Introduction
It is the time of the year for my 2023 Q2 net worth update. I aim to do a quarterly update of my finances to keep track of my FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) journey.
Tracking our net worth may not be something we think about on a daily basis, but it holds incredible value when it comes to managing our financial well-being.
Net worth is a powerful indicator of our overall financial health, representing the difference between our assets and liabilities.
By regularly monitoring and tracking our net worth, we gain valuable insights into our financial progress and can make informed decisions to improve our financial standing.
So why track our net worth?
It provides a snapshot of our financial situation, allowing us to understand the bigger picture.
It helps us assess our progress towards our financial goals.
It helps identify areas of financial weakness so that we can tweak our plan and take counter measures.
Without further a due, let’s dive right into my 2023 Q2 Net Worth.
Disclaimer #1: All mentioned values are in SGD.
Disclaimer #2: All reported values are as of 29th June 2023
My 2023 Goals progress
For my 2023 financial goal, I aim to deposit 13,000 SGD into my investment account this year. This is how I am doing so far:
| Goal | Current | Pending |
| 13,000 SGD | 5,550 SGD | 7,450 SGD |
I know I am well off track to hitting this target.
During the start of the year, I planned to invest around 1,100 SGD monthly which would put me on track to hit this goal.
However as we all know, plans do changed and I have been spending more than what I have allocated myself for which is definitely not good.
NGL, I highly doubt that I can hit this goal but we shall see!
My Portfolio Breakdown
Portfolio performance
| Vested amount | Current value | +/- % |
| SGD 44,205.87 | SGD 46,984.83 | + 6.29% |
My risk appetite is a bit more on the riskier side as you can see from my portfolio breakdown.
Am I looking to make any changes to it?
With my DCA plan more heavily focused on ETFs, VOO and QQQ weightage should be higher the near future.
I am working towards a 50% ETFs allocation and splitting the remaining 50% among PLTR and ETH. This would be a more balanced portfolio for myself.
My 2023 Performance
I have been tracking my investments since Jan 2023 and fortunately, I have been in the green since then.
For those who are not aware, the difference in my net worth between Mar and Apr is because I did not add in Eth into tracking previously.
ETFs
As many investment gurus always say that most people are suited to just buy into ETFs, QQQ & VOO have generally done well for me so far.
QQQ have been the better investment so far as compared to VOO with a 11% profit. This could mainly be due to the overall positive earnings resulted from the Q2 Big Tech companies.
PLTR
Palantir has been going nuts!
It reported positive earnings and have been on a super grow trend while also riding on the AI boom. Though I am not sure how long the AI boom is gonna ride on in the stock market, Palantir is already up 138% YTD.
I have been owning Palantir shares for awhile now and honestly, I was down most of the time 💩.
Palantir’s “bull” momentum seems to be slowing down recently and I am actually expecting a small pull back as the share price have just been going up too steeply!
This is a stock I have great conviction in and don’t mind holding on to it for a long time.
It has positive cash flow, high revenue growth, and customer retention is very high, meaning most businesses renew their contracts with Palantir. To me, these are signs of a quality company.
ETH
My thoughts on ETH and BTC is like VOO and QQQ. BTC is like VOO and ETH is like QQQ to me.
While I do not want to own too much Crypto investments, I choose to buy into ETH as my long term crypto investment.
BlackRock, the largest money manager in the world filed an application for a spot Bitcoin ETF in the US. Currently, the only crypto-ETFs that the US has approved are the bitcoin futures contracts and there is a positive sentiment that BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF could highly likely be approved.
This could be a major catalyst for the Crypto market.
Also, the Bitcoin halving is set on 2024 and I am looking to hold onto Eth till 2025/2026 and see how this investment performs.
Personal thoughts on the stock market
Honestly, I am not too sure too.
Many companies are still making layoffs and my company is also on a headcount freeze.
On the other hand, tech stocks are rising high while riding on this AI boom.
Is this the start of the bull market? Maybe.
My personal opinion is that the markets are slowly recovering. We might still see market pull backs occasionally which is normal, but I feel that it is unlikely that the market will drop back to 2022 levels.
While we are riding on challenging times now, sentiments are more high than low.
Life updates
My Investment plan
I am sticking to my DCA plan monthly by running on my war chest fund. Currently, this is how I am investing monthly:
VOO: $400
QQQ: $400
PLTR: $400
ETH: $1,000 (will repeat this for 4 more months and I will stop investing)
As I am depositing a lesser amount into my investment fund than my DCA plan, I will run out of ammo to invest monthly in about 5 months time.
At that time, I am planning to readjust my monthly DCA amount to a small sum so that I have enough to invest and build on my war chest concurrently.
Regardless, I will put money into my investment fund monthly.
The more I put, the faster I reach my FIRE goal!
Dabbling into Options
I have been reading up on options for the past 1 week and am interested in the idea of selling Puts and Calls. I am not still very new in this and I will just share what I have learnt so far 😅.
By selling Put options – it allows me to earn some premium while the stock price stays above the strike price and if it does not, the option buyer can choose to exercise the option and I get to own 100 share of the stocks which I don’t mind owner at a cheaper price.
By selling Call options – it allows me to earn some premium while the stock prices stays below the strike price and if it does not, the option will get exercised and I will sell 100 shares to the options buyer which I do take a profit too.
By combining these 2, it is a wheel strategy.
Unfortunately, SYFE does not allows for options trading and it does not allow me to transfer my assets over to another brokerage app too. So, the migration part can be quite annoying.
I still need some time to figure this out and hope this can be a new source of income.
Conclusion
The financial goal that I have set for myself might not be realistic as of now.
No matter how good or bad the market is behaving, I will invest every month.
My thoughts on the market are not as important as taking action into investing for our future self.
I will continue to write out articles and post about my net worth from time to time to keep myself accountable and document this financial journey.
For whoever might chance upon this, do share with me your financial journey. I would like to hear about it! 😊
A Quote to sum up the week
Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain
Cheers,
Eugene Loh