Tuesday, March 31, 2015

March 2015 update ($277,620 -$17,851 or -6%)



Accumulated $4,000 USD as part of my annual saving goal for March
Vanguard S&P500 is up $1,271
Vanguard Emerging markets is up $ 504
Received Q1 dividends Vanguard S&P500 $176 (after taxes)
Received Q1 dividends Vanguard Emerging markets $33 (after taxes)
Grand total additions: US$ 5,984

EUR is down to USD, lost $16,716
GBP is down to USD, lost 3,300
Gazprom shares lost $2,520
Company shares lost $523
Precious metals lost $776
Grand total losses:  US$ 23,835
 Financial Independence - monthly update March 2015
 Observations:

-         Great Britain and European Union continue rapid depreciation of their currencies - GBP lost almost 5% last month and EUR almost 8%. Year to year decline is 11% for GBP and 24% for EUR.   Official reason uncertainty with so-called PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) but reality is that it makes English and European goods more competitive and more attractive as tourism destination.  We will not discuss high unemployment and raise of crime, associated with such policies here.
-         Dividends for Emerging markets 0.8% a year and 1.7% for S&P500. This is very very low and by all accounts does not match any bullish sentiment towards the stocks. With strong dollar it will be even more difficult to maintain reasonable payments for multinational companies with headquarters and reporting in the US in USD.
-         Assuming that market is stabilized forecast towards end of the year ~ $320 K including any possible dividends, while if you follow the plan it should be around $420K in the money of the day at the very least.

5 comments:

  1. Wow, that is quite a big chunk that you have in Gazprom. Do you care to elaborate the reason for this?
    And the recent gains have to make you smile everytime you log into your account. ;)

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    1. eurfi,
      Thank you for stopping by. Annually I do analysis of the major oil companies, which includes Gazprom : http://www.niterainbow.com/search/label/Energy%20stocks
      You quite right I need to do the analysis again. Gazprom has some advantages : very big resource base, land connection to most of its customers (pipeline transportation is cheaper than LNG), low production cost and limited exposure to the shale and tight gas. As an example, ExxonMobil & Chevron has approximately 20% of the booked reserves as shale gas. A lot of producers struggling to make any money, developing shale gas and oil. Shell has about 10% reserves in it.
      Initially I invested in the company pursuing dividends income, rather than anything else. I expect pre-tax dividends this year are ~ 6 K USD from Gazprom alone (~ 4.7 % annual). The plan is to keep re-investing money in the new shares and by double dividends in 16 years time. However I realised that I need to save a side 25 times of my annual expenses to live on .

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  2. Great looking update. Of course, being a dividend income investor I'm sure you main concern with your portfolio is the amount of dividend income it can produce as opposed to overall portfolio value increasing or decreasing. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Hi DivHut. Thank you for stopping by.
      You are absolutely agree on my way to Financial Independence and Freedom I am looking at dividend income, rather than portfolio growth. I think I will give myself another 5 years, before I need to start closing in and shifting some of the investments from stocks to bonds. As you could tell about 25% of my investments are currently in cash. This will change towards end of the year, should everything go well. I want invest in the stocks and shares I have understanding. If I do not I bet conservatively and do mutual funds. However, to be perfectly honest I think this is next big bubble (mutual funds).

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