May 2018 update ($499,902 +$304 or +0.1%)

↑ US 500 Stock Index Fund is down by $2,598 or 2.3%

↑ Global Small Cap Index is up by $3,038 or 2.7%

↑ FTSE U.K. All Share Index accumulation is up by $561 or 4.5%

↑ GBP is up to USD by 0.7% or $106

Grand total additions: $6,303

↓ Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund is down by $205 or 0.2%

↓ Eurozone Stock Index Fund is down by $1,482 0r 1.2%

↓ EUR is down to USD by 2.0% or $4,286

Grand total losses: $5,973

Observations:

Strategy is proven to be right by separating the basket into USA, Emerging Markets (BRICS) and EU. At the moment USA with focus on “America first” is pushing forward.  12-month rolling is 13% for SP500 and 16.8% for Small Cap companies.  The fund says “Global” but almost 60% is in the USA and another 12% in Japan.

I have received a pay raise at work. It will help me to offset some of the inflationary costs but I also increased my pension contributions to about $10 K a year. This is not a lot but if I manage to keep it up I will have approximately $800 K by the time I retire (conservative estimate) in today’s money or $3 K a month for life.  

Fun fact: A British bank called “Barclays” is facing criminal changes over unlawful financial assistance from Qatar (it made a $3bn loan to Qatar to fund the purchase of its own shares in 2008). Additionally, the fraud charges turned on a so-called advisory services agreement with Qatar worth £322m that was first struck at the time of the £4.5bn fundraising in June 2008 and then extended at the time of the £7.3bn October deal.

This reminded me case of JPMorgan in 2013 when it invited Twitter users to ask “a leading exec at a global firm” for career advice, using the hashtag #AskJPM. This came in the same month the bank agreed to pay out $13bn in a settlement with the US Department of Justice for mis-selling mortgage securities. “Did you always want to be part of a vast, corrupt criminal enterprise or did you ‘break bad’?” was fairly typical of the responses.