We’ve reached December so it’s time to look back again, time for yet another portfolio update. It’s amazing how fast November has passed. That’s a bit of a cliche, but it’s like I published my last update only days ago. Yet here we are: Another month has gone by.
October was gruesome. Well, that’s perhaps an overstatement, but across the board equities dropped quite significantly. And my company stock was no exception. I was hit pretty hard, although my overall net worth dropped by only 1%.
As we entered November, I was pretty confident that the market would show strong recovery. What happened in October was due to the October Effect and the midterm elections in the US (early November). November would be much calmer I figured.
But it didn’t quite go like that. Initially. November continued to be very volatile and at some point my company stock declined for 5 days in a row (another 10% in addition to the October loss). After every decline I thought ‘this must be the lowest it can get’, only to drop even further the next day.
To be honest, it was hard not to get slightly anxious each time another drop occurred. I didn’t lose any sleep over it, but I did check the stock price a bit less often.
After the declines however, a rally followed. This past week. And the company share landed even slightly above October’s price. That’s what I call a happy ending to what looked like to become another dramatic month.
Apart from the volatile markets, it has been an interesting and productive month. I expanded my crowdlending investments and published a bunch of posts on the website.
But let’s have a look at the numbers.
November 2018
Income
The income looks like this:
Company shares
As you can see, the company shares produced a pretty decent increase in capital gain. It is not erasing the losses in October, but it is good to see things are ‘stabilizing’.
Below is a chart with the month on month income. Overall it is still looking good. Note that the loss in July 2018 is artificial as I sold a fair amount of shares, but left the invested amount untouched (this affected the capital gain obviously).
Crowdlending
I further increased my investments in loans on Mintos (crowdlending platform) and got my first tangible return. It has been re-invested automatically using Mintos’ auto-invest feature, so I just sit back and relax and watch my money work for me.
Portfolio
My portfolio is slowly adapting a second color in addition to blue (company shares) and that’s great. Diversification is high on my agenda as my portfolio is simply too concentrated.
At present I invest approximately 75% of my monthly available funds in company stock and 25% in crowdlending.
Overall, the portfolio remains very blue (company stock), but it’s slightly better than last month, with now 3.4% invested in non-correlated (alternative) assets (Mintos). This was 2.7% last month.
Not reflected in the above portfolio is the equity I hold in my home, which is approximately $300K. I do consider this to be part of my assets.
Net worth
My total net worth is as follows:
Mortgage-free home | $300K |
Company shares | $57,704.70 |
Crowdlending | $2,046.59 |
Liabilities | $31K |
Net worth | $328,751.29 |
That’s a small increase of $1.704,62 (0.5%) compared to October 2018.
Blog
I published a decent amount of posts. Some of the highlights are:
The last one is the second installment of SavingNinja’s thought experiments. I can’t wait for the next one!
Plans for December
My plans for December:
- Keep the ESPP program running
- Continue to invest on Mintos – a minimum of $500
- Open accounts on other crowdlending platforms (I already wanted to do that in November, but lacked the funds)
- Invest on Envestio (crowdfunding)
- Write, write, write
That’s all for this time!
Hey Mark,
First time visiting your blog!
It looks like you had a great November. I like your summary and the fact that you set some plans for the next month. I think writing those goals down motivates you more to achieve them.
P.S. Could you explain what you mean by Income from Company Shares? Is this the monthly gain of your portfolio/dividends received or something else? 🙂
It will be interesting to follow your journey!
BI
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Thanks for stopping by!
“Company shares” are shares of the company I work for. They have a so-called ESPP (employee stock purchase plan), which allows me to buy shares against a discounted price. What I mean with ‘income’ is either increase or decrease in capital gain (so a positive or negative return). This is completely driven by the increase or decrease of the share price. There are no dividends involved. It is not income just yet, but an appreciation of my assets. However, when I reach the point where the capital gain can cover my expenses, I’ll turn it into income and quit my job 😉
But I am in the middle of diversification as I do not want to be dependent on the shares in a single company.
It will be great to follow your journey as well!
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Got it, thanks for the explanation!
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