returns but real assets, private equity, and hedge funds did not perform that well despite some strong individual performers in those asset classes.

Investment Allocation

There were significant changes in asset allocation over the year:

 

Cash, futures, and rest of the world stocks increased their shares, while hedge funds, Australian small cap, US stocks, and bonds reduced their shares by quite a lot. Other asset classes changed their shares by 1% or less.

Accounts

Here are our annual accounts in Australian Dollars: 

Percentage changes are for the total numbers. There are lots of quirks in the way I compute the accounts, which have gradually evolved over time. There is an explanation at the end of this post. 

We earned $208k after tax in salary etc. Total non-investment earnings including retirement contributions were $240k, up 14% on 2022. I'm quite surprised by that increase! Part of it seems to be from timing of payments as well as larger tax refunds.

 

We gained (pre-tax including unrealized capital gains) $577k on non-retirement account investments. A chunk of the gains were due to the fall in the Australian Dollar (forex). We gained $562k on retirement accounts with $32k in employer retirement contributions. The value of our house is estimated to have risen by $51k. As a result, investment gains totaled $1.194M and total income $1.435M.

 

Total spending (doesn't include mortgage payments, life insurance, margin interest etc.) of $169k is up 13% on last year. Again, I am surprised by the size of the increase. Our spending including mortgage interest (but not principal repayments) seems to be up by only 5%. We did reduce our mortgage interest a lot by increasing the cash in our offset account.

 

$20k of the current pre-tax investment income was tax credits – we don't actually get that money so we need to deduct it to get to the change in net worth. We saved $38k from salaries etc. before making contributions of $26k to the SMSF. I also record an $8k "inheritance", which are gifts we received, mostly on our trip to China. Current net worth increased by $577k.

Taxes on superannuation returns are just estimated because, though we know the tax paid by the SMSF, our employer superannuation funds only report after tax returns. I estimate this tax to make retirement and non-retirement investment returns comparable. The total estimated tax on superannuation was $20k. Net worth of retirement accounts increased by $600k after the transfer from current savings. With the gain in the value of our house, total net worth increased by $1.228M.

Projections

Last year my best case scenario for 2024 was for an increase in net worth of $500k to $6.7 million. We actually reached $7.4 million. For this year, my base case scenario is simply a 10% increase in net worth to $8.2 million. The bear case is for a 10% decline to $6.7 million. In 2022, our net worth only fell by 0.7%, so this is very bearish. What about the best case scenario? This is going to seem crazy but I project double the percentage increase of 2024 for a net worth of $10 million. Told you it was crazy.

Notes to the Accounts

Current account includes everything that is not related to retirement accounts and housing account income and spending. Then the other two are fairly self-explanatory. However, property taxes etc. are included in the current account. Since we notionally converted the mortgage to an investment loan, mortgage interest is counted in current investment costs. So, the only item in the housing account now is increases or decreases in the value of our house. This simplified the accounts a lot but I still keep a lot of cells in the spreadsheet that might again be used in the future.

 

Current other income is reported after tax, while investment income is reported pre-tax. Net tax on investment income then gets subtracted from current income as our annual tax refund or extra payment gets included there. Retirement investment income gets reported pre-tax too while retirement contributions are after tax. For retirement accounts, "tax credits" is the imputed tax on investment earnings which is used to compute pre-tax earnings from the actual received amounts. For non-retirement accounts, "tax credits" are actual franking credits received on Australian dividends and the tax withheld on foreign investment income. Both of these are included in the pre-tax earning but are not actually received month to month as cash.... 

 

For current accounts "core expenditure" takes out business expenses that will be refunded by our employers and some one-off expenditures. This year, I didn't bother to note these, which amounted to about $1,000. "Saving" is the difference between "other income" net of transfers to other columns and spending in that column, while "change in net worth" also includes the investment income.

Went Over the Transfer Balance Cap

Intramonth, I've blasted through the transfer balance cap. This is the limit of AUD 1.9 million that you can transfer from an Australian superannuation account into a tax free pension when you retire or reach 65 years old. I'm now nearer AUD 2 million. The important thing is that when you exceed this limit you can no longer make "non-concessional" (post-tax) contributions to superannuation. However, I can continue to make recontributions to superannuation from my transition to retirement pension until the end of June this year. This is because this rule depends on your balance at the beginning of the current financial year, which in Australia starts at the beginning of July. But if I do stay over the AUD 1.9 million level on 30 June this year, I won't be able to make non-concessional contributions to my account next financial year. Instead, I will make them to Moominmama's account.

P.S. 20 January

The Australian is reporting today that the transfer balance cap is likely to be raised to AUD 2 million next July.

Bought a New Phone

I bought my existing phone, a Google Pixel 3a, just before the pandemic in early 2020. The battery has less and less life, it only has 64GB of storage, which is nearing being full, it is only 4G, the case is falling apart (and probably can't get a replacement), and obviously it is not getting any security updates etc. So I decided it was time to buy a new phone. I got a new Pixel 7a online with an original Google case for about AUD 500. This was actually cheaper than a high quality refurbished one. Replacing the battery in the existing phone was another alternative which would cost close to AUD 200.

I don't understand why people buy phones for more than AUD 1,000...

Big Moomin's and Little Moomin's Investment Returns for 2024

A year ago, we reconfigured Big Moomin's portfolio, which is managed by my brother, to provide better investment returns. This really paid off this year with a return of 34.4% in Australian Dollar terms. He now has AUD 73,230 in his account overtaking Little Moomin, who was ahead but now has only AUD 63,650. Little Moomin's pre-tax return is estimated at 15.0%, which at least beat the ASX200. But you have to take off the 30% investment bond tax to find out what he actually received, which is nearer 10%.* I am wondering if my balanced investment strategy is too conservative for Little Moomin.

* Actually, I take the reported 10.3% after-tax return and add back the 30% tax to get an estimated pre-tax return. The latter is definitely exaggerated because franking credits on some funds reduce the tax paid.

December 2024 Report

The numbers in this report may change a little once all data on private investments becomes available. I will write an annual report after all the data are in. In December, the Australian Dollar fell from USD 0.6515 to USD 0.6196. Stock indices and other benchmarks performed as follows (total returns including dividends):

US Dollar Indices

MSCI World Index (gross): -2.33%

S&P 500: -2.38%

HFRI Hedge Fund Index: -0.20% (forecast)

Australian Dollar Indices

ASX 200: -3.10%

Target Portfolio: 0.57% (forecast)

Australian 60/40 benchmark: -0.34%

We gained 1.50% in Australian Dollar terms or -3.48% in US Dollar terms. So we underperformed the USD benchmarks and outperformed the AUD benchmarks.

The SMSF returned 3.58%, compared to Unisuper at 0.43% and PSS(AP) at 0.05%.

Here is a report on the performance of investments by asset class:

The asset class returns are in currency neutral terms as the rate of return on gross assets and do not include investment expenses such as margin interest, and so the total differs from the Australian Dollar returns on net assets mentioned above. RoW stocks (mostly Defi Technologies) gained 8.4% and made the largest contribution to returns followed by gold. Several asset classes lost money, futures including bitcoin lost the most and made the most negative contribution to returns.

Things that worked well this month:

• Defi Technologies (DEFI.NE) gained AUD 37k, followed by gold at 17k, Pershing Square Holdings (PSH.L) at 15k, and Pengana Private Equity (PE1.AX) at 13k.
  

What really didn't work:

• Bitcoin lost AUD 30k, followed by Australian Dollar Futures at 22k, and 3i (III.L) at 10k.
  

Here are the investment performance statistics for the last five years:

The top three lines give our performance in USD and AUD terms, while the last three lines give the same statistics for three indices. The middle block gives our performance relative to the indices. Our rate of return is now higher than the ASX200 and we have much lower volatility, resulting in a Sharpe ratio of 1.00 vs. 0.54. Our alpha relative to the ASX200 increased to 4.71% with a beta of only 0.46. We capture much less of the downside moves than the upside moves in the market. But as we optimize for Australian Dollar performance, our USD statistics are much worse. We do beat the HFRI hedge fund index in terms of return, but at the expense of much higher volatility. Our volatility in USD terms is now a little lower than the MSCI World Index, but our rate of return is much lower.

We maintained our distance from the target allocation this month. We are now most overweight rest of the world stocks. Our actual allocation currently looks like this:

About 70% of our portfolio is in what are often considered to be alternative assets: real estate, art, hedge funds, private equity, gold, and futures. A lot of these are listed investments or investments with daily, monthly, or quarterly liquidity, so our portfolio is not as illiquid as you might think.

We receive employer superannuation contributions every two weeks. We contribute USD 10k each quarter to the Unpopular Ventures Rolling Fund and less frequently there will be capital calls from Aura Venture Fund II. I am now receiving TTR pension payments from both Unisuper and our SMSF and contributing more than the total of these to the SMSF (around AUD 4k net contribution per month). I made the following additional moves this month:

• I bought AUD 30k worth of shares in Regal Investment Fund's (RF1.AX) capital raising.
  
• I bought 100 shares of FBTC, Fidelity's bitcoin ETF. We now have a total position of around 5 bitcoins.