Summary of April 2024

 

Summary of April 2024

The war continues and what is worse is that Ukraine have started to lose some ground. I hope that this can be turned around again and it's a pity that there are so many young Russian men that considers that joining the army is their only way to improve theirs but probably more often their families life.

My van is now standing on all four wheels again. Lesson learnt for me, no chance to change wheels on the rim as a single person and without the proper equipment. So I took one wheel at the time to a garage and had them do it for me. The temperature is now also increasing meaning that it is now more comfortable to take it out for a spin again. I see several proper mobile homes out on the roads and on seaside parking lots so also I should do this.

I flew down for a week to take a look at properties in my favourite area. I had some difficulties to get hold of the brokers so in the end I only got to see three places. All of them were "illegal" dwellings. Two had no water and no electricity and ALL of them had a toilet that is flushed out to a dug out and covered hole in the ground. Madness Spain, madness! When I was there back in 2006 I was horrified that the University drains was just going straight out into the ocean but clearly this has not improved over the years in Spain. It is time for improvement and it is not THAT difficult to install a 3-chamber well for your black water. As you probably understand I have slightly changed my strategy and I've decided to buy the place first and then drive down there. It is yet another change to my plans but what can I say... life is good in my summerhouse and driving there in three days with all my stuff will be more convenient.

In April there was a proper dip in the stock market which it has started to regain a bit of again, being 100% invested, no income  and not yet bought my house I am for sure more sensitive to these fluctuations.

For the previous summary please visit Summary of February/March 2024.

The total invested value is now at: 343,328 €. No further investments were made.

The value of the portfolio is today: 542,962 € and I have 2,188 € in cash. I have realised gains of 9,653 € and unrealised of 199,633 € (58%) which is not good enough. My ETFs are now up at a value of 78% of my portfolio.

DAX is now up at 18,061 points which means that it has decreased by -2.1% since the previous summary and my own portfolio has decreased by -1.8% in the same time period.

Conclusion: The biggest drops have been coming from the US stocks for me during this month. Received some nice dividends and 25 degrees in Spain is not bad!

Dividends April 2024

 

Nike paid out 13.71 €, the US taxman took 2.06 € which left me with 11.65 €.

Rio Tinto paid out 772.21 € of which all was received as cash.

Barclays paid out 117.77 € of which all was in cash to my broker account.

HSBC paid out 203.26 € all received as cash.

It should be mentioned that the tax rate in Sweden is 30% on capital gains such as dividends. In every case in the end of the year I declare these dividends and pay a tax up to the 30% in Sweden. So for the US shares I need to pay 15% more and for the UK shares I need to pay the full 30% from what was paid out. So yes, I get it out as cash but with the tax declaration I pay in the money required for my capital gains.

Summary of February/March 2024

 

Summary of February/March 2024

After an "election" in Russia surprisingly Putin won with 88% of the votes and the war continues in Ukraine. I. for one, hope that EU will push through with using the frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine in their efforts to defend their nation.

I've been feeling a bit down, especially in the end of February, which I self diagnose as a mild depression. I'm feeling better now, but clearly I am destined to work and not having a proper job is a strain on my mental health. I additionally got a flat tyre on my camping van due to that the valve broke off, happily it did not happen during driving but while it was parked in the drive way. In my stupidity I was not aware of two things when it comes to wheels... #1 the valve is, due to them being tubeless, directly sitting on the rim and #2 when you order tyres you get exactly that, a rubber tyre without a rim and without valves. Great for the environment but it makes it difficult to sort out on your own. This means that the adventure starts to cost a bit of money due to all the items I needed to get however I hope that I will soon learn to put on new valves and new tyres on already existing rims.

It is a strange, strange feeling when ones money just keeps increasing without one having an income. I've never lived as "cheap" as I currently do and I spend in the region of 250-300 EUR per month which is far below my estimated 1,000 EUR per month. It is a very good moment to go out and buy property with cash and I must pull myself together and get busy buying a place. Oh, and I had a lovely Easter celebration with my family here in the summerhouse.

For the previous summary please visit Summary of January 2024.

The total invested value is now at: 343,328 €. No further investments were made.

The value of the portfolio is today: 549,106 € and I have 984 € in cash. I have realised gains of 9,653 € and unrealised of 205,777 € (60%) which is not good enough. My ETFs are now up at a value of 78% of my portfolio.

DAX is now up at 18,443 points which means that it has increased by 9.0% since the previous summary and my own portfolio has increased by 6.9% in the same time period.

Conclusion: DAX has gone crazy during the last two months and even though I was far behind my assets increased by 23.5k €. The snowball is clearly rolling down the slope which might be a stupid reason that is holding me back because I know that when I buy my future property then I will kill off that snowball.

Dividends Feb/Mar 2024

 

Several companies have managed to pay out dividends during these two months that I now cover.

ETF EU paid out 69.24 €, no taxes taken.

ETF All World paid out 33.18 €, no taxes taken.

ETF S&P500 paid out 70.11 €, no taxes taken.

McDonalds paid out 26.07 €, after 15% taxes withheld by US.

Intel paid out 37.80 €, after 15% taxes withheld by US.

BP paid out 52.98 €, no taxes taken.

IBM paid out 32.08 €, after 15% taxes withheld by US.

TJX paid out 16.53 €, after 15% taxes withheld by US.

DBAG paid out 114.12 €, after 26.4% taxes withheld by Germany.

Summary of January 2024

 

Summary of January 2024

More and more women are now being trained and used in the army in Ukraine, I hope that Russia decides that enough is enough and that the voices of the mothers in Russia keep increasing in volume regarding sending and having their boys being killed in a meaningless war that Putin decided to start and now probably keeps running due to pride.

I had a lovely ski trip to Trysil with my brothers and my cousins families. Trysil is a very nice place with long slopes that reminds me more of the Alps than anything else. Skistar and their inflation is making it costly though. I hadn't realised but my brother told me that Skistar apparently failed with their Austrian adventure. Pity, I hoped they would be able to go global but this might leave a mark on them for years to come. My poor little nephew managed to break his leg the first morning of skiing. The first (not yet up at skill level) and the last (tendency to make riskier decisions) appears to be the moments of additional danger. Is there a correlation with investing? I know for a fact that I was really bad in the early days and made seriously bad investments. When you have too much money, do you become reckless then again? May I never have that quantity of money! Angel investors are however needed to keep the entrepreneurs' of the world going but I prefer to be an entrepreneur than to become an angel investor.

My consultancy job is moving along ok, I would, at this point in time, like to increase it slightly, and I will have to have a discussion with them about that.

For the previous summary please visit Summary of November/December 2024.

The total invested value is now at: 343,328 €. No further investments were made.

The value of the portfolio is today: 525,591 € and I have 632 € in cash. Some dividend cash was taken out from my German stock broker. I have realised gains of 9,653 € and unrealised of 182,262 € (35%) which is not good enough. My ETFs are now up at a value of 77% of my portfolio.

DAX is now up at 16,927 points which means that it has increased by 2.0% since the previous summary and my own portfolio has increased by 4.4% in the same time period.

Conclusion: It's been a good start of the year and my portfolio has increased with 15k € which is an amazing figure on its own especially considering that my monthly costs currently are around 250€ per month. What goes up shall at some point come down again and I will need to extract money for the next stage pretty soon.