Let’s start with what my investing strategy, something I first shared way back in 2009 but wasn’t really finalised until 2012, tells me to do. For this post there are three important pillars:
- If any of my assets, diversified by country and by asset class, gets more than 25% away from the plan then I will either sell or buy as appropriate to move that asset class back to plan
- Minimise taxes meaning I keep more of my wealth for myself
- Minimise investment expenses also meaning I keep more of my wealth for myself
It’s also worth sharing some other information that helped inform my recent decisions:
- My gold had become 25% overweight
- My bonds while not 25% overweight were well overweight
- The UK 2019/20 capital gains tax annual exempt amount is £12,000. It’s also worth adding that I believe if you sell assets worth more than £48,000 or have gains before taking off losses of £12,000 then you will also have to complete the tax return capital gains summary pages. Not a financial negative but a time waste worth avoiding if it sensibly can be.
- Once this COVID-19 problem passes it’s looking more and more likely that we’ll be Asian bound for the next part of our FIRE journey. We’ve still not finalised plans, as we’ve learnt we have no need to rush these types of decisions, but we’re confident enough to start (continue?) shifting our asset allocation over the coming 6 to 12 months. That involves moving our equity investment bias (may be controversial for some but it’s always been part of my strategy so I’m not changing it) from the UK (HYP, VUKE, VMID) to Asia mainly in the form of the Vanguard FTSE Developed Asia Pacific ex Japan UCITS ETF (VAPX).
- VAPX only went ex dividend/distribution on Thursday with all my Vanguard equity dividends/distributions being paid on the 08 April 2020.
- Within my portfolio I have pensions (all SIPP’s), an ISA, NS&I Index Linked Savings Certificates (ILSCs) and plenty of non-tax efficient investments.
The first actions taken were to use up some of that £12,000 capital gains tax annual exempt amount meaning I had to do some pruning within my non-tax efficient investments. I therefore sold all of my AstraZeneca (AZN) shares and sold half of my non-tax efficiently invested gold. These sales released £25,000 of cash for a £10,000 capital gain. I used that cash to buy VAPX. I waited until Thursday to do this otherwise I would have received VAPX dividends on that investment amount which would have then been taxed.
My ISA gives me periodic trading credits some of which were due to expire in the next week. I therefore chose to sell some bonds (INXG in this case) and again buy VAPX. Trading cost was £0 but there were of course buy/sell spreads. This was only a very partial rebalance.
I took no action in my SIPP’s or NS&I ILSCs.
After netting off our future home purchase funds as of this morning my portfolio now looks like this:
Click to enlarge, RIT asset allocation net of future home purchase funds
That is a portfolio that for me:
- has 3 years of expenses in cash which is where I want to be
- is still 17% overweight in bonds but no opportunity to minimise expenses or taxes so no action planned unless the equity markets continue to fall triggering a rebalance
- is 23% underweight property so no active rebalancing (yet). If the market doesn’t move greatly in the mean time I’ll use some of my Vanguard dividends in an investment wrapper that also contains property to passively partly rebalance here.
- is now 13% underweight gold.
- is 6% underweight international equities.
- is just right on emerging market equities.
- is 14% overweight UK equities. This week I’ll use my remaining capital gain exempt amount to sell down more of the HYP and buy VAPX.
- is 7% underweight Australia/Asian equities. That will be just right post the HYP sale.
It’s probably also worth just sharing how my portfolio is faring in the current market. From their respective peaks by my calculations the S&P500 is down 24.9%, our FTSE100 is down 28.2%, the Nikkei225 is down 19.5% while the ASX200 is down 32.4%.
In comparison from peak wealth my portfolio is down 15.1% when measured in £’s and if I measure in the currency of our likely new home, I’m down a more modest 11.9%. In £’s wealth is back to levels seen only 4 months prior to when we first FIRE’d and in the currency of our likely new home we’re still well above levels seen on FIRE day!
In conclusion, the RIT household is importantly safe and healthy at this current difficult time. Friends and family are thankfully in the same situation.
Our financial situation is also still strong thanks to my FIRE plan that was enacted way back in 2007. Thank-you FIRE! One of the best life decisions I’ve ever made. Unfortunately, some friends and family are already starting to squeak here. It’s not serious yet but if this goes on for much longer it could fairly quickly become so.
While this time is giving the planet some much needed respite, I therefore truly hope it doesn’t go on much longer. What I do hope though is that post COVID-19 people in the world act somewhere between what we have today and what we had. Maybe a bit more work from home, more free exercise in the great outdoors with family/friends rather than that monthly gym membership, more healthy cooking at home rather than that favourite restaurant, less buying of stuff that doesn’t bring us value which just might even lead to more time with loved ones and more financial security. It wouldn’t be full strength FIRE but some might just find it improves their life.
Have you been taking any action yet?
As always DYOR
