Financial Update & Emotional Monk Saying Thank You

Financial Update & Emotional Monk Saying Thank You

This was a big month for MonkWealth.

A big milestone was reached by publishing my first book: Become an Investor: The Ultimate Guide to Long-Term Investing for Absolute Beginners. The majority of you reading this post would already know it – and most probably already enjoying a copy of it.

Contrary to what I expected, which is always the worst case scenario so I’m not disappointed, Become an Investor got over 100 downloads on Amazon during the promotion last weekend! This was a massive success from my perspective and an extremely rewarding experience. It felt like I was doing something right – starting from sharing my investing knowledge for free on this blog, to writing a structured and self-contained version of it in a book and launching a relatively successful promotion for it.

So, for everyone who got the book, I want to say a big thank you!

Each consequent purchase was met with gratitude and it did warm my heart. I hope you’ll get surplus value out of the book because, if done right, it does contain life-changing information. I was super happy to share all the knowledge with my subscribers and address the common questions I’ve received from you over the last years.

But your contribution is also valuable to me.

Each download or purchase of the physical copy of the book makes it more visible to other readers.

This can be further improved if everyone who got the book leaves an honest review about it.

Maybe it’s not obvious immediately, but reviews are one of the most important factors that drive buyers’ decisions. That’s why I’d like to ask everyone that extracted value out of Become an Investor to go and review it on Amazon. This doesn’t only help the book’s rankings, but also helps other people like you to see it.

So, a call to action to all of you who got the book:

Call to Action: Review the Book on Amazon

If you found value in the book, please dedicate a minute to write a short and honest review about it.

Link to Become an Investor on Amazon

Again, this is extremely important for me and the ongoing success of Become an Investor. And each review counts – it has potential to reach a much wider audience and change many peoples’ lives for the better. It would’ve certainly changed mine if I got it when I knew nothing – especially as a FIRE enthusiast hoarding piles of unutilized cash.

That’s enough for the book.

It’s already in the past and I’m eager to tackle new endeavors. However, there are a couple more things I’ve been up to lately as well.

Complete MonkWealth Redesign

In case you haven’t been around lately you may have missed it, but probably MonkWealth feels a bit different, doesn’t it?

I had the thought for a pretty long time, as I thought the previous design didn’t convey what I’m about that clearly. For sure, the blog homepage served its purpose for returning visitors that knew what they’re looking for, but a new visitor landing there would just see the latest posts popping up with absolutely no introduction to what I’m about, how I invest, or what is FIRE.

After the redesign, it’s much clearer. Whenever a newcomer lands on the homepage, he’ll be met with as brief of a summary as I could compile to introduce myself:

• A capitalist embodiment of a Monk on a quest for absolute liberty.
• The author behind MonkWealth and Become an Investor, promoting self-reliance with a philosophic twist to accumulating long-term wealth.
• An investor managing a broadly diversified portfolio of various asset classes, mostly stocks and cryptocurrency.
• Helping people succeed in areas ranging from saving, investing, and financial independence to living a productive and fulfilling life.

And if it’s too high-level for people unfamiliar with investing, finance, or FIRE, they can always refer to the About page. That one’s new as well. At least updated and modified. 🙂

If I missed something or if you think it can be improved to describe MonkWealth better, suggestions are always welcome!

With all that said, I love the new look and feel of the website. Hope you’ll enjoy it as well! There is tons of great content coming up, as I was just piling up ideas while my full attention was focused on finishing and releasing the book.

Financial Update

This was an amazing month financially – not unlike the previous one.

Massive gains were made in my primary markets of focus: stocks and crypto.

Stocks

Let’s kick it off with the monthly S&P 500 chart, as a representative of the largest allocation of my stock portfolio.

To put it into words: it’s around an 8% increase in just this month. At the same time, a full recovery from the crash in March. We’re back up – which can be seen as both a positive or negative thing, depending on the perspective.

I actually tweeted about it:

 

 

I never traded stocks and am all about long-term investing. The only market timing I’m committed to is catching a macro-cycle with the cash I have saved up. Everything else is invested immediately.

If you’re interested in my approach and strategy – which I always define upfront, I may write another How I Invest post soon. Let me know. 🙂

Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency is the market where I’m also invested for the long-term, but I’m allowing myself to be more active when I spot an opportunity.

When I talk about this market, I usually represent it using a BTC chart – as the largest portion of my crypto portfolio. However, this month it’s not representative of my portfolio at all. Actually, Bitcoin was moving sideways, ending at “just” a ~3% increase. But them alts… I made some great trades with some of my holdings.

I sold Orchid (OXT) right around the peak. I’m all about HODL, but when an altcoin I bought to speculate grows more than 500% in value within a day, it’s a sell. And its pullback over the month had a really soothing effect on my mind and soul, whatever that means.

I also sold Tezos (XTZ) during the second week of the month. Unlike OXT, this is a coin I plan to hold, so I sold with an intention to buy after a pullback.

I usually don’t trade with coins I plan to HODL, but my main motivation was the temporary lack of correlation with the rest of the market. XTZ seemed to lag behind and grew in value while most major coins fell. I decided to take the risk, sold everything and was either to wait for a dip to buy back, or accept a loss and buy back if it was still trading higher by the end of the month. As expected, it retraced and I bought back on the way down, executing another successful trade.

I also sold some of my DENT and BTT holdings, but my allocation in each of those is less than 200EUR, so they don’t qualify for a picture of their own. By the way, I’m only showing charts of the coins I’ve traded more actively this month. As you can see on the monthly charts, I’d have massive gains even if I just held them.

This was the case with another winner – Cosmos (ATOM), finishing at >100% increase since last month. It also pays interest, so I have an incentive to hold it, plus I got in when it was way cheaper than it is today. I’m not touching it.

FIRE Progress

As you know, I stopped sharing these numbers after declaring that FIRE updates don’t make sense.

And I won’t just throw a meaningless percentage here, but I’d like to mention a phenomenon that’s occurring these past couple of months.

Basically, as many personal finance enthusiasts do, I track my net-worth via monthly snapshots using a customized Excel file. It contains sheets per asset class, each containing the accounts and their value denominated in EUR per month. At the end, I have sheets where I aggregate this data to show my current net-worth, difference since last month, and other (irrelevant for now) metrics.

With that said, what’s been going on recently is that at the end of each month, after all expenses, my net-worth grew for more than double of my net income. Mind blowing, right? Well, it depends. It seems it’s becoming more common as one’s portfolio grows in value. But even with a lower portfolio in the past, I also experienced “saving” my whole salary. This was less common back then and happened in the months where the investment returns were higher than my monthly expenses, so my net-worth grew for amounts higher than my net salary.

I’m only mentioning this because I remember how interesting it was to see it in action for the first time. And how satisfying it is when the numbers get even higher. Of course, as I’m not blinded by emotions, I know that this has a lot to do with the stock market’s recovery since the March 2020 crash and the recent performance of the cryptocurrency market. And these results may differ in different times under different circumstances, of course.

And although I can’t take the full credit or responsibility for any major swing in any direction, I’m the one who assessed my risk tolerance, determined my asset allocation and investment strategy, and decided to risk my hard-earned money. These are just the risk-adjusted rewards.

Of course, all the thought processes and planning necessary to set up a robust investment strategy are a part of the Become an Investor book.

And another reminder, if you already got it, I’d highly appreciate an honest review on Amazon. 🙂

Click here: Review Become an Investor on Amazon

Thank you all!