January 2019: many happy returns
Posted: 2019-02-03 Filed under: Investment returns 3 CommentsI had a decent break over the New Year period, and whiled away far too much time reading blogs/etc. I felt very up to date, at the time. Now of course I can’t remember what actually happened in January – proving the point of Nassim Taleb/others.
Overall I don’t think January was that notable for world politics/markets. Davos saw the usual flurry of policy-making headlines, but nothing stood out for me.
Closer to home Brexit dominated the news media, with as expected the UK government’s EU deal being rejected by a thumping majority in parliament. For some reason markets have reacted fairly favourably to these developments, I think because they appear to suggest ‘no deal’ looks very unlikely. I can’t say I am as sanguine, but in any case the pound rose to $1.33 at some point and ended the month over 2% up against the USD.
Equities recovered over half of their Q4 falls. Everywhere. Especially some tech stocks (Amazon up 13%, Facebook up 25% (!)). Even bonds rose gently. Sentiment has changed dramatically, without any particular data or hard facts to point to. Sigh.
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Posted: 2019-01-27 Filed under: Analysis & comment, Investing philosophy 19 CommentsOver the new year break I found myself really enjoying the blog post by {indeedably} in which he breaks down his assets and income.
He has an unusual way of looking at his state of financial dependence, as shown by his image below:
His core point is that his level of financial independence depends on
- the amount of his expenses – some of which are ‘wants’ rather than ‘needs’,
- the level of investment income he can expect and
- how much ‘time he wants to sell’ (i.e. paid work he wants to do). He isn’t fully independent, but only ‘sells’ about half his time.
One thing that shows up clearly in {indeedably}’s graph is that investing can be expensive. In his case, a significant portion of his assets are property, and as a result his investing expenses appear to include a) mortgage costs b) property management and c) property maintenance – among other things. I think they will also include his investment fund expenses/fees too.
Putting on {indeedably}’s glasses
I spent a few hours bashing my expense tracking data into a similar format to {indeedably} and now can view my cashflows on a broadly comparable basis.
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I’ve lost everything through a cyber thefth
Posted: 2019-02-15 | Author: FIRE v London | Filed under: Analysis & comment | 13 CommentsThis post is a response to @SavingNinja’s Thought Experiment #4.
@SavingNinja poses the following challenge, and asks for a ‘stream of consciousness’ reply:
My first reaction is to clarify exactly what I have lost. I don’t accept the premise that I have lost all the money/assets I’ve ever owned; for starters, I’ve spent some of those! So for purposes of this discussion I’ve lost all the assets that can be retrieved via online / written instructions to banks/brokers/etc.
This loss is catastrophically bad for me. It amounts to:
SavingNinja tells me I can’t get them back. I am not going to take that at face value and am going to find a very competent lawyer, agree a performance-related fee structure, and send them hard at everybody that moves. I am going to consider going public with my predicament and creating an almighty fuss that my banks, brokers, etc will find embarassing at least. But, for the sake of argument, SavingNinja proves right and I can’t retrieve more than, say a few £000s of goodwill gestures.
I do however have a few remaining assets.
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