Dear Community,
After cleaning up some early sins in the portfolio, I am now ready to face the judgment of the GQers and would like to hear your opinion about my portfolio. I am using the steps from @DonkeyInvestorso that I don't forget anything essential and put a point 0 in front of it with some key data about myself for context :-)
Step 0: What? Who are you?
I am in my mid-30s and live with my wife and two children in the Speckgürtel of Berlin. Here we built an EFH in a residential area in 2018. We are both fully employed - I in the IT strategy of a large German corporation and my wife in public service. In the pandemic I started to look into stocks and since September 2022 I am invested in various stocks. More about this below.
Step 1: Tell us something about your investment horizon and your goals
To start, the main investing goal right now is our own property. I consider the loan installments to be part of our savings, as it allows us to call a bit more of our house and land our own each month. We have chosen a loan model that gives us interest rate security (~2.1%) down to the last euro, so we don't have to worry about what the interest rate environment will be like in 10, 15 or 20 years.
In addition to the loan, we are steadily adding to our nest egg(s) / small project capital / vacation capital. In and around the house and garden are always current topics that make our lives easier or at least more beautiful :-)
For the remaining invest sum there are currently two possible scenarios.
Scenario 1: Over the next 15 years or so, some equity capital is to be saved for a possible vacation property in DE or abroad.
Scenario 2: If this plan should fail for reasons in the future, the investment horizon is unlimited until retirement. In that case the time frame would be about 30 years.
Step 2: Outline your strategy and explain how it will help you achieve your goals
After doing some research on finance online and with books, I ended up with a two-part strategy. I save 150 EUR per month spread over 3 ETFs and thus map a 50/30/20 approach World / EM / Europe. The goal is to somewhat counteract the strong US bias in the common World indices and to orient myself closer to the distribution by GDP worldwide. It also helps me to stay interested and on task when different positions develop differently. Then you always have something to research 🙂 .
All ETF are accumulating because my goals are not dividend oriented.
I tried individual stocks in the very beginning on a very small scale, but I've since ditched them all. I am interested in financial topics, but I can't and don't want to spend the time to follow individual companies meticulously besides my family, job and house. Therefore, it remains mainly with the ETF.
As a little fun bet, I've mixed in a bit of crypto, which I don't fund out of my regular income. I participate a bit on two survey platforms and get so between 30 and 40 EUR / month. I then push the money to BISON and buy crypto with it. It gives me a good feeling to really use "play money" here, where even a total failure would not itch me. Best case scenario, that eventually goes to the moon and helps support the more serious goals 🙂 Also, I feel crypto is a good place to learn how to deal with volatility. When everyone panics because stock markets go back and forth by 5-10-15%, but that happens more or less every few weeks with crypto, it doesn't make me that crazy anymore 🙂
Step 3: Explain why you chose the exact stocks in your portfolio
First of all, I chose an ESG variant for all my ETFs. The overall ESG construct is always criticized, but I think it works at least approximately. If I put an MSCI World ETF with and without ESG side by side, a large number of the companies that I would also avoid according to my moral sense fall out. I simply don't want to be invested in companies that are actively working against the future of me and my children. Sometimes the whole thing goes beyond my personal feelings, for example on the subject of alcohol, but that's the way it is. Fortunately, my EUR ETF has LVMH in it ;-)
So even if the system can be improved, which is certainly the case, in the end products come out that I find better than those without ESG.
About the individual positions:
$LESW: My base world ETF, but it has pretty strict ESG rules. Here about half of the MSCI World companies fly out and "only" 748 positions remain. This ETF gets 75€ per month.
$EDM2 (-0.06%): The EM ETF's main purpose is to further diversify the portfolio as itself. Have no particular return expectations.
Here I invest monthly 45€
$SAUM (+1.14%): With the Europe (not only Euro) ETF I deliberately enter a few overlaps with the World ETF, but I can cope well. I would like to implement with it in the total portfolio the weighting approximately globally after GDP.
Here flow monthly 30€ into it.
$BTC (+1.43%): The standard among cryptocurrencies. My little bet on the status as "digital gold".
$ETH (+3.24%): My focus here is on smart contracts and other applications of blockchain technology. Since many other Chains are based on Ethereum or even implement it, I see it as the basis for many web applications of the future and therefore worth a bet.
$XRP (+5.58%): I like here that a concrete problem (internat. money transfers) is to be solved and therefore the technology is well tangible for customers, institutions and governments. From my point of view, the concept has good prospects for the future.
Step 4: Give us some insight on how you plan to grow your depot.
Here's where it gets simple: as our family income increases, I'll scale up the ETF savings plans at the current ratio - and end.
In the crypto space, I still have my eye on Cardano, as the project's approach of moving towards absolute decentralization with a scientific approach (reviews, peer reviews, community consensus processes, etc.) appeals to me. However, I am still missing the view for a possible use case in the real world.
Step 5: Don't forget to share with the community what you don't want in your repository, i.e. which tips you can do without.
Individual stocks are not really interesting for me at the moment for the reasons mentioned above.
Also, any suggestions that recommend reducing loan repayments in favor of other investments are hard limits for me. Otherwise, fire away 🙂
Step 6: Share absolute values
Check 🙂
