October 2012 Review

I'll do a series of regular monthly reviews, to monitor my investment performance and track the trend of my net worth.

October saw my net worth increase by 1.2%, mostly from a high savings rate.

During the month i purchased 3 ETFs. These were:
- SEDY.L - emerging markets high dividend equities. This should return solid dividends with what i perceive to be greater long term growth potential than the traditional developed markets.
- IASP.L - asian property yield equities. Should offer a decent dividend and many of the companies in the ETF are reasonably valued.  I am slightly concerned about the recent property cooling measures announced in HK, but the fund is geographically diversified, also including Singapore & Australian companies.
- SHYU.L - high yield corporate debt - should return a yield of over 6%, made up of hundreds of individual debt issuances to minimise default risk.
Each holding represents around 1% of total assets. The focus is primarily on yield, but i hope the first two will offer capital appreciation over time.  Performance was broadly flat up to the month end.

I also purchased some notional gold (treated almost like a currency by the local banks, but backed up by physical gold), again about 1% of total assets.

My pensions increased with monthly contributions, partly offset by a marginal drop in unit values.

My property was occupied with no issues. The property valuation was fairly flat - periodically i'll look at the local market & conservatively update this (including it in my net worth calculation).

Cash fell overall as a result of the above investments during the month, but excluding the impact of these, it increased with a good savings rate.

On a year to date basis, my net worth has increased by around 38%, again mainly from healthy income & savings.