January/February 2018 – Investment portfolio growth

The start of the year has been a little rocky for finance across the board. After markets being at all-time-high’s for a while, the Canadian and American economies and stock markets took some major blows in January and February. The same goes for the cryptocurrency markets, which I’m adding to my portfolio updates for the first time in this post. But overall, things really aren’t as bad as the headlines would make them seem.  Let’s take a look at how my investments did for the months of January and February 2018.  You’ll notice some changes below of how I calculate some of my assets.

Overall Assets

TFSA TD e-Series Index Funds

January and February saw some major 1 day drops in the markets, which is reflected in the chart and graph below. In the 2 months, the Canadian Index and Canadian Bond Index lost value, and overall my portfolio lost $4. In the grand scheme of things, only losing $4 when the market saw such major drops is a good thing. After they dropped, my assets were able to gain back a lot of their value in the weeks to follow.

I usually like to buy at least a little bit of e-Series funds every month, but with some major costs (that I’ll discuss in my Savings section), I didn’t buy any additional assets in January or February. Overall, I’m still seeing gains in my portfolio, and have seen a $1,700 increase in value of my portfolio since I started:

RRSP TD e-Series Index Funds

My RRSP consisting of an aggressive TD e-Series portfolio mirrored pretty close to my TFSA. Again my Canadian Index assets fell in value, but with no Canadian Bonds in my RRSP, this account actually saw a little bit of growth compared to my TFSA in January/February.

I didn’t contribute any money to my RRSP in January/February 2018. Overall, I’m seeing about a $190 gain in my RRSP TD e-Series portfolio since I started investing.

High Interest Savings Account

As is with life, sometimes you find yourself needing to pay some major costs that may or may not be expected. For me, those costs came as a new roof for my condo building. With a special levy to the tune of $5,500, I needed to take some of my money out of my High Interest Savings Account to help pay the costs.  It’s a great reminder as to why you shouldn’t put all of your money in investments, and always keep some around for a rainy day. Luckily I didn’t need to dip into my savings that much and repaid a bit at the end of February.

Home Value

This month I’ve used a different method to calculate how much value my home has.  In previous updates, I’ve always used what I paid for my condo as the condo value. This month I’ve decided to use my city assessment that I get once per year as my condo value. The assessment you receive from the city isn’t always the most accurate representation of what your property is worth, but it does provide a general guide. I bought my condo in 2012 for $183,000 and this year, my property was assessed at $246,900! Not a bad investment increase.

Cryptocurrency Portfolio

In January, I wrote a post about how I’ve decided to dabble in cryptocurrency as a hobby. I’ve really enjoyed getting into Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, following the news and trends, and riding the rollercoaster of portfolio value. As I wrote in my post, cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile and risky. I would only recommend putting in what you are willing to lose.

Luckily for me, I got in in November 2017, right before the whole cryptocurrency market boomed. January and February were somewhat of a bloodbath for the crypto markets, and I saw my portfolio lose a lot of value. But I can’t be too upset that even after 2 months of major loses, I’ve more then doubled my money! I’m in the game for the long run, but who knows what it will look like a month from now.

The tables below show the values I own of different cryptocurrencies.  Value changes are attributed to both the rise and fall of prices, as well as trades I made to sell off some currencies, buy more of the ones I own, or buy new ones altogether:

Car

In my December post, I wrote that I bought a new car, and provided it a guessed value of $15,000, as there aren’t Black Book estimates for new cars. What I failed to mention is that I’m financing the car. I’m paying 0% interest over the next 5 years, and while the value of the car may be $15,000 or more, I still a lot of money on it. So this month, I’m updating my car as an asset by negating what I still owe on the vehicle.  That’s why you’ll see a major different in asset value in my overall calculation. I re-evaluated the car value to be about $20,000, but I still owe a little over $20,000 on it. At the moment, it’s a negative asset.