Portfolio Thoughts
- Uncomfortably Long – In early 2018 I decided it was time to “derisk” my portfolio a bit. I felt like stocks had rocked and rolled a bit too much. By mid-2018 I had raised a substantial bond position, built a new commodity position, and had decreased my stock exposure greatly. As I’ve been learning and adjusting my strategy over the past couple of years, I’d held these allocations pretty constant. After the markets got knocked around pretty good earlier in the year (due to COVID) I started changing my attitude about where I believed things were heading. Of course, no one can possibly know what will happen. Regardless, I am now at my lowest bond/cash weighting in a long time. I am ‘uncomfortably long’ assets. I would much prefer to be more conservative and safely ride out whatever happens. I believe, however, if I do that it might wind up being devastating to my investment portfolio (and net worth). I wrote up my thoughts on a lot of the research I’ve done over the past few months in a separate document yesterday (https://deanorolls.com/2020/12/01/im-uncomfortably-long-assets/). This explains several of the topics I’ve been spending time researching to come to these decisions. Additionally, a lot of circumstances have changed (in my personal life) that have made me decide this is the correct move for my overall portfolio. Risk = ON [very uncomfortably]!
- Bitcoin – My Bitcoin position has swelled greatly in recent months. I guess this is the biggest news within my portfolio. I’m coming up on my first anniversary of owning it and plan to revisit the position soon (so I won’t spend too much time on it here). I’ve spent considerable time/energy learning about it this year. I’ve added to my original position several times (as I learn more and more). I think a lot of people should do the same. I see a lot of really smart people who quote/study a lot of Buffett, Munger, and Ben Graham give regurgitated takes on Bitcoin. I think they need to think for themselves more! I’ve challenged myself to do so and it has benefited me greatly. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. — Ben FRANKLIN.
- Coffee Can – I’m becoming more and more comfortable with the concept of buying an asset and putting it in a coffee can on the shelf and never selling it…EVER! A few years ago, this concept was not one I would have embraced. I was constantly looking for new opportunities and weighing them against existing assets. Along with some other recent adjustments to my process, however, it is fitting in nicely. I allocate new capital into whatever I believe has the best value at that time (or whatever is most out of whack with my target allocations) and then stop. Full stop. Never to do another thing again. Just let whatever is going to happen…happen. It is going to happen anyway no matter how much time/energy I spend thinking about it. If scenarios present themselves at some point, I am not opposed to reallocating capital but it is not something I wake up looking for each day, week, month. I have several positions that I believe will be coffee can portfolio holdings in my portfolio. I’ll sell them if/when I need money in retirement, otherwise they’ll just sit there.
Portfolio Actions
Not much happened in my portfolio this month (transaction wise). This coffee can methodology is pretty boring. That said, I was able to do two of my favorite things this month…lower taxes and lower fees.
I moved my HSA moved to a new provider. I don’t use my HSA for health-related expenses at all. I use it as a retirement vehicle to be able to avoid taxes in my portfolio. Moving to my new provider will; 1) lower (actually eliminate) my account’s expenses (although they were not very high anyway) and 2) make it easier to manage. I get way more joy than most people do from figuring out ways to pay less in fees and to cut my tax bill. If I know I can lock money away from the taxman for a few decades I’m not sure there is a better feeling. Seriously… No, I’m serious… Really, really serious… So, during the month I got my account moved and then topped it off with the rest of my 2020 contribution. I now eagerly await the new year and I’ll fully fund 2021 as soon as I can in January.
During the month, I also reinvested some dividends that I had received (that was sitting in cash) and contributed to my/our Roth IRA. None of these were big moves but necessary maintenance. I was buying into the information technology and energy sectors. My allocation was most out of whack in these two sectors last month (too low of an allocation in each).
About Deanco Investment “Group”
There is no investment group, it is just me and my money. I’m just a normal guy who has a full-time job that is not in the field of investing (right now). However, I do have a finance degree and co-founded a fintech investment performance reporting company out of college (in the late 90s). I’ve always been interested in investing and doing it well. I’ve read many of the great investing books and built all kinds of tools/models (and fang-dangled spreadsheets). I’ve been super focused on my investing for the past few years. I began working hard to get my investments into assets that I believe will perform well in this crazy world we find ourselves in these days. I’ve learned a lot and changed strategies the more I’ve learned. It is why I like investing; you can always learn more than you know today and use your knowledge in your investing journey. I try to write down my journey each month and tracking my performance. It helps me to perform regular reviews on my investments. Since I’m doing them anyway, I figured I’d share. I try to share my investment portfolio, individual investments, and performance (good or bad) each month. This is my November 2020 update (37 months of tracking it).
Writing things down has been a game-changer. No one particularly gives a hoot about me or my money but the discipline of noodling on things and then writing down the thoughts regularly has been extremely helpful. It has also been excellent to be able to come back later and easily remember why I did a particular thing I did.
I do this solely for myself but if you are interested you can read more here: https://deanorolls.com/investing/
I’d love to talk about investing with you. Link up with me on Twitter https://twitter.com/deanoroll5
For a full update download this ^^^ PDF.
DeanoRolls (@deanoroll5) 