Ugh, I have so many half-written posts saved in my drafts. Really need to finish some. But in the meantime here’s what I’ve been up to lately: not much.
My shares and crypto portfolios have absolutely tanked over the past few weeks, leaving me with a bit of a mess and I’m unsure what to do. Markets seem to be operating in a way that whatever choice I make, it’s the wrong one, so I’ve held off from buying. Plus flying lessons – far out they are not cheap. Every time a lesson gets cancelled due to bad weather (of which there’s been a lot recently) I’m like YES! MONEY!
Shares
Sell: BetaShares Geared ASX200 (GEAR)
Gettin’ off the GEAR. Volatility decay meant that it was frequently underperforming my most boring holding (VESG), and I felt like things were getting really choppy as far as markets went, so I opted to pull out of all of this at a small profit.
Buy: Vanguard ESG International Shares ETF (VESG)
The rule was if I was selling out of GEAR, I had to put the results into things equally or less risky. I decided to split the money 50/50 between VESG and HACK. So this was just adding to my already large holding of VESG.
Buy: BetaShares Global Cybersecurity ETF (HACK)
Argh. This has languished at -5% since I bought it. Tech is just getting smashed at the moment and this ETF is obviously made up of a bunch of it. My personal trainer (don’t laugh, he’s smart) bought in a year or so ago and he is waaaaay more risk-averse than me when it comes to stocks, and it’s done well for him. So I thought I’d jump on in too. So that’s HACK. An ETF I bought because my personal trainer likes it. So next up on the list of investment decisions based on things that’ll make you roll your eyes is…
Buy: Dubber (DUB)
Okay, you’re going to laugh: my Amex card had a deal for a free year of Motley Fool so I was like eh why not? I know. I know. If you unsubscribe from all the marketing emails it’s not that bad. I probs wouldn’t pay for it though.
Anyway a while back they recommended Dubber – they make tech that can automatically transcribe phone calls. You know when you call a company and they tell you your call is important to them, and due to unexpected circumstances like COVID (can you still call it unexpected after 2 years?) you have to wait on hold for 4 hours, then when you get through you get told the call may be recorded for quality assurance? That recording can get passed through Dubber, which can generate a transcript which then gets reviewed. Seems pretty cool. I signed up with IB and wanted to buy something through them to see how the process went (spoiler: same as all the others, just way more obtuse), so I gave this another look and saw the price had fallen due to the ASX being a hot mess and was like… don’t mind if I do.
Crowdfunding
ReNutrients
A company that has licensed IP from a Finnish company that turns old alkaline batteries into… fertiliser. It’s a cool idea, but dunno if it’ll take off due to it not being super cost-effective at the moment – plus they down own the IP, just licence it so that’s a bit of a risk. Maybe a change of government might put a heavier focus on sustainability which would create a more favourable environment to get this off the ground. Here’s hoping!
Crypto
Hahaha, I think I’ve made enough dumb investing decisions lately so I eased off on the crypto… aside from some small ones:
- Loopring
- Monero (via a Cardano swap due to exchanges banning it here)
For one final dumb financial decision: I connected my Raspberry Pi to Binance Futures to experiment with automated bot trading, and it’s currently losing me money at a rate of 20% a day. It’s truly impressive how bad it is. It was just a small amount as an experiment to see what happens – I will do a post on it once the experiment ends on the 23rd (the day Australians get blocked from using Binance Futures, boooooo).