My contribution to globalization at the start of the year. 🌍🚀

I would like to ask the knowledgeable real estate owners but also everyone in general what you think of our plan.

We have been living in a very nice and now completely renovated and modernized old apartment for rent for 11 years.

Our landlords now want to sell and approached us first. I think the price is totally fair for the location, furnishings and the fact that virtually everything in the apartment has been redone in recent years.

(77sqm old building 4 rooms, 1 is a breakthrough. Large basement for home gym.

Community garden in the backyard.

2015 floors restored, new power lines and distributors, new wallpaper and in the high hallway new ceiling (hanging lower), completely new windows. 2018 Bathroom and kitchen modernized.

2021 new double sized balconies and new gas boiler).

Purchase price: 200.000€

Offer from the agents: € 70,000 in one go, the rest over 10 years in installments directly to them, interest-free and flexible.

My current portfolio provides exactly this one-off payment and the ancillary purchase costs plus a small cash buffer for any repairs that may be necessary.

With the installment to the agent and the house payment, we are €300 below the current rent + savings rate.

I should also add that we are well established here with jobs and a child and the apartment fulfills all our wishes. A possible termination due to personal use by the potential new landlord would hit us hard. The rent is currently still low but could be increased by 15% every 3 years over the next 9 years, only then would it reach the local rate. Which is what I would assume with new landlords.

For me, this is a very good offer, it just leaves me without any capital investment. Which not only takes away my return, but also one of my hobbies. At least for the next 10 years until I have paid off the apartment.

What do you say? Go ahead and sell everything to live rent-free in 10 years?

Thank you very much for reading and I would be grateful for any comments or objections :)

I have looked at my portfolio review of 2025 and my start to 2026 - not just "how much", but above all: why and what I have learned from it. I am happy to share this with you and look forward to discussion & feedback and, above all, your views: what was the result and also your perception of your stock market year 2025 - and what set-up are you starting the new year with?

Time to reflect 🧘‍♂️

1) Change of mood at the end of 2024

After a rather sobering (for me) stock market year 2024, there was a clear turnaround in sentiment in November 24: on the day of Trump's election victory in Nov 24, the market jumped significantly (Dow +3.57 %, S&P 500 +2.53 %, Nasdaq +2.95 %). This made the "risk-on" narrative credible again - and you could see it in the behavior of many portfolios. At least in mine, if I'm honest with myself ;)

2) Q1/Spring 2025: Unusually Europe-friendly

The first few weeks of 2025 were indeed unusually Europe-heavy: in the first six weeks of 2025, the STOXX 600 was up >5.5%, while the S&P 500 was only up +2.7% in the same period.

This also became clear later in hindsight: in 2025, defense and banks were extremely strong drivers in Europe at times. I was also right in this upswing ($DHL (+1,24%) , $GBF (+3,53%) , $RIO (+2,43%) ) but unfortunately also some disastrous ($NESN (-2,58%) , $MC (-0,54%) , $NKE (+1,9%) ,$NOVO B (+5,65%) ) decisions were made. Partly also trend- and community-driven -> yes, you are to blame ;)

3) Beginning of April: Bad times

Then came the break: The strong start to the year was literally "wiped out" in just a few sessions, partly due to the customs/trade war shock. YTD turned completely negative, and by April 7 the STOXX 600 was around 12% below the closing price on April 2. $TSLA (+2,09%) and $NVDA (-0,64%) purchases. I also $PEP (-1,62%) I bought cheaply, but a real breakout is still a long way off.

4) Shortly afterwards: fireworks

Then a tailwind came back in the US from the middle/end of April, when the market repriced parts of the Trump escalation in the direction of "negotiations/de-escalation". The Donald kept a few election promises that were perhaps not quite official .-)

5) H2/late year: AI + interest rates as a "macro tailwind"

Towards the end of the year, the environment was then more strongly characterized by two factors: AI-driven risk assets and falling interest rates. It was an AI-driven rally, which also supported sentiment and inflows into US equity again.

And on the interest rate side: the Fed set the key interest rate at 3.50 % to 3.75 % in December after a further cut.

At the end of the year, the major benchmarks were also closer together again: STOXX 600 +16.66 % in 2025, S&P 500 ~+17 %.

6) Golden times 🥇🏅

Then there was the beautiful gold (u.W.). 2025 was a real exclamation mark: spot gold was up around 66% over the year (according to Reuters, the strongest increase since 1979).

Silver was even more extreme at around +168 % per year.

I have already written about gold in more detail here on getquin - if you are interested in the topic, you can find the article in my profile.

Personal performance 2025

• Internal rate of return: approx. +10 %
• TTWROR: approx. -33 %
• Dividend yield: approx. 1.3 % p.a.

The figures confirm what I described above: in my opinion, I made very good operational decisions (realized profits, used tax aspects, built up cash flow). At the same time, the TTWROR shows quite clearly that the portfolio structure was too volatile and too strongly growth/trend-oriented in the meantime. Too often, I have taken the "falling knife".

Before the turn of the year, I invested in $NVDA (-0,64%) , $TSLA (+2,09%) , $GBF (+3,53%) and $DHL (+1,24%) - each with positive returns - for the following reasons:

• Utilize saver's allowance
• Reduce tech-heaviness
• Cash generation (you can read why below)

Starting point Jan 2026:

Brief overview of the 2026 start setup

Asset mix

• Individual shares: 71.4 %
• ETFs: 16.0 %
• Gold: 9.2 %
• Crypto: 3.4 %

Regional breakdown

• North America: approx. 45.7 %
• Europe developed: approx. 26.0
• Rest of the world (including EM/Asia/Australasia): approx. 22.5 %

Sector structure

• Financial services: 20.5 %
• Consumer goods (cyclical): 19,2 %
• Consumer staples: 15.7
• Information technology: 14.8
• Materials: 7.9
• Healthcare: 4.7

Start to the new year

Parallel to the sales at the end of 2025, I reallocated or increased my holdings in January, including in $O (+0,84%), $VNA (+1,7%) and $ZAL (-0,77%)- with the logic:

• Strengthen cash flow/dividend components
• Turnaround opportunities as a limited admixture
• Reduce volatility in the portfolio

Why I am thinking more defensively in 2026

Next week, the purchase of an apartment on beautiful Lake Tegernsee 🏝️ will be notarized. This is a step into a completely new asset class for me, as it's my first property of my own. - In addition to construction financing, it will of course also be a liquidity issue over the next few weeks.

I may make a separate post about this, perhaps some of you are also currently facing this step?

I can mentally cope well with drawdowns. But: being able to bear risk does not automatically mean having to bear risk.

My portfolio should fit in with this new phase of my life.

What I will do differently in 2026

Because a new asset class will be added to my portfolio in 2026 with the purchase of an apartment, I want to position my portfolio more defensively in future - without completely foregoing opportunities for returns : risk. Otherwise we would be completely wrong on the stock market :)

1) ETF core should dominate

I want my portfolio to be dominated by my ETFs in future. My target scenario is therefore

• 60% of the deposits via a savings plan in my 4 core ETFs ($VWRL (+0,43%) , $COMM (+1,91%) , $WSML (+1,22%) , $IEMS (-0,44%) ).
• 30 % stocks
• 10 % commodities
• Play money: crypto, certificates, pennies (weighting < 5%)

Important! This is a start-in-2026 setup

Of course, as always in life, a plan is there to be thrown overboard - so you have to wait and see how assets perform in the year ahead and reassess regularly.

2) Stocks yes - but with more discipline

Turnaround/opportunity stocks and trends remain part of my approach, but clearly limited. I want these positions to be what they should be again: An addition, not a foundation.

I will reduce (basic) consumption and strengthen healthcare. And tech?

3) Tech: more controlled

Tech will remain a driver of returns in 2025 - but I want to build it up again in a controlled manner after my sales. I will monitor the trend from a distance for the first few weeks and possibly months and bet on corrections. You can't do without it - as you can see from the Mag-7 performance in 2025:

• $GOOGL (+0,59%) : +65,3 %
• $NVDA (-0,64%) : +38,9 %
• $MSFT (-0,05%) : +14,7 %
• $META (+1,35%) : +12,7 %
• $TSLA (+2,09%) : +11,4 %
• $AAPL (-1,36%) : +8,6 %
• $AMZN (+2,73%) : +5,2 %

On that note, happy new year!

$VWRL (+0,43%)
$EWG2 (+2,45%)
$O (+0,84%)
$PEP (-1,62%)
$MSFT (-0,05%)
$P911 (-1,2%)
$BLK (+3,09%)
$NKE (+1,9%)
$RIO (+2,43%)
$MC (-0,54%)
$NOVO B (+5,65%)
$NESN (-2,58%)
$ZAL (-0,77%)
$COMM (+1,91%)
$IEMS (-0,44%)
$BTC (-0,4%)
$ETH (-0,72%)
$XRP (+0,97%)
$PEPE (+0,38%)

Hello dear community,

This is my first post on Getquin. Nobody knows me, nobody knows my portfolio or my background. Therefore, here is a short introduction of me.

Who am I?

I am Malte, 23 years old, work full-time in a medium-sized company, have a Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering and am currently doing my Master's in Applied Data Science.

How long have I been on the stock market?

I started investing in 2022, but made a lot of mistakes right at the beginning. Derivatives, knock-outs, holding individual stocks far too short, etc. In total, I lost around 3000 euros as a result.

What has changed?

When I received a full salary for the first time (April 2024), I woke up. I read the biography of Warren Buffet, the book "The Richest Man in Babylon" and other books and realized that there is no such thing as quick riches.

At that time, a lot of things changed in my family, so I had to move out of my home on October 1, 2024. Everything I had managed to save by then went on the move and furnishings, and hardly anything was invested. The money that was left was in the call money account. The result: 2 years on the stock market, 3000 euros loss. Ouch

What happened next?

I closed the portfolio and opened a new one with Scalable to start from scratch. The first step was to set up a savings plan on the $VWRL (+0,43%) was created. This has been running continuously since then with 200 euros every month. I had had enough of individual shares for the time being. Another 250 euros went into the call money account every month. I can't put any more money aside at the moment, as the tuition fees of 500 euros per month are really restricting me.

On April 1, I received a tax refund from the tax office, which I paid 1:1 into the deposit. I was able to use the money to buy 12 $GOOGL (+0,59%) at 154 euros. The investment was intended to be long-term and I opted for Alphabet purely because of the extremely high cash flow. The slump in the share price due to the Trump tariffs came in handy.

I also decided on 01.08.25 to jump on the bandwagon. $BTC (-0,4%) to jump on the bandwagon. However, as I'm not good at dealing with high volatility and therefore don't want to make individual purchases, I've set up a savings plan that invests 25 euros a week in Bitcoin. This way I hope to build something up in the long term.

My strategy for the future:

Growth:

I enjoy trading individual stocks and would like to add a maximum of 10 individual stocks to my portfolio in the long term. I will buy these when the money is available and I have found a sensible investment (as with $GOOGL (+0,59%) the financial situation of the company is decisive for me, not hype or anything else). In return, an additional 100 euros will be transferred to the custody account as cash every month from 01.01.2026 and 300 euros every month from 01.10.2026.

The savings plan on $BTC (-0,4%) will also remain. I have no plans to increase the amount here. I'll treat the money as if it wasn't there. If the BTC price reaches 1,000,000 euros at some point, I'll be happy; if not, it won't be too painful a loss.

Foundation:

The $VWRL (+0,43%) remains as the foundation. The savings rate will be increased to EUR 500 every month after completion of the Master's degree on 01.10.2026.

Pension:

I have decided to do something specifically for my pension. To this end, from 01.01.2026 I will invest 100 euros every month in the $VHYL (+0,58%) invest. The savings sum will be increased by 50 euros every 5 years. In a conservative scenario, this will give me a gross annual dividend of 33,000 euros by the time I retire, which I think is quite nice.

Conclusion:

I hope that I can build something up in the long term. I might be able to significantly increase my savings rate by increasing my salary after my Master's degree, but we'll see.

Don't forget the one $MCD (-1,22%) share in the portfolio, that was pretty much my first share and I can't really part with it hahaha.

My goal for the end of 2026 is to have 10,000 euros in my portfolio.

I'll keep you up to date.

I would be delighted to hear a lively exchange in the comments!

Happy New Year first of all. 🎊

Having achieved most of my goals in 2025, I would now like to set myself ambitious goals for 2026.

I would like to use the same categories as in 2025.

My current portfolio value is €148,421.85, as shown below.

After a very eventful year in 2025, I can focus entirely on maximizing my savings rate this year, as there are no important changes in my personal or professional life.

The most important thing for me will be to reach the portfolio value of €200,000, which is quite ambitious given my starting value and my deposits, and assuming that the market plays along properly.

Despite my ambitions, it is again very important to me to achieve a balance between a patronizing life and a decent savings rate. To this end, I have set my savings rate so that I still have some fun money left over each month (approx. €1,000) and that I will receive a special payment of €7,000 in November, which I could theoretically invest in full in addition to my normal savings rate.

The dividends from my $VWRL (+0,43%) and $TDIV (+0,4%) will be half reinvested and half consumed.

As last year, another goal will be to add one or more risk/return drivers and I expect myself to have more courage to increase these in bad phases. To this end, the plan is to be a little more active in the return drivers and to take a little more risk alongside my main investments - the target for this would be around 10% of the portfolio.

Goals 2026:

Portfolio value: > €200,000 = main goal

Investments in the amount of: €35,000

Dividends: > € 3,000

Yield driver: add 1 or more - maximum 10% of the portfolio

Travel: travel to 3 new countries - Japan is already booked for May , tbd, tbd

I wish you a great and successful new year. Despite all your ambitions, don't forget about life and enjoy it as much as I enjoy this app and the process of building wealth.

Cheers 2026 🥂

The last major dividend for this year came in today:

FTSE All-World ETF.

No payout, no blowing money -

👉 will be fully reinvested.

That's exactly how time works for me:

Collect dividends, reinvest, increase shares.

2026 can come. 📈

I wish you all a happy new year, good health in the coming year and maximum returns.💸

Your Charly

Today I received my last dividend for the year 2025 from $VWRL (+0,43%) . 💸

A nice end to a very good year overall.

In 2025, I once again learned a lot, gained experience and developed financially.

I am very satisfied with my journey in the world of finance so far and am convinced that I will continue to be just as motivated and successful next year. 🚀

I'm really looking forward to that.

I wish you all a happy new year. 🎆

Stay healthy, stay invested and may you all achieve what you set out to do. 🍀✨

My last dividend has also been paid out. And the year 2025 is over. It was actually a very good year on the stock market, but very volatile due to tariffs and AI. My year was so incredibly exciting, be it the motorcycle license, semester abroad but also self-employment with a record high in December (for many still just pennies)

I'm looking forward to the next year and to updating you again with analyses, opinions, news ... to inform you about my current thoughts and stocks.

Thanks also to all the active people here :) there are many that I/we appreciate!

So the last dividend of the year is still going into the account.

A happy new year and a successful new year 2026 to you all. Stay healthy and may your goals come true. 🪅🧧🚀