General Portfolio Updates

2022 Year In Review – Wealth And Portfolio

Calvin Lo

2022 has not been a kind year financially. In terms of the investment portfolio, definitely a year I would like to forget. But then again, the lessons learnt might prove invaluable should we have similar circumstances again in future.

In no particular order, here are the 4 main areas of my life I’m reflecting on this year:

  • Wealth
  • Relationships
  • Health
  • Meaning

This might get lengthy in one post, so I’ll split it up into parts. I’ll start with Wealth in today’s post, since this is a finance blog but note that it’s not my highest priority in life. Wealth is just a means to an end.

How I fared against last year’s goals

Looking back at a similar post end last year Portfolio Review and Reflections 2021, here’s how I’ve fared against the goals I set out for the investment portfolio then:

  • Reduce number of holdings – reduced from 25 to 21 (excluding small number of OCBC DRIP shares), can reduce further next year
  • Increase exposure to index funds – VT + QQQ weight up to 46% from 33% last year
  • Reduce speculative stocks – sold Zoom (ZM) and Teladoc (TDOC) but still holding ARKK, Sea (SE), Block (SQ), Airbnb (ABNB) although I’ll probably hold onto those

This year, I’ll also be reflecting on other aspects of wealth besides investing, i.e. net worth, budgeting, and spending.

Net worth

Overall net worth has probably dropped or stayed flat at best this year, likely impacted by stock market tanking and increased travel spend. I intend to do a proper net worth review in coming weeks and might share in another post.

Besides our home, most of our wealth is invested in the stock market which has had a terrible year. Our portfolio fared worse since it is tech/growth heavy. I won’t elaborate much since I post Portfolio updates monthly. You can check those out and view my portfolio here.

Budgeting

Budgeting has always been important but more so now with inflation raging. With increased travel expenses expected, GST hike, and inflation staying high, I need to keep a tight budget so that spending doesn’t spiral out of control. We’ve had quite a few charges to our expenses so I’m due to review our budget these coming weeks. I’ll share more once I’m done with the budget review.

Spending

Since cross-border travel restrictions were lifted, we’ve been and are planning to travel a lot more. So our expenses this year has skyrocketed quite a bit. Also, our daughter will be going to primary school in 2025 so we only have 2 more years to travel outside of school holidays. Travelling during peak season scares me. The trade-off is that we will have less to channel to investments.

I’ve only started compiling our expenses more diligently in the 2nd half of 2022. So I expect it may take a few more months before I can get some meaningful insights.

Investing

I don’t intend to reduce investments by too much next year. With stocks still in a bear market, next year might continue to provide buying opportunities at lower valuations. Great for us to take advantage and accumulate shares for our retirement. That said, I probably won’t be backing up the truck with recession highly likely, so I don’t want to be catching falling knives.

Our portfolio now is heavily exposed to tech and growth, and has thus taken a huge beating. That said, I’m not at the point where I’m thinking of pivoting out of tech just yet although there might still be more pain ahead.

However, I’m probably not going to be buying tech heavily even at these lower valuations, mainly because the macro environment isn’t favourable to the tech sector at the moment. Since we still have a long runway to retirement, I believe tech/growth might still serve our portfolio well in the long run as long as I’m discerning about the quality of these stocks I’m holding.

In 2022, I’ve added Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF (SCHD) to add some defensive exposure to the portfolio which had been sorely lacking since I sold AbbVie (ABBV), JPMorgan (JPM), and most of our Singapore stocks (which tend to be value stocks).

Last year, I’ve also automated the regular investments into ETFs through FSMOne and started using robo-advisors Syfe (Core Equity100 and REIT+ portfolios) and Endowus to supplement my mainly DIY strategy.

Towards the latter half of 2022, I’ve become a lot more interested in fixed income and cash equivalents in view of higher interest rates. In 2023, I might increase our portfolio exposure back in bonds. I had reduced our portfolio exposure to bonds drastically by selling off our entire position in
iShares 20 Plus Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) back in Dec 2021.

China also looks interesting as it starts to reopen up after finally giving up its zero-COVID policy. I’ve has exposure to China via the Hang Seng Tech ETF (SGX:HST) and have just been DCA-ing a small amount the entire time. I’m not sure yet if I’m confident enough to go in heavier, but I’m comfortable with our exposure at the moment.

Without further ado, here’s our Family Portfolio as at 31st Dec 2022:

Here’s the pie chart view:

Here’s wishing you a fantastic year 2023 ahead in your all areas of your life!

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2 thoughts on “2022 Year In Review – Wealth And Portfolio”

  1. Pingback: 2022 Year in Review – Health, Relationships, and Meaning | Finance Gnome
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