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 €.

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.

Dividends in July 2023

 

The months of strong dividend payments are behind us and therefore there will only be some minor trickles arriving for the remainder of the year. Two companies still decided to pay out some cash to me though.

Nike paid out 12.44 € of which the US taxman took 1.87 € and I was left with 33.10 € in cash on my broker account.

ABF also decided to pay out 33.10 € and all of that arrived as cash on my broker account.

Sold stocks during July 2023

 

I had two things that I've been needing to deal with since a long time and that was that I owned part of my H&M shares and all of my Ratos shares in a slightly strange construct which now needed to be sorted out. Secondly I had a debt built up towards all my nephews since the stock brokers that I have been using did not allow me to construct sub accounts for my nephews which can be done very easily in Avanza and was therefore also done. This means that I, moving forward, can very easily buy shares for them for their birthdays and I no longer have to carry a virtual debt to them. I've set it up so that I buy 70% Avanza Global and 30% Avanza Zero to them. I do today consider the low cost ETFs to be superior to any other investments for an amateur investor such as myself.

I therefore sold 353 of my H&M shares at 15.03 € giving 5,305.59 € (loss of -485.83€, -8%) for a holding held for 67 months. Dividend build-up I leave with my remaining shares.

I also sold all my Ratos (in hindsight... a bit early since they have recovered lately) of 1245 shares at 2.51 € giving 3124.95 € (loss of -698.05 €, -18%) and I've received 57.27 € in dividends during a holding period of 65 months.

My current holding period of sold investments are therefore 3.6 years and the change will be updated in the upcoming monthly summary.

Summary of May/June 2023

 

Summary of May/June 2023

For a brief moment I was filled with hope for the Ukrainian population. I hoped that the internal struggles in Russia would provide an opening for Ukraine to take back their land by the Russian troops rushing towards Moscow. We were unfortunately not as lucky. Not only Russia but also USA, UK etc. are using mercenary troops and not only providing them with plenty of cash for executing the jobs but these guys tend to have top notch equipment. Is there something to learn from Russia here? Is it advisable to create well funded, large military organisation that are pretty much only answering to money? When there is nothing for them to do... what do they then do? Is it in their interest to create conflicts?

I've heard colleagues complaining about that nothing is happening in Sweden during summer and all projects hit a stand still but I hadn't believed or realised just how much this is. Trying to regain my social security number was a slow process and without it one can pretty much do nothing in Sweden. You can't even get a mobile phone number for crying out loud. The wheels have slowly started to turn and I don't seem to have fully embraced my new life because it still leads to some level of frustration which it shouldn't! Why should I care if it takes 3,4 or even 5 months before I get my camping van up and running and hit the road? I think I'm too used to having things go my way. I've always claimed that I am a lucky person and the jam sandwich tends to land with jam side up for me but here in Sweden it feels as if it is jam down each and every time. Setting up the consultancy company is taking very long time which I'm not pleased with since it is a loss of money. Four weeks to start a company bank account, four weeks! Ridiculous. UKs HMRC are additionally, if I get a tax refund, sending that out as a cheque instead of paying it into the bank account as they always have done. Silly.

It costed a boatload of money to get the van sorted (i.e. repairs), I've ordered but not yet received, solar panels, hybrid inverter, batteries, roof fan, floor ventilation, insulation, compost toilet, cables to the death of me, electrical bicycle, foot water pump, tools, DC converter from 48V down to 12V, fire alarm, etc, etc. Several things are left to be ordered such as floor, ceiling and wall panels. All of which has costed another boatload of cash. Money has just been flying out left, right and centre.

Enough with the moaning... I've spent this month removing everything that was inside the van, treating rust and painting it over both inside and on the roof. I've started to put in some insulation, however until I've made all the cuts in the metal I don't want to move on with the insulation job. I need to have a crash course on electricity because now I'm over dimensioning everything in the camping van with a 5000 W hybrid MPPT + inverter. 2x24V solar panels, 2x24V lithium batteries (solar and battery connect in series to have 48V output) etc. All in line with pulling it out of the camping van and placing it on my future house instead and everything I learn building my camping van I will be able to use on my house later on. I've also done some jobs around the summer house to make it look better. Will wait with some though until my nephews arrive so that I can do the jobs with them. I think it will be good for them to learn a little and hopefully appreciate the pleasure of seeing a job done that they can claim they did.

I sold one of my holdings, Talanx, because it had increased severely in value in a short amount of time. Any dividends that had been received was also taken out so in total I took out 6,200 € from my broker account. As you will see from the report it hasn't made a dent though.

For the previous summary please visit Summary of April 2023.

The total invested value is now at: 363,739 €. A minor May investment was made in ETF Mix from my final salary, I sold Talanx and took out the cash + any collected dividends. The strengthening of the pound sterling have also helped out.

The value of the portfolio is today: 505,503 € and I have 1,224 € in cash on my broker accounts. I have realised gains of 8,671 € and unrealised of 141,164 € (28%) which is not good enough. My ETFs are now up at a value of 73% of my portfolio.

DAX is now up to 16,148 points which means that it has increased by 1.5% since the previous summary and my own portfolio has increased by 2.6% in the same time period.

Conclusion: The stock market was alright during these two months. My work / life balance has improved significantly and I give myself a pat on the shoulder each day when I've finished a job whatever that was that I wanted to do that day. So now I give myself a pat for finishing three articles and then I go out into the area and enjoy a, currently, surprisingly,  sunny Sweden!

Dividends in May/June 2023

 

It's been a period with plenty of dividend payments which is always enjoyable especially now when I need to take out money instead of adding.

E.On paid out 204.00 € of which the German taxman kept 53.80 € and I was left with 150.20 € as cash on my broker account.

Intel paid out 44.75 €, USA tax office withheld 6.71 € and I was left with 38.04 € in cash.

TJX paid me 19.78 €, US withheld 2.96 € and I got 16.82 € on my broker account.

The next dividend payment I'm not really happy about. I wanted Luc to keep re-investing the earnings into the business or other endeavours for that matter!

Tessenderlo paid out 127.50 €, the taxman in Belgium kept 38.25 € and I got 89.25 € on my broker account.

IBM provided me with 38.34 €, tax withheld was 5.76 € and I got 32.58 € in cash.

BP paid me 49.46 € which arrived directly as cash.

Barratt paid out 59.36 € in cash.

Lloyds paid out 121.05 € in cash.

HSBC paid out 64.67 € in cash.

ETF EU paid out 301.16 € in cash

ETF S&P500 paid out 63.29 € in cash.

ETF All-World paid out 38.89 € in cash.

So a pretty good period!