Investment allocation breakdown for 2023 Q1

Disclaimer: I am not a registered investment advisor, and even if I was, I wouldn’t be your investment advisor. The information found in this blog post is in­tended to be strictly anecdotal and should not be construed as financial advice. Everyone’s situation is uniquely different, so if you are seeking guid­ance, be sure to consult a licensed and certified professional.

 
Another quarter, another investment allocation breakdown.

It’s almost time for me to do another comprehensive edition of one of these, similar to the one I did in July 2022, but until then, I recommend taking a look at that one to understand the finer details of why I invest the way that I do (though keeping in mind that some of that information may have al­read­y become outdated in the last three quarters).

Cash

As is expected for the first quarter of the year, my cash balance has dropped substantially from saving up during Q4 of last year in or­der to dump a lot of money into tax-advantaged accounts on the first of the year after contribution limits reset.

Because of rising rates and the fact that I use an online savings account, I’ve been able to get a passable amount of interest just from keeping cash in my bank, but I don’t want to fall into the trap of becoming comfortable with guaranteed interest and missing out on potential stock market spikes, so I made sure to move forward with my standard investment strategy without being affected by emotion-based reconsiderations or doubts.

  1.21%

Domestic broad market index funds

While the economy wasn’t doing well, I focused more on investing in high-yield dividend funds so I could continue staying in the mar­ket but not be so harshly affected by falling market prices. It’s obviously not possible to predict the future, but it seems like things might have stabilized now. As a result, I’m holding all the high-yield dividend funds that I bought already, but all my new money is go­ing into the total stock market instead.

 42.35%

International total market index funds

No changes.

  4.22%

Target date funds

Like I do every year on January 1 after the annual contribution limit reset, I contributed the maximum amounts allowed to my Roth IRA and Health Savings Account (HSA) and put several thousand dollars into my SEP-IRA (if you’re not familiar, the SEP-IRA con­tri­bu­tion limit is dynamic based on your net earnings, so I never know what exactly my limit is going to be until the year’s Sched­ule C is complete).

I self-manage and self-allocate all my non-retirement savings, but for savings in retirement accounts, I use target-date funds that will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly reallocate my money into safer investment products as I get older.

 19.52%

Real estate investment trusts (REITs)

No changes.

 12.36%

Bonds

My allocation in bonds went up by a little bit since last quarter because of the purchase limit reset on Series I bonds with the United States Treasury. I don’t plan on this being a long-term thing, but at least for now when inflation is still high, Series I bonds are still a high­er guaranteed rate of return than certificates of deposit, even with the higher interest rates nowadays.

  7.40%

Cryptocurrency

I know I said I wouldn’t buy more cryptocurrency and just hold onto what I bought years ago and wait it out, but after the recent col­lapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the unprecedented move by the FDIC to insure all customer deposits (as opposed to just up to $250k) made me lose a little bit more faith in the United States dollar.

I was clearly not alone, because the price of Bitcoin started steadily climbing. It didn’t go up nowhere near enough for me to be able to recover my previous losses in cryptocurrency, but because I bought in shortly after the SVB incident at a lower price, my recent earn­ings from the past few weeks have offset some of my previous losses.

  5.50%

Individual stocks and private companies

If you remember from my previous financial breakdowns, I generally only invest in companies that I believe in and personally use fre­quent­ly. There is one more company I added this past quarter, which I will probably disclose the next time I do a “comprehensive e­di­tion” version of one of these breakdowns.

On somewhat of a related note, a company in which I invested during a private equity funding round a while back just completed its in­i­tial public offering. The stock price spiked up very hard… then plummeted uncontrollably. My original investment is now less than a tenth of what it used to be. 🤦 That should serve as a warning of the danger of investing in individual companies.

  5.23%

Precious metals

I don’t know if this is because of the substantially higher amount of money I have in Vanguard compared to Fidelity, but in Vanguard, I’m able to make purchases first and go into a negative settlement fund balance—almost as if I am investing on margin—but incur no interest or fees as long as I make my account whole via a direct deposit by the settlement date. Unfortunately, Fidelity doesn’t offer me this perk.

Because of this, every time I want to make a purchase on Fidelity, I have to pre-deposit a certain amount of money from my bank ac­count first, and then can only use that amount of money to make purchases.

This means that, on Vanguard, I can pick out my investments first, and then transfer over an exact amount of money to the cent from my savings account. However, on Fidelity, I have to estimate the approximate cost of the stocks I want to purchase, deposit a little bit more than that (in case the price goes up while I’m transacting), and then have a bit of leftover money in my settlement fund.

When I’m investing in high-risk assets like individual companies and cryptocurrency-tied securities, I have a set number of non-fractional shares that I want to purchase. With my leftover money, I’ve gotten into the habit of just putting it into more gold, which (along with the fact that the price of gold as gone a little bit up) explains why my precious metals allocation is a tiny bit higher than it was last quarter.

  1.08%

Fine art, and other collectibles

No changes.

  1.13%

If you’re used to coming to these investment allocation breakdowns to check in on my stock investment challenge with Doug Wreden, the one-year in­vesting period has concluded—you can find an in-depth analysis of the results at “One-year update: Investing US$10k in the stock market – Parkzer vs. DougDoug & Twitch Chat.”

 

—§—

 

 

—§—