All Time Contributions of Asset Classes

I was wondering how much each asset class has contributed to our total profits to date. It was easy to compute this number using the spreadsheet I use to compute monthly gains on individual investments and asset classes. The numbers are only estimates. For multi-asset class funds, I assume that each asset class in the fund has the same rate of return. So I multiply each asset class share by the total profit for the fund to get the contributions of that fund to total returns for that asset class. This is also how I compute asset class returns each month. Here are the results:

Private equity has contributed the most followed by Australian large cap and gold. Contributions of bonds and real assets are surprisingly large. They may be an artifact of how I compute the contributions from multi-asset funds like our employers' superannuation funds. Also, Commonwealth Bank is all attributed to bonds, when about half my return was from my investment in the Colonial IPO rather than my later investments in CBA hybrids. Finally, 17% of Regal Investment Fund (RF1.AX) is currently in private credit but most of my returns were made before they even invested in private credit! So, this is biased upwards.

Coincidentally, I am changing the name of the Bonds asset class to Credit. Private credit isn't bonds. It isn't even "fixed income". The category covers both private credit and bonds.

UK Pension Update

Back in April, I got a letter from the UK pension authority laying out the voluntary contributions I could make to get a UK pension. They sent this via snail mail and there were only a few days left to the deadline to make the contributions. I transferred money to their Barclays account from Commonwealth Bank. I thought this would be more reliable than OFX. But turns out that OFX may have been better because CBA only allowed me to put the relevant reference code in the "message" field rather than a standard "reference field". 

I soon got another letter asking for 2023-24 contributions, which I made. I waited a couple of months, as the website said it could take up to 8 weeks for my National Insurance record to be adjusted. It was still the same when I checked. I phoned the help number at HMRC and after waiting for ages and starting to talk with someone with a heavy foreign accent on a bad line, got cut off. I tried to send a letter with copies of my transfer receipts by express mail. But the Australian Post Office computer system couldn't handle non-geographic UK postcodes! So, I resorted to sending the letter by regular airmail in a hand addressed envelope. 

In the process, I managed to drop my wallet in the shopping mall. I got it back the next day from the mall concierge desk with all the cash intact! I think the last time I lost my wallet was almost exactly 30 years before in Albertville in France on an epic bike trip from London to Nice. I didn't get it back that time, but a nice policeman found a hotel that was prepared to host me until I received a spare credit card I got my parents to send me from London. 

A month later, I just checked the HMRC website and see this:

Previously, I think it forecast around £400 per month. So, it looks like they updated my record! It's all pretty confusing because the website still says most contribution years are incomplete but doesn't say how much I did contribute! It also says I am short about £17 for 2023-24, despite me sending the amount they requested. I will send it with next year's contribution.

This forecast includes the effect of contributions in the years up to 2031. In my accounts, I value this pension as the value of contributions I made - around AUD 9k. But using the 4% rule it is equivalent to needing AUD 538k less money in the 4% portfolio to get a given expected income stream! The net present value is a lot less than that.

 

Kyte

 

I invested in this startup via Anglelist. Turns out that I invested more in this one (USD 15k) than any other, Now they are shutting down. That is something you should expect often with startups. I already knew they were closing, but now it's public I can let you know too.

Ether

Opened a very small position (0.24%) in Ether (technically that is the correct name for the cryptocurrency via the QETH.AX ETF traded on the ASX. Oscar Carboni put out a $6,500 target. It is currently at USD 4,666.

 

Back into Platinum Capital!

Just over a year ago, I sold out of Platinum Capital (PMC.AX). It had been under-performing and the company announced a plan to merge it with an active ETF (PIXX.AX) also managed by Platinum. The price was close enough to net asset value (NAV) as a result and I got out. In the meantime, L1 took over Platinum (the fund manager) and also bought a stake in Platinum Capital. Then yesterday Platinum Capital announced that the merger had been abandoned and L1 plans to take over management of PMC using the strategy that they have applied in their existing listed investment company (LSF.AX) but using a global investment universe instead of an Australian focused one. The market had been expecting the merger to be cancelled, as the share price of PMC was trading around 12% below NAV. So now is a good opportunity to reinvest in PMC because of the discount and hopefully better future performance under L1. They have been running a seed version of the new strategy, which has gained 27% since the beginning of the year. 

I plan to sell down part of my holding in Cadence Opportunities (CDO,AX) to fund this new investment.  This stock is very illiquid so it is likely to be a slow process.

My long history with Platinum Capital and related Platinum funds. Green is investment valuation, red is net invested capital and orange is profit:

 

July 2025 Report

In June, the Australian Dollar fell from USD 0.6559 to USD 0.6433 meaning that USD investment returns are worse than AUD investment returns. Stock markets rose (total returns including dividends):

US Dollar Indices

MSCI World Index (gross): 1.38%

S&P 500: 2.24%

HFRI Hedge Fund Index: 0.27% (forecast)

Australian Dollar Benchmarks

ASX 200: 2.36%

Target Portfolio: 1.82% (forecast - depends on HFRI result)

Australian 60/40 benchmark: 1.90%

We gained 3.38% in Australian Dollar terms or 1.38% in US Dollar terms. So the only benchmark we didn't beat was the S&P 500. It seemed that some stocks that were beaten down at the end of the last Australian financial year rebounded strongly. A good example is Regal Partners (RPL.AX), which gained 35%. Maybe a classic case of selling for tax losses. In absolute Australian Dollar terms it was our fourth best month ever gaining AUD 203k. November 2024 was the best ever month with a gain of AUD 335k followed by January 2025 (280k) and March 2024 (229k).

Our SMSF returned 4.59% beating Unisuper (1.67%) and PSS(AP) (2.08%).  This was a welcome change after five months of under-performance.

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. All asset classes had positive returns. Australian small cap had the greatest return and hedge funds made the largest contribution to total return.

Things that worked well this month:

• Ten investments gained more than AUD 10k: Pershing Square Holdings (PSH.L 40k), Regal Partners Fund (RPL.AX, 22k), Regal Investment Fund (RF1.AX, 22k), Pengana Private Equity (PE1.AX, 15k), Bitcoin (15k), Unisuper (12k), Gold (12k), WAM Capital (WAM.AX, 12k), PSS(AP) (11k), and WAM Alternatives (11k).

What really didn't work:

• Australian Dollar Futures lost AUD 12k. (-14k).

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 four benchmarks. This month, we have added the Vanguard 60/40 ETF portfolio to the set of benchmarks. The middle block gives our performance relative to the indices. 

Our alpha relative to the ASX200 is 3.2% with a beta of only 0.49. We still have much lower volatility, resulting in a information ratio of 1.46 vs. 1.12. We capture much less of the downside moves than the upside moves in the market. We also have very good performance relative to the Vanguard 60/40 portfolio with the same volatility but 4% p.a. more return. We captured 100% of the upside of this portfolio but only 60% of the downside. 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 far higher volatility. Our USD volatility is at least less than that of the MSCI index, but our return is more than four percentage points lower.

We moved a little bit away our target allocation. Our actual allocation currently looks like this:

About 65% 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 liquidity, so our portfolio is not as illiquid as you might think.

We receive employer superannuation contributions every two weeks. We make monthly concessional contributions to Moominmama's superannuation to reach the annual cap on contributions. 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 back to my superannuation accounts. I made the following additional moves this month:

• Made a USD 7,500 investment in African start-up Yassir. In my reporting, all these small investments are reported together with the UV Rolling Fund. Similarly, individual paintings I invested in at Masterworks are all reported together and different property investments at Assetora (formerly Domacom) are wrapped together.
• Bought 400 more shares of the Monochrome bitcoin ETF (IBTC.AX). 
• Bought 2,000 more shares of WCM Global Quality (WCMQ.AX).