Hi! Great to have you back here.
Rather amazingly, I have now passed my first real milestone with this blog where I share my experiences with the All Seasons Portfolio investment strategy. I have now been doing this for 6 months and to me, that is something worth celebrating. Already in that short period of time, I have been able to accumulate a decent amount of funds into my portfolio, and with good progress at that.
June has been a great summer month here in Sweden. Good weather and people are coming out from their winter hibernation. Stock markets were a bit shaky though since we last encountered for the May update, and there are many reasons behind it.
Threats of trade war between US and China and its impact on Chinese and American companies, threats of actual war between US and Iran and its impact on the oil market, and uncertainty in Europe around the next British Prime Minister and Italy’s budget deficit. Investors are therefore not certain of what the stock market will bring in the near future. Thus, there has been a great appetite for alternative investments and safe-havens, in other words, gold.
The gold price has gone up with more than 10% to USD 1,400 in only a month. As gold is a part of the All Seasons Portfolio, this has had an impact on the growth of my portfolio.
Monthly Update June 2019
So how has my All Seasons Portfolio developed during June? Well, to begin with, I have added to the stock portion by buying SPDR’s Small Cap Value Europe ETF. I managed to add about € 167 this month, which all were plowed down into this ETF. With this addition, the equity share was increased from 15% to 20% of my total portfolio, which is still slightly too low, when compared to the established All Seasons Portfolio allocation. The nearest months, I will be adding to the Mid-Term and Long-Term Government Bonds and Stocks.
But admittedly, the portfolio really has begun to resemble the All Seasons Portfolio, doesn’t it? I’ll just keep adding to the buckets were it is missing, and slowly but surely, I am getting closer.
Visually, the splits and developments of each segments are shown in the below graph. The lower growth in recent months are mainly due to lower capital injections, as I have only added around € 170 per month for both May and June. Hopefully, I will be able to increase going forward. However, bearing in mind i was able to add a great amount (€1,200) in March, I would say the average monthly investments is still intact.
You see, the gold part (the dark blue color at the top) has really increased in size this last month without the addition of any funds. Theoretically, would my portfolio have been greater in size, this could have been a good opportunity to sell gold and buy of the other proportionally smaller buckets, but at this time, the transaction cost still would eat away too much of the benefit of rebalancing. Therefore, I will keep rebalancing by only adding new money going forward as well.
So to the summary of what is in my portfolio currently from an ETF perspective. I have, when compared to previous monthly updates, added values from previous months and the monthly development in percent. Hopefully, this will help you get a better picture of the development.
| ETF | Type | ISIN | Value June | May 2019 | Monthly diff |
| iShares $ TIPS UCITS ETF USD (Acc) (EUR) | TIPS | IE00B1FZSC47 | 377.72 € | 381.96 € | -1.11% |
| Vanguard EUR Corporate Bond UCITS ETF | Corporate Bonds | IE00BZ163G84 | 375.61 € | 370.44 € | 1.39% |
| iShares € Govt Bond 3-5yr UCITS ETF EUR (Dist) | Govt Bond Mid | IE00B1FZS681 | 173.43 € | 172.16 € | 0.73% |
| iShares J.P. Morgan EM Local Govt Bond UCITS ETF USD (Dist) (EUR) | Govt Bond Long | IE00B5M4WH52 | 380.23 € | 367.29 € | 3.52% |
| iShares $ Treasury Bond 7-10yr UCITS ETF USD (Dist) (EUR) | Govt Bond Long | IE00B1FZS798 | 355.01 € | 356.80 € | -0.50% |
| Invesco Bloomberg Commodity UCITS ETF (EUR) | Commodities | IE00BD6FTQ80 | 343.28 € | 327.83 € | 4.71% |
| Xtrackers Physical Gold ETC | Gold | GB00B5840F36 | 469.44 € | 423.96 € | 10.73% |
| SPDR® MSCI Europe Small Cap Value Weighted UCITS ETF EUR Acc | Equity | IE00BSPLC298 | 167.83 € | – € | #DIV/0! |
| SPDR® MSCI USA Small Cap Value Weighted UCITS ETF USD Acc | Equity | IE00BSPLC413 | 441.91 € | 423.22 € | 4.42% |
| Total | 3 084.43 € | 2 823.66 € | 3.09%* |
* Portfolio development excluding new money
As you see, gold has had a crazy good month. Have you missed out or is gold a natural part of your portfolio? Leave a comment below this post. But an increase of more than 10% is unbelievably god over only a month. However, gold is a volatile asset, which is why it should only take up 7.5% of an All Seasons Portfolio.
Also commodities, Emerging Market bonds and US small cap stocks have developed well – all with value hikes of between 3 and 4.7%.
Also, I received more dividends than usual in June – about € 6 in comparison with the usual amount of around €0.22. This was much due to ETFs with a quarterly dividend policy with distribution in June. I will figure out how to keep track of this and how to present it in a clear way. I am still fine tuning my spreadsheets and presentation.
And if you have any suggestions or comments on what content you would like to see, feel free to leave a comment here below. All feedback is highly appreciated, and I do enjoy any encouragement as well.
Signing off for this month – let’s touch base again soon.
Thanks for your paid attention.
/Nicholas
