Portfolio Summary
Here is a summary of my portfolio at the top level:
- Raiz Aggressive Portfolio – $8,689.42 (-20.21% according to app)
- VDHG (using VPI platfom) – $43,962.00 (-9.24%)
- IVV (Selfwealth) – $548.90 (7.28%)
- SYI (Selfwealth) – $1,722.44 (-0.59%)
- VISM (Selfwealth) – $457.02 (-7.74%)
- A200 (Selfwealth) – $1,741.6 (-7.33%)
- Cryptocurrency – $20,888 (-70%~-80%)
- Australian Shares – 30.78%
- Global Shares – 35.66%
- Bonds – 6.44%
- Fixed Income Assets – 0.34%
- Cryptocurrency – 26.78%
Portfolio Total – $78,009.37. An decrease of 5.52% compared to last month value ($82,562.89).
This month’s saving rate is 69.04%, a bit below my target of 70%. However, this saving rate is still impressive since there are 2 significant payments I have made on my credit card – a tax report for my crypto portfolio and hospital cover to remove the MLS next year. My income for this month is a bit higher since I received five salary payments. I also reduce my spending on food by cooking and fewer deliveries. One of the reasons is my health. Since I started working at my new job, I have gained 4 kgs. This is not good in the long run, and the reason is that I often have soft drinks at lunchtime, and I don’t exercise anymore. My current strategy is to have a normal lunch without soft drinks and eat fruits or light dinner at dinner. These two combinations have worked well lately, but the downside to this is that I feel more hungry than usual. Let’s see if I can keep this up and turn this into a habit, so I can get consistent spending on food. I have also accumulated around 4,600 points on my credit card. It is more than I thought, so it is worth it when switching to this credit card.
The contribution plan is still on track. It was hard this month to keep myself calm and not FOMO to every dip. I put 25% more into VDHG this month since I have done more work on freelance. At this time, I only DCA my money to Bitcoin only whenever I have a chance. With the current volatility, in my opinion, DCA is probably the best way to buy Bitcoin in a long term. Another milestone is that I have used the Round up feature in Raiz since the beginning and the accumulation has reached $500. It took one and a half years to reach $500, a bit longer than I expected, but this shows that a small contribution will add up over a long time.
Note: A reminder is that this number is still an estimation only as my crypto portfolio consists of different assets, including NFTs, staking, DeFi. I have to use different tools to keep track of and maintain the value of assets to finalize the final value of my portfolio. NFT is hard to estimate because of price fluctuation in the crypto market. However, estimation is still good enough in this case.
Events & Porfolio Analysis
This month is full of bad news. Blood is everywhere. I have never experienced anything like this before. Let’s summarize what happened
On 07/06/2022, SEC decided to open an investigation on whether Binance Holdings broke securities rules. Bitcoin price crashes about 2%. And on the same day, RBA increases the cash rate by 50 basis points, bringing the current rate to 0.85%. This comes as a surprise as I was expecting only 25 basic points. Though with the current inflation, it seems to be a reasonable amount to fight inflation. We can see news on TV talking about high petrol prices, supply shortages, lettuce shortages and so on. I have already shifted my habit to doing more shopping, rather than having deliveries every night, though each shopping trip, the cost for the same basket of items that I buy every week increases. The increase in cost is still acceptable because I have a decent salary, but for the low-middle class, stress is inevitable.
On 13/06/2022, Bitcoin crashed, and was at 25k. Stablecoin USDD also lost its peg. I was so scared at that time that we would have another LUNA-UST 2.0. And it did not stop, Bitcoin crashed again and dropped below 21k. At the same time, the stock market crashed. This is the worst day in the stock market, and SP 500 index was in the bear market zone. Fed had decided to raise 0.75 percentage points on 16/06. A few days later, Bitcoin dipped to 17k on 19/06.
I am not even surprised when an article about “Bitcoin dead” Google searches hit a new all-time high. The confidence in the market has been shaken a lot this month. Not only that, but we also had companies suspended withdrawals like Celsius and Coinflex. The event LUNA-UST has triggered a domino effect on different companies. Crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital has filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in New York. People call this Lehman Brother for cryptocurrency. This has shown me that everything connects in a complicated way. Mr. Warren Buffet has said “It’s only when the tide goes out you know who’s swimming naked”, and we are seeing companies swimming naked now. On one side, I don’t want to see the market collapse, but on the other side, we need the market to heal and become more mature in the future. Let’s hope we do not see any more bankruptcy, but I doubt that could happen.
Lots of events happened this month, and as you can see from the list of things above, everything is down. The worst asset in my portfolio is cryptocurrency. It was hard for me when checking the crypto portfolio for this month because I know how bad it would be. My current strategy for my cryptocurrency portfolio is to DCA into Bitcoin only and need to have at least 50% of my crypto portfolio in Bitcoin as it is the only asset that everyone would trust in the bear market. That’s why we see a lot of altcoins have dropped more than 90% of their value. Until markets become more stable, Bitcoin is the only option atm. As for the stock portfolio, it’s not that bad, but it could be because I am used to seeing more than a 20% drop in cryptocurrency. VDHG remains my largest position, which also means it has a heavier loss than others. Raiz’s portfolio does not see any increase in value despite my contribution, and the app shows that I am at a 20.21% loss (according to the app calculation, but if we only compare the principal amount, it’s only around 7-8%). So, what’s next from now? It has been a rollercoaster this month, and I believe last month is just the tip of an iceberg. I have no idea where we are heading now, but one thing for sure, I will follow my plan no matter what happens to the markets.
Some of the articles I use for the information above:
- https://cointelegraph.com/news/bad-day-for-binance-with-sec-investigation-and-reuters-expose
- https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/01/crypto-mega-hedge-fund-three-arrows-capital-reportedly-files-for-bankruptcy-in-new-york/
- https://www.treasury.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/910559/RBACRD.pdf/_recache
- https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/13/bitcoin-btc-falls-as-market-focuses-on-celsius-issue-fed-rate-hike.html
- https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/15/real-time-updates-of-the-feds-big-rate-decision-and-powells-press-conference.html
- https://www.news.com.au/finance/markets/world-markets/sign-cryptocurrency-is-dead-as-bitcoin-dips-to-17k/news-story/cabee213f6d4f51df53443a768297400
- https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-dead-google-searches-hit-new-all-time-high
- https://fortune.com/2022/06/13/celsius-suspends-withdrawals-crypto-lender-market/
- https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/06/30/coinflex-withdrawals-remain-halted-as-recovery-token-talks-continue/
- https://www.quora.com/Its-only-when-the-tide-goes-out-you-know-whos-swimming-naked-What-does-it-mean-in-the-stock-market
Passive Income
This month has produced about 11.49 ADA. SOL and ONT rewards are small. BAT reward is to be included next week, but I can see the estimation is about 12.5 BAT. Staking reward for AXS for this month is about 0.327 AXS, and also no point of converting SLP anymore due to low price. I also stake another coin called Impact, with relatively high APY. I only stake for a few day so the distribution is around 772.804 PACT. Dividend payment is now slowly coming through, I will do another update later for how much that I have for the last quarter.
To sum up:
- ADA Reward – 11.49 ADA.
- SOL and ONT rewards – the reward is not large enough to consider.
- Brave Reward – 12.5 BAT.
- AXS Staking – 0.327 AXS.
- SLP farming – None due to low price to swap.
- Impact Staking – 772.804 PACT
- Dividend – $1,474.4. Most of the dividend comes from VDHG ($1,023.37).
What I have learnt
Keyword for this month – Learning
It’s been quite a journey for me this month compared to the time when I first started my job. It was a slow process from the beginning but now, I can work alongside my colleagues and learn quite a lot of things. One thing I learn from a conversation with my colleagues is that you should always ask if you don’t understand. Now, I feel more confident when asking other people. A mistake always starts made with a miscommunication, so don’t be afraid to ask to prevent that happens.
My co-worker also gave me a mind map of how to be productive. I am surprised that this mind map shows a pretty accurate representation of how I would do things. I was stunned when I looked at this mind map, and he also printed out this mind map in A0 size so I can put it on my wall at home. Now, I always feel motivated every day so + 1 for my weekday job. However, +1 means there should be a -1 in my freelance work. I want to do more work for the company that I have been working with for a long time, and develop a complete system for them. Though there are many challenges, because of the limited time I can work as a freelancer. I have a feeling that I am working 2 full-time jobs now and the amount of stress has increased lately. My priority right now is my career, so it makes sense to have more knowledge, but it has become more like a burden. Let’s see if I can keep this up in the 2 months, or else I need to switch my strategy. Due to the amount of work, I have not had much time to listen to podcasts this month. This month focuses more on my career, not financial knowledge. Well, to be honest, one thing I learned is that a bear market is scary and I am still learning a lot about this bear market, physically and mentally.
Attribution – Graph down vector created by starline – www.freepik.com