Portfolio Update - February 2023

Portfolio Summary

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

Raiz Aggressive Portfolio – $13,548.42 (4.52% according to app)
VDHG (using VPI platform) – $73,924.5 (0.85%)
IVV (Selfwealth) – $593.70 (9.37%)
SYI (Selfwealth) – $2,181.66 (7.92%)
VISM (Selfwealth) – $518.40 (1.51%)
A200 (Selfwealth) – $2,052.92 (4.58%)
Cryptocurrency – $40,914 (-35.8% from principle)
Gold – $9,244.12

A breakdown of my current asset allocation:

Australian Shares – 26.77%
Global Shares – 32.02%
Bonds – 5.84%
Fixed Income Assets – 0.29%
Gold – 6.47%
Cryptocurrency – 28.62%

Portfolio Total – $142,977.72 An increase of 4.95% compared to last month’s value ($136,224.54).

This month’s saving rate is 59%. My life is becoming normal again with work. I am becoming busy as always and spending more time on work. It’s time to make money again this year and see how much this year I could save up. A couple of hiccups this month but these should not stop me from progressing in my career. It’s already been quite impressive that I can make it this far in my career, with all the experience that I have gained since last year. More details about this will be explained in the last section. For now, everything is slowly back to normal. My contribution to different investing accounts is going back to its normal level now.

Though, there’s a change in my contribution plan. I will need to move my DCA date to the VDHG fund to the start of the month instead of the end of the month. This is because I also want to get the extra interest bonus on my saving account. The bonus variable rate on my saving account is only activated if my balance is more than the previous month. Since my contribution is always at the end of the month, sometimes my balance will go down and I would lose that bonus interest.

A small change to my crypto contribution – I now only invest $400 per week in Bitcoin only at this stage, a total of $1,600 in a month. From my calculation, I should be able to have a spare $1,000 to save each month, which should get me the bonus for the saving account. This sounds like a good plan but I need to wait and see if this could work in the long term.

Another good news – fasting actually works. By consuming fewer calories each day at work + exercising on the weekend regularly, I am now down like – 3-4 kgs. This also means that the expense of food is also reduced quite a bit. My budget for food in a week is now around $200, which is around $30 per day. $800 for food in a month is actually pretty good, considering I do not order takeaways more than 2 times a week. This is also the reason why my expense is lower compared to the average. It’s only a month so far, but I am already excited about this weight loss journey. My goal is to reach 70 kgs in 6 months, and I am currently at 81.6 kgs, with another 11.6 to go.

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 01/02/2023, ChatGPT has shown that Google needs to step up their game to compete in the AI industry. They are currently testing a new chatbot called “Apprentice Bard”
On the same day, The ECA (European Central Bank) is prepared to set another rate hike soon. The reason is because of the core inflation, which does not include energy and food, keeps on rising. There’s no way they gonna pivot any time soon.
Another company laid off 2,000 employees in the upcoming weeks, Paypal. The interest rate hike has made the economy slow down, and tech companies will do anything to survive this environment.
On 02/02/2023, FED announced a rate hike of 25 basis points as expected. However, Mr.Powell also said that it’s still early to say inflation is under control. There might be no rate cut in 2023 until there’s a clear sign that inflation is under control.
Meta released their fourth-quarter revernue, and it did not disappoint the investors. Its stock price soared 20% after a disappointing 2022.
On the same day, “Gautam Adani announced he’s scrapping his firm’s $2.5 billion equity sale” after a report on 24/01 from the short seller Hindenburg Research accusing Adani Group of manipulating the stock price.
On 04/02/2023, Job reports were announced and it was better than expected. “Jobs report shows an increase of 517,000 in January, crushing estimates, as the unemployment rate hit 53-year low”. This means FED can continue their rate hiking this year.
Microsoft has started integrating into its search interface Bing.
The new we have been waiting for – on 07/02/2023, RBA decided to increase the cash rate target by 25 basis points to 3.35%. I was expecting a higher rate hike but 25 basic points is expected in the market. One sentence we need to be aware of – “The Board expects that further increases in interest rates will be needed over the months ahead to ensure that inflation returns to target and that this period of high inflation is only temporary.”. This is quite hawkish.
On 08/02/2023, FED chair Jerome Powell had to make the statement clear – “inflation is beginning to ease, though he expects it to be a long process and cautioned that interest rates could rise more than markets anticipate if the economic data doesn’t cooperate.”
Another company joined the laid-off race, Zoom planned to lay off 1,300 employees, 15% of the workforce.
On 08/02/2023, Disney is to cut 7k jobs and plans to cut $5,5 billion in costs, that’s a lot of cuts.
On 15/02/2023, the CPI report was announced, and the number is lower than the previous month by 0.1 but higher than the expectation by 0.2, at 6.4%. Gas and fuel prices rise this time. Even it slows down just a bit, this might make FED keep the rate a bit longer, putting more pressure to the property market.
On the same day, RBA has dropped an announcement – “The head of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) reiterated on Wednesday that interest rates had not peaked, adding that he was unsure how high they had to go as the central bank, seeking to control inflation, tried to follow a narrow path to a soft landing.”
On 16/02/2023, the report on retail sales shows that retail sales jumped 3% in January, even when inflation still increases. This number beats the expectation, hence markets responded positively. Bitcoin rose 12% in 24 hours to $24k.
On 20/02/2023, Chinese stock rallied after the People’s Bank of China left its 1-year and 5-year prime loan rates unchanged, widely in line with expectations.
On 21/02/2023, Meta announced that they will be launching a pay-for-verification subscription servicer for Facebook and Instagram, just like Twitter Blue. Hopefully, they will not follow the disaster that Twitter has created.
On 22/02/2023, Paxos is having a “constructive discussion” with SEC after receiving the Wells Notice last week. The company has been silenced since then, so this is the first time they speak up about it.
On 23/02/2023. FED minutes show that members resolved to keep increasing the rate to combat inflation. Most of the members approved a 25 basis points hike, while a few members said they wanted 50 basis points.
On 24/02/2023, Q4 GDP for 2022 was released, GDP increased at an annual rate of 2.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022, lower than the expected 2.9%. This shows that the economy has slowed down.
On 25/02/2023, Core CPE, FED’s favorite measure, rose 0.6%, more than expected in January. The market fell right after this report. This means that FED can keep the rate longer than the market has expected.

Crypto news

Great news on 01/02/2023 about the Ripple vs SEC case, according to the news, “Eleanor Terrett, a Fox Business correspondent, has opined regarding the ongoing LBRY-SEC lawsuit that if the judge rules that secondary market transactions of LBC by people unaffiliated with or having no investment intent in LBRY are legal, it might set a precedent that would be favorable toward XRP users.”. Whatever the outcome for the LBRY court case would not have much effect on the current Ripple case.
DekaBank is eyeing up crypto products for their clients. Another bank joins the race.
On 04/02/2023, Shiba Inu soars 14% because o the latest update on Shibarium. Much of the attention around Shiba Inu has been driven by the impending launch of Shibarium, a layer-2 network designed to reduce Shiba Inu’s reliance on the Ethereum blockchain
On 07/02/2023, Crypto exchange Binance will suspend U.S dollar transfers. This is due to the banking partner Signature bank having increased U.S dollar transaction minimums to $100,000. If this was released back in January, we gonna the market reacts badly because of this, but not so much reaction for the time being.
A piece of good news – Payments giant Visa reportedly seeks to meet customer requests to convert digital assets into fiat payments, similar to how it converts foreign currencies.
On 09/02/2023, Dubai announced a new rule for crypto – “In Dubai, the issuance of, and all activities related to, anonymity-enhancing cryptocurrencies such as Monero (XMR) are prohibited under new laws published Tuesday.”
On 10/02/2023, major news from SEC, Kraken will close its staking and settle with SEC for $30 mils. The reason behind this is that SEC claims that Kraken failed to register the offer and sale of its crypto staking-as-a-service program
Reports show that Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin by market value, has completed reserves attestation by major global accounting firm BDO. The stablecoin firm released BDO’s assurance opinion on Feb. 9, which re-affirms the accuracy of Tether’s consolidated reserves report (CRR) as of Dec. 31, 2022.
On 11/02/2023, Montana passes a bill to protect Bitcoin and crypto mining rights.
IMF commented on El Salvador about its Bitcoin adaption “have not materialized” and must be cautious. Even though El Salvador has paid its debt in full, they still think Bitcoin adaption contains risks. Well, let’s see about this in a couple of years.
On 13/02/2023, The United States Securities and Exchange Commission reportedly told Paxos Trust Co. that it plans to sue the stablecoin issuer for violation of investor protection laws in relation to its Binance USD token. SEC is pushing its agenda to take control of the crypto market.
On 14/02/2023, a bombshell – Circle blew the whistle on Paxos. Paxos cannot continue minting BUSD anymore. On-chain shows that a major outflow from Binance, $831 million in the last 24 hours.
On 15/02/2023, SEC once again tried to take control of the market by proposing a rule that would require registered investment advisors to go outside the crypto industry for storing digital assets.
Binance is now the biggest target from lawmakers, and they have announced that Binance is prepared to pay monetary penalties to “make amends” for past regulatory violations.
On 18/02/2023, the Bank of Japan surprisingly announced that it will start a pilot program in April to use digital yen.
The Bank of Russia also follows Japan’s footsteps, to launch CBDC in April.
On 20/02/2023, no major news about Paxos after SEC targeted this company. The question is why SEC is after these companies while no one has declared if Stablecoins are securities or not. For its part, Paxos said it “categorically disagrees with the SEC staff because BUSD is not a security under the federal securities laws.”
After the news about SEC Custody Proposal, Coibase Custody, and Anchorage Digital follow guidelines so they may be qualified under the new proposal, which is good news. However, there are still drawbacks to this proposal.
On 22/02/2023, Coinbase reported its fourth-quarter earning, and it beats on revenue and earnings, but it also showed that the usage continued to decline.
Another good news from Hong Kong, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) published its proposed rules for virtual asset trading platforms and seeking public comment. This will push crypto adoption more for Asia markets.
On the same day, Mastercard also announces its partnership with Immersve to allow crypto payments in Web3 via USDC settlement.
Big news from Tezos on 23/02/2023, Google Cloud has a partnership with Tezos to bring Web3 technology to its users.
On 24/02/2023, FTX Japan reported that thousands of users have moved from the exchange since it resumed withdrawals on Feb 21. Thanks to the structure of the firm, Japanese users are lucky to have their funds back.
On the same day, Coinbase launched a layer 2 blockchain based on Ethereum, called Based, which is also similar to Optimism. No new network token would be issued. Coinbase wants to extract more users to use their network to reduce bottlenecks from the main network.
On 25/02/2023, Solana network has some issues with the performance after forking. On-chain trading slows down, and some validators are downgrading their software in an attempt to restore activity. Solana needs to work on their network, there have been many incidents before.
On 27/02/2023, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) joined forces to find the way forward for globally coordinated crypto rules. The US has taken it too long to regulate, which makes it more disadvantageous in the long term if no rules are introduced, while other countries are establishing how to regulate the crypto market.
On 28/02/2023, after Paxos stopped minting BUSD, Coinbase will suspend trading for BUSD starting March 13, a reasonable move.
On the same day, Robinhood released interesting news, Robinhood Markets received an investigative subpoena from the U.S SEC. Robinhood also received a similar subpoena from the California Attorney General’s office regarding its trading platform, custody of customer assets, customer disclosure, and coin listing.

Two important keywords of this month – are inflation and regulation. As we have known, inflation has been raising since last year and even now, there’s still not a clear sign that inflation has begun to go down. At the same time, the cryptocurrency market has been under scrutinized by the SEC in the U.S.

People are now aware of a thing called inflation and experience it in their daily life. RBA has reported a whopping 7.8% in inflation. And they are now becoming hawkish with their policy. Even in the U.S., inflation is slowly going down but chairman Powel said that there’s not enough evidence to show that inflation has slowed down. We are expecting more rate hikes and the FED will keep the rate longer than expected. The housing market will be tested in the future soon when the rate is going higher. Companies are still laying off employees, and a recession seems likely to happen soon. We shall see what the economy looks like at the end of this year, and how markets react to inflation and rate hike.

On the other side, the crypto market has seen regulators make their move to regulate the market. SEC is now targeting small companies, and Paxos is the first target because of its stablecoin BUSD. This has made it hard for Binance as more speculations arise. I believe someone or a group of people are preventing Binance to become too big to control. SEC also fines the Kraken exchange because of its staking service. With this, Binance Australia is also temporarily preventing staking for Australian residents. Lots of things happened in a span of a month. This also raises a question – why SEC is doing this now, why not last year. With the fall of FTX last year, SEC could have done something about this but they chose to stay silent and only comes out now to attack different places. We shall see more in March and how the crypto market survives this winter.

It has been a good month for my portfolio. A gain of 4.95% is a decent gain, even when most of the ETFs and Raiz is actually going down this month. There are only 2 winners this month in the stock market

IVV with the current gain at 9.37%, compared to 7.59% last month, and
VISM with the current gain at 1.51%, compared to -0.57% last month.

It has been a volatile month for stock as lots of news coming out, especially with CPI, CPE, and layoffs from companies. My contribution to VDHG is only $2,000 at the beginning of this month. It does not move much this month either but I can see there might be another shortfall soon because of the rate hike. I expect this is a short recovery from the market since we have fallen so much last year, a little pump like this might give a wrong impression to the investors that the economy is back to normal, but the fact is there are still problems in the macroeconomics. We still have wars in Ukraine, inflation everywhere, renting is going crazy, and who knows what happens next to the housing market. Even Berkshire Hathaway holds more cash and treasury bonds atm. The stock market might drop more in the future. Therefore, the only strategy that would work is DCA.

Most of the gains come from the Cryptocurrency portfolio, a gain of $4,460. With this gain, the loss is now reduced to -35.8%, compared to -41.7% last month. Bitcoin is still holding at $23k-$24k as of the end of this month. Other altcoins are also recovering, but I believe most of the gains come from Bitcoin as it’s the only investment in crypto that has a positive gain at the moment. I have been DCA-ing to it for the whole year so my cost average is somewhere around $23k. Still, an impressive gain even though we have heard lots of bad news for the crypto market. I will still keep DCA-ing to Bitcoin at least end of this year since the macroeconomic. We have to wait for another year to see another cycle in both the stock and crypto markets. We may also have another bottom this year. It’s hard to predict the future so accumulating more is the only goal on my mind atm. Let’s see what is waiting for me next month.

Some of the articles I use for the information above:

Passive Income

This month has produced about 11.251 ADA. SOL and ONT rewards are small. BAT reward is 9.617 BAT. Staking reward for AXS for this month is about 0.548 AXS. Staking for IMPACT is 2759.17 PACT.

To sum up:

ADA Reward – 11.251 ADA.
SOL and ONT rewards – the reward is not large enough to consider.
Brave Reward – 9.617 BAT.
AXS Staking – 0.548 AXS.
Impact Staking – 2759.17 PACT
Dividend – No dividend this month.

What I have learnt

Keyword for this month – Consistency

I have started listening to podcasts again. I am actually getting bored in the morning, so I tell myself to listen to something new every day and learn a bit more about finance. Therefore, I listen to different podcast shows not just about finance and the economy, but also about improving myself as well, like My Millenial Money, How to be a better human… I slowly get back my excitement each morning now. I hope I can get this habit to continue till next month.

A challenge for me this month is fasting. It was super hard at first not to eat more than 2 meals a day. I did have experience before by only eating chicken breast only for a couple of months, and lost a lot of weight. However, that was when I was working from home. Eating only chicken breasts would not have enough energy for me now. The only thing that matters is the number of calories consumed in a week. Eating chicken breast only would make it faster to lose weight but I also experience other side effects like sleep loss at night and dizziness… I would not want this when I am still at work. I have decided to eat only 2 meals – breakfast and lunch. My breakfast is only the sausage roll and a small container of chips for lunch. I would eat a small snack at night so my mouth would stop asking for more food. I will eat like this on the weekdays but it’s tough to follow this, so I switch again by having 3 days like the above, and on 2 days, I would get a bigger meal like rice with curry or whatever is sold in the cafeteria. This has worked for me since the beginning of this month. Even though I consume less food, I still need to exercise more on weekends. My current goal is to reach 10k steps on the weekend. I currently go for a walk in the morning for at least an hour and finish the rest in the afternoon. This is also good for my health as well. I feel better each day now after a couple of weeks of fasting. I also hope I can keep this going for the next couple of months and reach my weight goal in a short amount of time.

Another thing I find myself doing nowadays is learning more about new technology. I enjoy learning and improving my skills this month since I was able to learn and apply the knowledge at the same time. I am heading toward the architecture design role at my freelance job. It’s been fun to learn, as always. As an IT professional, learning and improving ourselves every day is a must, to survive in this field. The more you learn, the more important you become to a company. That’s me though at this stage. Keeping consistency in learning things is the key to becoming a great developer.

Portfolio Update – February 2023

Portfolio Summary

Events & Porfolio Analysis

Passive Income

What I have learnt

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