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.

Dividends January 2024

 

Few dividends were received during the month of January 2024 however they were:

ABF paid out 105.93 € that I received directly as cash on my broker account.

Burberry paid out 36.40 € and also in this case I received it directly as cash on my broker account.

The stock portfolio development during 2023

 

Due to the end-of-year rush on the stock exchange the development of the portfolio was semi ok. My stock portfolio increased in value by 54.6k € of which 11.1k € was in added investments which means that 43.5k € came from snowball effect.

In the previous report the stock portfolio development 2022 I spoke about that I had readjusted my target from the original 750k € to ~450k €, to buy a renovations object close to a warm beach and close to skiing during winter. Spain has started to be more interesting that France. I handed in my letter of resignation and left the UK in May 2023 to move back to Sweden to live in the family summerhouse while converting a campingvan. The campingvan is ready and I'm planning to leave in spring 2024. I do around 2 days per month of consultancy job for my old company but I must say that I am bored. Being retired is not as fun as one might think it to be. Everyone of my friends in Sweden are busy with their kids and their activities and it is a very, to put it bluntly, boring, not to have a job to go to every day. I'm therefore very certain that once I have fixed the renovations object I will, one way or the other, get back into the workforce again.

As can be seen in the graph above my plan is working well. In my first year (2012) of investment I ended up with a stock portfolio in the value of 17,659 € which was 4,744 € more then my plan required. In the second year (2013) my stock portfolio grew with 73 % and ended up with a value of 30,623 € which was 4,723 € above my target meaning that I managed to stay ahead of my plan but I did not manage to increase this advantage. In the third year (2014) my stock portfolio grew with 57% and I ended up with a value of 48,208 € which is then 8,333 € ahead of my investment plan which means that I managed to double my advantage during 2014. In the fourth year (2015) my portfolio grew by 53% and I am up at a value of 73,579 €. My plan was to have a stock portfolio of 54,915 € in the end of 2015 which means that I am now 18,664 € ahead of my plan. During my fifth year (2016) which was horrible in terms of new investments my portfolio still grew by 20% and the value was up at 88,414 € which mean that I was still 17,312 € ahead of my plan. In the sixth year (2017) the portfolio grew by 24% with a value of 109,606 € which was 21,802 € ahead of my plan. Followed by my seventh year of investing (2018) and an estimated growth of 19% and a value of ~130,000 which kept me 22,726 € ahead of my plan (hit by divorce). To then in my eighth year of investing (2019) with a growth of 24% with a stock portfolio value of 160,669 € and me being 33,216 € ahead of the plan (still hit by divorce). In the ninth year of investing (2020) and a growth of 52% and a stock portfolio at 243,801 € and me being 94,629 € ahead of the plan (final year of being hit by divorce). In my tenth year (2021) I had a growth of 57% and a stock portfolio at 383,941 € and by that I was 211,395 € ahead of the original plan. In the eleventh year (2022) I had a growth of measly 19% and a stock portfolio of 455,859 € and by that I was 258,156 € ahead of the original plan. In the twelfth year (2023), the year I left my job, I had a growth of 12% and a stock portfolio of 510,439 € and by that I was 285,661 € ahead of the original plan.

The larger the portfolio the less impact further investments will have and in this case I've not only stopped putting any more money in but instead I'm now taking out money instead.

Conclusion: 2023 turned out to be a good year for my stocks that no longer relies on new fresh large chunks of money being added to the pot but instead extraction of assets.

Summary of November/December 2023

 

Summary of November/December 2023

War is still going on, which means that food prices will not be coming down any time soon besides from the obvious that people keep dying due to one idiots decision. Winter has hit very hard this year and it is very cold in many locations in the northern Europe. I myself sitting in my summerhouse need to help out the heat exchanger by using the fireplace. Happily I had a lot of left over pieces of wood from my campingvan conversion so that has saved me a trip to the recycle centre, although, not the best for the environment. Heating of a place, no matter if it is my campingvan or the summerhouse is crucial and it is an interesting experience to take stock of. It is also a catch 22 with the the solar panels and winter. when the sky is clear and the sun is shining it is very often cold, however, the LiFePo batteries gets permanently damaged if one charge them when the temperature is below zeros deg C. So, when the solar panels can work, they cannot charge the batteries and when the batteries can be charged the sun is not shining on my panels. Everything should, however, be solved by driving toward the sun!

The consultancy job has continued and I've written invoices to my old company. The project has gone fairly well and we need to get it now to the next level, which I hope we will accomplish now during January with customer trials.

For the previous summary please visit Summary of October/Early November 2023.

The total invested value is now at: 343,328 € which is a drop by ~10k €. Several companies were sold: Netflix, EasyJet, Skanska, BASF and H&M to reduce the taxes that I need to pay from the sale of my Netflix shares. Over 10k € was taken out from my German broker account. In the UK broker account I re-invested the money from the sale of Netflix and EasyJet and bought more Berkshire, ETF-All World, Burberry and McDonalds.

The value of the portfolio is today: 510,439 € and I have 967 € in cash. I have realised gains of 9,653 € and unrealised of 167,111 € (33%) which is not good enough. My ETFs are now up at a value of 76% of my portfolio.

DAX is now up at 16,594 points which means that it has increased by 8.9% since the previous summary and my own portfolio has increased by 9.0% in the same time period.

Conclusion: People seems to have been really, really happy about Christmas coming around this year and the stock markets reflected this. I just barely beat DAX also this month. I must say that it feels strange to take out >10k € and yet have an overall portfolio value increase.

Dividends during November/December

 

Several dividends have been paid out in the end of the year and I even managed to receive one from a company that I had sold off, namely H&M.

H&M paid out 70.69 €, of which the taxman took -21.21 €, leaving me with 49.48 € as cash.

TJX paid out 19.40 €, taxman took -2.91 € leaving 16.49 € on broker account.

Intel paid out 39.61 €, taxman got -2.31€ leaving me with 27.30 € as cash.

IBM paid out a healthy 38.35 €, taxman took -5.76 €, leaving 32.59 € in cash.

BP paid out 53.03 €.

Scottish paid out 4.98 €.

McDonalds paid out 25.63 € and I must have been lucky there with when I bought them.

HSBC paid out 64.12 €.

ETF - All World paid out 34.38 €.

ETF - EU/UK paid out 63.19 € and finally

ETF - S&P500 paid out 63.14 €.

I've also in early January received Nike 13.43 €, taxman took -2.01 € leaving 11.42 €.

The dividend page has now been updated including including the end of year tally of 5,265 € paid out in total -468 € to taxes.

Stocks bought/sold November/December

 

Several stocks were bought and sold during this period. The trigger was that I considered the value of Netflix to be excessive and due to that I must now pay taxes in Sweden I decided to balance the gain by getting rid of some loss shares. I keep investing in my UK stock portfolio and any money in my German stock portfolio I directly take out in this case I took out >10k € from my German stock portfolio.

Sold shares

Netflix, 30 shares sold for 12,833.26 € with a gain of 6,938.77 € or 109%.

EasyJet, 947 shares sold for 4,560.53 € with a loss of -2,670.51 € or -38%.

Skanska, 250 shares sold for 3,743.12 € with a loss of -628.86 € or -14%. During the holding period an additional 717 € was paid out in dividends.

BASF, 140 shares sold for 6,073.38 € with a loss of -770.57 € or -12%. During the holding period an additional 2,716 € was paid out in dividends.

H&M, 250 shares sold for 3,856.83 € with a loss of -1,092.01 € or -22%. During the holding period an additional 1,605 € was paid out in dividends.

My current holding period of stocks is 45 months.

Bought shares

McDonalds, 20 shares bought for 5,082.50 €. I should never have sold them when I previously did. I bought them as a realty company and then in the pandemic I sold them as a fast food company. Stupid!

Berkshire, 20 more shares bought for 6,647.54 €. This means that I currently hold 45 shares for 11,399 €.

Burberry, 170 shares bought for 3,246.04 €.

ETF-All World, 35 shares bought for 3,653.23 €. This means that I currently hold 93 shares for 9,223 €.