December 2014 Investment update

During December i made a few purchases and one notable sale.

Purchases:
Continuing my recent trend of adding to existing ETF positions, i purchased additional units of IAPD.L (Asia Pacific high dividend) and VUKE.L (UK FTSE100 tracker).

The increase in IAPD was mainly to keep balance to the overall geographical mix of my portfolio, following a number of recent purchases of UK, Europe & Emerging Markets.  The VUKE purchase was a little more opportunistic, following a fairly sharp fall in the UK index during early December.  Both have been delivering solid reliable dividends over 4%.

The unit prices for these purchases were around GBP19.38 for IAPD, and GBP27.84 for VUKE.

Sales:
During the month i sold my entire holding of the 3049.HK (the CSI300 China index tracker).  Following a very sharp rise in China equities over the last couple of months, i decided to carry out a long overdue rebalancing to reduce my overall exposure to China / RMB.

I currently have a reasonable holding of the HK Index tracker, along with a large amount of China government bonds. In addition, my HK pension fund is heavily weighted towards HK equities, which in turn are made up of both a large amount of China H shares, and companies heavily dependant on the China economy.

In selling my direct exposure to China equities, it reduces my the proportion of my investment portfolio allocated to HK / China to around 25%, making the overall portfolio roughly 50% USA, UK & Developed Europe, 25% HK & China, and 25% other Asia Pacific & emerging markets.

I sold for around HKD7.08 per share, realising around a 33% capital gain, most of which arose over the last couple of months.