Monthly Update: May 2019

What a month!

No better way of explaining it as the featured picture of this post. In case you’re having trouble figuring out what it represents, look no further than the YTD chart of the S&P 500.

But let’s put the stock market on the side and talk about the elephant bull in the room.

Of course, I’m talking about the cryptocurrency market, the performance of which can be shown by the following representative sample – the price of Bitcoin:

Don’t be surprised if it looks different an hour after I publish this post though. 🙂

Anyway, this is just a monthly update post, so I won’t dive deep into my expectations or forecasts, but I’d point you to a highly recommended read if you want to get familiar with my strategy & how I invest by clicking on the link below:

How I Invest

I was very excited to write it and check it out if you want more insights into how I approach this game for both the short-run and the long-run.

Talking about long-term investments, the S&P 500 erased two months of gains, which was a good buying opportunity towards the end of the month. It would’ve been a good buying opportunity even if it didn’t, as the future value of the portfolio is what really matters.

I have so many things I’d like to cover regarding the upcoming year or two, mainly around recessionary indicators & the trade war / election situation going on. I think we can soon expect a new category on MonkWealth – Economy. I did Inflation and would like to cover International Trade, so as the number of posts grows, they deserve a category of their own.

And just to be complete, here is the performance of the S&P over May 2019.

Of course, I did my monthly contribution as usual.

Personal Finance

This post would’ve been much different depending on which time of the month I’d have written it.

The gains from my cryptocurrency allocation and the losses from my stock allocation were offsetting each other in my total portfolio value throughout the full month. After a few bigger expenses (vacation costs, to be more specific) making my FIRE goal “not closer”, I spotted the pennant (continuation TA pattern) on the BTC chart on 25 May and decided to give it a last push… And from there, I let it take off.

So yes, my expenses were higher this month, but it’s nothing recurring, so there is nothing to worry about. As I said in the post I Hate Spending Money:

All my trips are funded with all the tabs I didn’t split and all the excessive food I didn’t throw.

Asset Allocation May 2019

No surprises here.

It looks quite different from last month, where the cryptocurrency allocation was almost as small as the P2P allocation. To break down the growth, here are the separate coins’ performances over the last 30 days:

• BTC – 57%
• ETH – 61%
• LTC – 51%
• XRP – 41%
• BCH – 60%
• BCV – 253%
• ZRX – 17%
• ZEC – 42%
• XLM – 28%
• BAT – -9%.

My allocation in the first few is >90% and my holdings in the last few are negligible.

The reason I’m not rebalancing or selling for profits is because I expect more growth in this asset class, as explained in the How I Invest post. I checked with myself that it’s not greed that drives this decision, but valid expectations based on various bullish indicators (mainly the Bitcoin block reward halving next year).

That being said, I’m not hodling the full portfolio to teh moon, but plan to sell 20-25% of my allocation on certain price thresholds I’ve set per coin. I’d share the details, but my decisions can easily change based on new information, so I’ll keep them to myself for now.

And lastly, I also sell hashing power through NiceHash and am compensated in BTC for it, so my crypto allocation grows on autopilot a little bit each month. I’m not affiliated with NiceHash, but I prepared a post about mining and will release it in near future. Make sure to subscribe if you’re interested.

My GPUs, as well as every other illiquid asset I own, including pension, are not a part of my net-worth or asset allocation calculations that I use on MonkWealth.

FIRE Progress May 2019

My FIRE progress went from 37,83% to 39,83%. An exact 2% growth!

Not bad for a month in which my stock portfolio fell ~6% and I funded a couple of not-inexpensive trips. An interesting fact: yesterday my FIRE progress reached 40%, but this happened (take a look at the period after 30 May):

Anyway…

Witnessing the rate of growth regardless of the bumpy road month after month keeps me on track and reminds me of how possible this FI thing is. Especially when there aren’t any detrimental factors slowing us down, such as an expensive show of status, insecurity, consumerism, or a succubus.

I may have another significant expense in near future that will help me increase my net-worth faster, but let’s talk about it when the time comes. For now, the plan is simple: save > 60% of the net income, invest >= 50% of the savings, keep the rest ready for opportunities and recessions.

Until next week!