Summary of October/Early November 2023

 

I will start as I unfortunately always have now for the last almost two year... War is still ongoing!

The campingvan has now been finished which felt very good. Everything is in and I passed the MOT. I tested it out and I had this wrong thought that it would be more like living in a home but it really isn't. It is luxury camping on wheels. The temperature outside is pretty much like inside. It can get a couple of degrees higher with heating, but I do not want to use gas heater and I'm scared about draining the batteries so I use very moderate heating. A fridge is also draining a lot so unless the sun is really shining for many hours a day I will not use it. No need when it is below 10 degrees anyway. I made a test drive and the first night was 5 degrees. That was cold. The other three it was between 11-13 degrees which is fully acceptable. I do not get a lot of charge from the solar panels now during winter, which is really sad and very limiting. I will not take off until spring next year.

I've continued to do some consultancy job for my old company. It is going fairly well and the invoices are being paid.

For the previous summary please visit Summary of August/September 2023.

The total invested value is now at: 353,601 €. No investments were made and no investments were sold.

The value of the portfolio is today: 494,047 € and I have 1,569 € in cash (took some out from my German one) on my broker accounts. I have realised gains of 7,487 € and unrealised of 140,446 € (28%) which is not good enough. My ETFs are now up at a value of 73% of my portfolio.

DAX is now down at 15,234 points which means that it has decreased by -1.0% since the previous summary and my own portfolio has increased by 0.9% in the same time period.

Conclusion: The stock market appears to be muddling through and I don't see anything exciting at the moment.

Dividends in October/Early November 2023

 

Few dividends have been paid out but I'm of course happy for any cash flow in my direction!

Nike paid out 12.84 €, the tax office kept 1.93 €, leaving me with 10.91 €.

Barratt also paid out in the size of 134.04 € of which all ended up as cash on my broker account.

Summary of August / September 2023

 

Summary August / September 2023

War is still going on between a dictator and a democracy in Europe. Horrible!

I would like to apologise for that I have had to combine two months in this report. I was about to blame it on that I've been busy, and I have, but still... 

During the two months the sun was shining so I've been very active with my van conversion. I additionally painted my parents house (with their help of course) and my consultancy company got up and running so I've worked with my old company and was even sent for a week to the USA represent them in an activity.

Van conversion - last time I had insulated, moisture barrier and laid out the floor. Now I have done the same with the walls, the doors and the ceiling. I've put in a kitchen area with a sink, I have fresh and grey water tanks and a foot pump for the water. I've put in my bed, I needed to build a frame and storage space underneath it because I lost so much surface with the bed. I've put in a table to eat at and to work at. I've put in a mirror to gain more light and make the space look bigger. I've put in infrared heating which I think is a lovely new way to heat up small spaces. I've put in fire alarm and carbon monoxide alarm which is less required since I will not use gas but still... The batteries (2x24V in serie to give 48V output) are in and connected to the inverter, the solar panels (2x24V in serie to give 48V output) are connected to the MPPT/Inverter, the AC current and the home fuse box is in and after a bit of a trial and error journey are now also working and are releasing as it should and my three AC outlets works perfectly fine. I still have three things running on DC which is my ceiling fan, and two lamps. All these are also working fine. One big issue though.... the inverter that I bought was for a home and I had failed to realise that it needed a substantial voltage from the solar panels to charge the batteries. Once I realised the mistake I've also realised that I cannot increase the solar panels to reach the needed voltage so I've been forced to order another inverter which will arrive shortly. This will however require me to parallel connect my batteries instead of having them in serie. What's left? Well, I need to put in a lot more storage space, I need to put in media, swap out the inverter so those freaking batteries will get charged, I need to put in a toilet, fridge, induction cooker. These are hopefully the big ticket items left. I also need to do a MOT on the van, which I should do during October.

Painting my parents house was not really fun but it had to be done and I'm happy that I am around and could help them out with that! At the absolutely worst location, three panels needed to be changed out so that was a bit of a drag and though I'm not afraid of depths I must admit that my legs started shaking a bit when standing high up on the ladder and needing to lean out to hammer them stuck in place. Anyway, now it is done and will hopefully last for 7-10 years.

In the end of August my company was finally up and running. I got a bit upset with the Swedish tax office because they demanded me to show my private economy when the company requested F-skattesedel and VAT register. To my knowledge an AB is it's own legal person and in this situation the Swedish tax office takes the decision to NOT consider it as such due to few owners of the AB. I provided them with the requested papers and I could finally sign the contract with my old company. This led to me going over to the USA on assignment for a week and additional work being interviewed by journalists, speaking to potential customers etc. This additionally delayed things with my van but on the other hand I could write an invoice to them which I did now in the end of September.

I do enjoy living in my summerhouse and I've started to think more and more about delaying my departure until early next year. Both due to that I'm running so late, it gives me more time to test it out before heading to the south, and Christmas is not far away and I definitely wants to celebrate that with my family here in Sweden. It feels good to have been able to join in on all the Swedish events this year that I haven't been able to for 20+ years such as midsummer, crayfish party, birthdays etc.

For the previous summary please visit Summary of July 2023.

The total invested value is now at: 353,601 €. No investments were made and no investments were sold.

The value of the portfolio is today: 491,025 € and I have 2,284 € in cash on my broker accounts. I have realised gains of 7,487 € and unrealised of 137,424 € (28%) which is not good enough. My ETFs are now up at a value of 74% of my portfolio.

DAX is now down at 15,387 points which means that it has decreased by -3.7% since the previous summary and my own portfolio has decreased by -2.0% in the same time period.

Conclusion: The stock market went down for a while in August and have since then now started to recover slightly during September. Due to some dividend payments I'm very close to take some money out from my German stock broker but at this point in time I do not yet need it so I leave it for now.

Dividends in August/September 2023

 

I thought there would only be some trickles of dividends arriving during the remainder of the year but I was clearly wrong. I had some serious pay out from especially Rio Tinto which is much appreciated!

ETF All-World paid out 26.05 € as cash on my broker account

ETF S&P500 paid out 63.41 € as lovely, lovely cash.

ETF EU-UK paid out 82.53 € as cash on my broker account.

Rio Tinto paid out a total of 514.09 € as cash on my two broker accounts.

HSBC paid out 64.35 € as cash to me.

Barclay decided to pay out 59.10 € as cash on my broker account.

Lloyds were also generous and paid out 68.90 € to my broker account.

Intel has tighten the purse and only paid out 35.36 €, the taxman took 2.32 €, leaving me with 33.04 € as cash on my two broker accounts.

BP paid out 52.53 € on my broker account.

IBM paid out 38.49 €, taxman took 5.78 € leaving me with 32.71 € on my broker account and finally

TJX paid out 19.48 €, taxman took 2.92 €, leaving 16.56 € as cash on my broker account.

Summary of July 2023

 

Summary of July 2023

War is still ongoing and agreements made are no longer kept. The ages of people being called into the army in Russia is increasing, while Ukraine is at it's max capacity. My thoughts and hopes are still with the Ukrainians!

I've significantly underestimated just how slow things are. My consultancy company have not yet been received the all clear and my old company is screaming for me to help them out due to too many projects come to a standstill. Good for me one might think but I really do not want a fulltime job again consulting or otherwise and also it makes me wonder if I left my old company in a bad way i.e. my handover was not as good as I hoped? I provided everything they asked for and more so I should probably conclude that that's on them.

My campingvan conversion is also a lot slower than I had hoped for. Rain, rain, rain is holding me back since I do not want to bring in wet insulation, floors, furniture etc. and my only option for cutting and adjusting things is under the open sky. What I've accomplished to todays date is the following... repaired the car, rust treated and painted the interior, installed a skylight and fan, installed solar panels (no other electrics), installed floor ventilation, insulated the floor and laid floor and now I've started to insulate the walls. Ordering of things have been much slower than I had hoped for and the amount of sunny days in July has been few. I also made a small holiday trip to Andorra to visit a friend, get some sun and allow my brother and his family to have some alone time in the summer cabin. I did not, in the end, perform any jobs with my nephews. A big storm is running in Sweden at the moment and when the sun arrives I need to help my parents to paint their house since that has absolute top priority. My van will have to wait. I shouldn't be stressed about it but I must admit that there is some level of frustration.

During my trip to Andorra, being in and walking in the mountains, I had some time to think and realised that an idea that I had back in 2005 is still viable and I should / must execute on it. This means that I now know what to do with the money that comes into my consultancy company instead of taking it out as salary or as dividends I should invest it into this old, old idea. Anyway... that will have to be after I have sorted out my renovations object where ever I end up buying it. Good time to buy property though!

To sort out some strange holding structures and to sort out my virtual debt to my nephews I sold both Ratos (slightly too early!) and a large part of my H&M holding.

For the previous summary please visit Summary of May/June 2023.

The total invested value is now at: 353,601 €. No investments were made and I sold some H&M and all my Ratos holdings. The strengthening of the pound sterling have also helped out.

The value of the portfolio is today: 498,059 € and I have 1,274 € in cash on my broker accounts. I have realised gains of 7,487 € and unrealised of 144,458 € (29%) which is not good enough. My ETFs are now up at a value of 74% of my portfolio.

DAX is now up at 15,974 points which means that it has decreased by -1.1% since the previous summary and my own portfolio has increased by 1.9% in the same time period.

Conclusion: The stock market went up significantly in July and have started to come back down again and happily my own portfolio performed better than DAX at this point in time.