Portfolio Update - January 2023

Portfolio Summary

Here is a summary of my portfolio at the top level:

Raiz Aggressive Portfolio – $13,372.26 (8.4% according to app)
VDHG (using VPI platform) – $71,651.6 (0.93%)
IVV (Selfwealth) – $571.20 (7.59%)
SYI (Selfwealth) – $2,254.20 (10.52%)
VISM (Selfwealth) – $496.62 (-0.57%)
A200 (Selfwealth) – $2,105.45 (6.94%)
Cryptocurrency – $36,454 (-41.7% from principle)

A breakdown of my current asset allocation:

Australian Shares – 27.55%
Global Shares – 32.61%
Bonds – 5.95%
Fixed Income Assets – 0.29%
Gold – 6.84%
Cryptocurrency – 26.76%

Portfolio Total – $136,224.54 An impressive increase of 18.6% compared to last month’s value ($114,857.8).

I have returned from my holiday trip in December 2022 – January 2023. It was a great trip. The most important thing about this month is my mental health. I was desperate for this trip. I could see my mental health has improved quite a lot when I came back here. Surely I feel more alive these days, but a part of me still thinks I should not overwork myself. The reality is that I am still not safe from being laid off at my workplace. There is a rumor that there would be another laid-off between March – June 2023. Honestly, I would prefer to find another job after my project finishes at the end of March 2023. I have learned quite a lot at my workplace, especially my communication and coding skills. A significant improvement compared to years in my previous job, where I did not have any senior developers who could guide me on how to do things properly. Even if I got fired, I am glad that I have had this experience.

As mentioned in my last post in December 2022, this month’s saving is quite low at 55% since I only started to work again on 16/01/2023, so the income for this month is only 1/5 of what I could have made in a month. Thanks to the low expense so I still manage to have somewhat an average saving rate. The salary I got only came from this week. I am trying my best to save more money next month + lose weight. I have been fasting for the last 2 weeks, and it really helps with my food cost. My goal for this year is to lose at least 10kgs if possible. This also means I can cut back on my daily food consumption. However, it’s mentally challenging I would say. Let’s see if I can keep up with my fasting.

Another change this month is that I have included Gold in my portfolio. I don’t buy gold here in Australia. Part of my expense is to send money back to my parents so they can cover their cost of living + medicines. I always send extra so they can choose what to do with that extra money. I used to ask if they can buy gold for me. I didn’t realize that I have accumulated this much amount of gold. Let’s see how gold performed in the future.

Note: A reminder is that this number is still an estimation only as my crypto portfolio consists of different assets, including NFTs, staking, and Defi. I have to use other tools to keep track of and maintain the value of investments 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

Let’s start with the general news

On 04/01/2023, “The U.K. economic contraction of 2023 will be almost as deep as that of Russia, economists expect”
On the same day, Amazon said that they would cut over 18,000 jobs, more than expected before.
On 05/01/2023, Tesla stock dropped 12% after the deliveries report. Even though the number was good, Wall Street still thought it was a bad report.
On 06/01/2023, Another Bank of Japan unscheduled JGB buying operation today. This might be the result when no one wanted to buy the 5-10 year bonds.
On 10/01/2023, Wells Fargo steps back from the housing market due to the impact of higher interest rates.
On 11/01/2023, Bed Bath & Beyond has begun to lay off more employees. It’s struggling to survive in this market.
Microsoft is in discussion to invest $10 billion in OpenAI.
On 12/01/2023, CPI report was out, and the consumer prices fell 0.1% in December, within expectation. However, headline CPI still rose 6.5%, while core increased 5.7%.
A report has shown that the richest 1% of people have accumulated close to two-thirds of all new wealth created around the world. From the report, a total of $42 trillion in new wealth has been created since 2020, with $26 trillion, or 63%, of that being amassed by the top 1% of the ultra-rich, according to the report.
On 18/01/2023, another important index PPI shows that the wholesale prices fell 0.5% in December, much more than expected. We can see inflation is easing down.
On 21/01/2023, Google laid off 12,000 people, following other tech firms.
Meme stock Bed Bath & Beyond is about to file Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and hired a legal advisor to file the bankruptcy on 21/01/2023.
On 23/01/2023, Japan’s finances are becoming increasingly precarious, Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki warned on Monday, just as markets test whether the central bank can keep interest rates ultra-low, allowing the government to service its debt, according to Reuters.
On 25/01/2023, inflation in Australia rose to 7.8%, a new 32-year high.
Microsoft has a somewhat expected earning report, but we see slow growth to 31% in Microsoft’s Azure service. They also expect revenue from $50.5 to $51.5 billion in revenue in the next quarter.
On the other side, Tesla has a better report, beating all the expectations. Stock rises 5% when the market opens.
A good news on 28/01/2023, Core PCE Inflation rose 4.4% from a year ago, down from the 4.7% reading in November, and in line with the Dow Jones estimate.

Crypto news

On 03/01/2023 – “Cameron Winklevoss, a co-founder at crypto exchange Gemini, released an open letter for Barry Silbert, founder, and CEO of Digital Currency Group (DCG)”, to resolve the situation.
On the same day, SBF pleaded not guilty to 8 charges. The trial will begin on Oct 12.
On 04/01/2023, The U.K. is enforcing a tax exemption for foreign investors purchasing crypto through local investment managers or brokers. This shows that a wide adoption is happening.
On 05/01/2023, Crypto Lender Genesis Trading laid off 60 positions, 30% of its workforce. The effect of FTX still affects firms today.
On 06/01/2023, Crypto exchange Huobi plans to lay off about 20% of its staff. Justin Sun has denied the news, but it’s likely to be true.
On the same day, Silvergate announced they would abandon the Diem project, and cut-off 40% of its workforce. Its stock crashed 40%, trading at $12.57.
On 08/01/2023, Blackrock added Bitcoin as an eligible investment to its fund – Global Allocation Fund. The big boy is now joining the game.
At the same time, IRS officials said that crypto was here to stay and became more legitimate.
On 11/01/2023, “Coinbase said on Tuesday it will reduce its workforce by about 20%, or 950 employees, as part of a restructuring plan, in a third round of layoffs for the cryptocurrency exchange since last year”.
On 12/01/2023, The team behind the Cardano ecosystem will release a software toolkit later this month that will enable developers to deploy custom-built sidechains on Cardano aimed at improving the ecosystem.
Binance is also planning to hire 15%-30% in 2023, prepping for a bull market in later years. This is quite a controversial move as other firms in the same space are laying off massively.
On 12/01/2023, Samsung’s investment arm launched Bitcoin Futures ETF on the Hong Kong stock market 13/01/2023.
Bitcoin has climbed to 20k in the last few days. Probably because of the CPI new report and other unknown reasons. On 15/01/2023, Bitcoin reached $21,000 after the FTX collapse.
On 17/01/2023, the Founder of the bankrupt Three Arrow Capital established a new crypto exchange. This is just crazy to think about.
On 18/01/2023, for some reason, big companies listed a news about a crypto exchange Bitzlato With Laundering $700M, but we cannot find any information about this exchange or the CEO on the internet.
On the same day, Genesis filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.
Bitcoin has had an amazing rally this week and performs better stock market. It’s currently at $22k as of 21/01/2023.
On 24/01/2023, Ripple CEO Garlinghouse strongly believe the court case will be in favor of XRP.
On 27/01/2023, the White House announced an article “The Administration’s Roadmap to Mitigate Cryptocurrencies’ Risks”. The content seems reasonable.
On 30/01/2023, quite a big news, The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is testing out the digitization of car titles and title transfers via a private Tezos blockchain. More adoptions coming.
On 31/01/2023, good news for USDC, Circle’s December 2022 reserve report, reviewed by Grant Thornton accountancy group, breaks down the current make-up of the stablecoin issuer’s reserve vault. According to Circle, 44,553,543,212 USDC is currently backed by $44,693,963,701 U.S. dollars held in custody accounts. USDT is not popular as it used to be.
On the same day, “Ripple, the digital payment network, has partnered with Montenegro to help the small Southeast European nation develop its digital currency” according to zcrypto.
Another great news for ADA holders, Cardano DEX will support Djed Stablecoin Liquidity Pools.

This month, we see a lot of tech companies laying off thousands of people. This is the result of the rate hike from the FED. However, the rate hike does its job of slowing down inflation. Other countries are also hiking rates due to high inflation, like England, and Japan. However, in Australia, we see the inflation number rose to 7.8%, a 32-year high. This will be the turning point for RBA, they need to decide what to do next. Their rate hike for the last couple of months was just a small amount compared to the US. With the inflation number running hot like this, I expect more and higher rate hikes in the future.

Bitcoin has had an amazing start in 2023. It is currently at $22k-23k from $16k. This has shown that it has outperformed other assets this year with this amazing rally, even though the stock market has a good start as well. The bear says that this is a bull trap as usual, but no matter what trap it is, both bears and bulls got slaughtered because of high volatility. The crypto market also recovers, thanks to Bitcoin. Overall, an amazing start to 2023.

With the recovery in the stock and crypto markets, my portfolio has shown a significant gain this month, at 18.6%. My Raiz account finally got out of the negative return, an impressive 8.4% return. Since I have not done any contribution to VDHG, the gain is not significant but because of dividend re-investing, it finally has a 0.93% return. Other ETFs – IVV, SYI, VISM, and A200 are performing well as well. Most of my gains from this month came from the crypto portfolio and the addition of gold. My observation for this month about my crypto portfolio is that even though people are saying it can go down quickly, it can also go up quickly. People tend to panic when their money goes down in value. They will make decisions based on emotions because they cannot take the pressure it creates. I have only been in this market for 1.5 years and experienced so many collapses last year, it is wise to diversify your portfolio, and have a large portion of your crypto portfolio in Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the king in this market, and everything has to follow it. I learned this lesson the hard way since my altcoins are still down more than 70%. I have switched my strategy last year to accumulate more Bitcoin as I believe it is a store of value. Inflation is the reason why Bitcoin will have its place in the future, only by then will realize how important it is to have a small portion of your portfolio in something that you can send, receive, pay, and store privately. With all that being said, I could not buy many assets this month due to a limited budget. I will try to save more next month and accumulate more. Inflation is still high so it is good to accumulate more before inflation is back to normal.

Some of the articles I use for the information above:

Passive Income

This month has produced about 16.148 ADA. SOL and ONT rewards are small. BAT reward is 16.572 BAT. Staking reward for AXS for this month is about 0.374 AXS. Staking for IMPACT is 3616 PACT.

To sum up:

ADA Reward – 16.148 ADA.
SOL and ONT rewards – the reward is not large enough to consider.
Brave Reward – 16.572 BAT.
AXS Staking – 0.374 AXS.
Impact Staking – 3616 PACT
Dividend – No dividend this month.

What I have learnt

Keyword for this month – Holiday

Nothing much about learning this month. However, I learned quite a bit during my holiday. The one thing I learned the most is communication skills. I am open to more conversations, especially with my relatives. I tell more jokes than before. I used to be a guy who did not like to talk that much. I think the reason for this change is that I want to create a more enjoyable environment when I travel back to my home country. It’s supposed to be an enjoyable trip and be happy whenever I can. Especially, my parents, I want to make them happy and proud of me. That’s what I learn this month and I am glad to have that holiday trip.

Portfolio Update – January 2023

Portfolio Summary

Events & Porfolio Analysis

Passive Income

What I have learnt

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