Thursday, December 20, 2012

End of 2012 year update ($224,500 +$61,000 or +37%)



The portfolio changes:
$55,600 were accumulated over the year and invested.  This exceeded annual goal of $40,000 with my annual bonus almost fully invested and some additional efforts were put in.  Otherwise the portfolio only gained 3% or $5,400 otherwise.
Primarily this was due to over exposure to cash & precisions metals.   This year I reduced exposure to cash from 74% to 54%, with stock market portfolio allocation went from 18.5% to 39.5% (next year 2013 I expect it will go up to 49% or even %55).
Company shares are slowly going up, as I am reinvesting all the dividends into the new shares. Annual gain is $800.
Keeping emergency fund into GBP, allowed me to gain almost $3,000 on the differences in exchange rate. Albeit from 2008 it lost almost $18,000 as GBP was stronger back then and this is without taking inflation into account.
- Mutual funds invested into emerging markets did not bring any gain this year (To be fair $300). I started wondering whether it is worth keeping money there. Since 2008 there has been loss of 7%, but the currency lost 30% of its value as well. Grand total loss over the last 4 years $9,600
Precious metals gained $2,400 this year.
€ lost about 3% towards $ this year,  for my nest egg it meant $1,200 loss.