October 2023 update ($761,222 -$29,485 or -%3.7)

↓ Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund is down by $4,621 or -3.7%
↓ Eurozone Stock Index Fund is down by $6,465 or -4.5%
↓ US 500 Stock Index Fund is down by $10,015 or -3.1%
↓ Global Small Cap is down by $9,545 or -6.9%
↓ Growth fund is down by $1,794 or -3.3%
↑EUR to USD is up by 0.9% for my portfolio its $2,419
↑ GBP to USD is up by 0.8% for my portfolio its $537

Total losses: $29,485

Observations:

Following my March 2020 post where I described how the rich people are being prepared to stay the rich in the UK using the tax efficient schemes allowance from the moment they are born.  Such schemes mainly benefit a well-off people, since the allowance is around $10K a year per child, while average salary $40 K a year before taxes ($32K a year after taxes).  In the past four years a had opportunity to invest the full amount for my two kids. At the moment I call it college fund. Hopefully they don’t need to touch it during the college. At the end of October, I invested $10K each while the market was just going up.

My American UK brokerage company is still doing investments via the phone. It takes at least a full working day before the money are in.  The only reason I tolerate them that the official fund annual charge is 0.07%.

A lot of the companies, including investment performance terms, a firm would like to show that it’s in top quartile. While this is meager top 25%, nobody wants to shout about being second quartile, let alone third or fourth.

The most important in achieving this top quartile performance it’s important to select right period to suit the needs and manipulate the data. One company is top quartile over 10 years but actually bottom quartile over one, three and five years. Another is top quartile over three years, but bottom over one, five and ten.  There were also a lot of companies who were good performers over one year, but poor performers over the long term. But it’s the long-term picture that really matters.

The US government is now under intense pressure over their $25tn US government bond market. There is immense incentive to falsify real inflation figures.

Fun Fact:  The highest percentage of house ownership outright in europe is in ex-communist countries (romania, croatia, bulgaria, poland, lithuania, hungary, poland, etc.) the lowest is in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Belgium.

This is called legacy issue, since the people used to get their houses for free. Despite long time the statistic remains the same to this date. Even taking percentage of people owning houses with a loan, the picture hasn’t changed yet.