My portfolio is down ~40% this year, how is your performance?

Flat YTD, despite only two holdings being in the green.

Google sheet here, manually input transactions, everything else is formulas or scripts pulling yahoo finance data / saving daily history.

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Using a spreadsheet is the only way to do it properly. I donā€™t think any tracker can really get it spot on than manually doing it as long as you have a simple portfolio. Even if you donā€™t care, you should track how much you have deposited and withdrawn and current value to see your real profit. Always annoying seeing people showing their Trading 212 Portfolio Graph. If you just sell all your red positions it will show a profit lol!

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Google sheet, I did actually build some software to log into Trading 212 & Interactive Broker accounts and consolidate it. Turns out Google Sheet was easier and more simple.

I simply go in every few days and record the current value of the portfolio. Allows me to record performance over time.

For option prices, I just manually insert them every couple days. Stock prices are live-ish.

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You have managed to invest 250k in 18 months ?!?!?

Iā€™m in the wrong job :joy:

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I doubt anyone having 9-5 job can get seriously rich.

Its about owning business, paying minimum tax.

Sad world we live in, when hard work is rewarded with 50% salary tax. Then 15-25% tax on purchase. Basically you can use 1/3 of what your gross salary is on end purchase after tax.

While business can have a lot of those expenses under their books, minimise the profits, pay less tax. Own property/cars under business etc.

We learn in history books that peasants during peace had to pay 1/10 to ruler, then 1/12 to church.

Well today in peace, we pay 1/2 to ā€œrulerā€, then 1/5 again on purchase. Something smells wrong hereā€¦

:thinking:

True and False.

Switch to contracting, getting paid via PAYE is a bad idea, work as a freelance software engineer, you make Ā£100k-Ā£200k per annum, do it through your own LTD company and invest 95% of the income. Pay corp taxes and personal taxes post investment, not pre. This is what I am doing. I have other little businesses too but nothing matches the freelancing, itā€™s whatā€™s allowed me to do the above.

This is more high risk approach, investing the capital before paying corp taxes on it, but itā€™s whatā€™s allowed me to get the compounding machine spinning.

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I explain how to become a software engineer here: Learn How to Code & Become a Software Engineer in 1 Month - YouTube

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It depends in which country you reside, in Croatia there is no such thing as having freelancer with 100-200k Ā£ annum without going into tax system of normal business.( required salary and 3rd party accounting)

Max cap is 300k HRK which is , roughly 35k GBP. Which is peanutsā€¦

Even if you are doing 10-12 projects for 5 customers over 12 month period? To me, thatā€™s a business, thatā€™s what I do. Not a job and thus should be able to wrapped in a LTD company.

If still the case, then maybe move country?

I get what you say, but I am very Conservative on the topic of moving abroad.

I find Croatia as little paradise in Europe.

Low costs of living.
Sea in range of 1h30 minutes ride.
Mountains in range of 1h30 minutes ride.
Has decent infrastructure.
Has ā€œbigā€ and safe city.

Has Mediterranean/continental climate.

People are slow paced, warm.

Cant find this in such small place in Europe easily.

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In the UK your (Ā£100k-Ā£200k) would be under IR35 umbrella company which is worse than PAYE unless your lucky to be out of scope. I used to be a contractor before they destroy that avenue

How are you investing then, as if directly into stocks from your company then that would be after corporation tax (but before dividend/income tax), also if you do well then you will be hit with big tax longer term as stocks value & dividends will be part of your companies tax burden.

Of course you can invest in a SIPP pre all tax which is a good way for ltd companies run by a sole director, but itā€™s a pension so cant touch till much later.

Luckily Iā€™m freelancing not working in one place. But yes on single long contract then IR35 is true.

Thanks will watch later. My degree actually is Computer science so look forward to it.

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No itā€™s all via the Ltd company. I barely myself a penny.

The LTD has a brokerage account with Interactive Brokers, you can do this in most of Europe and UK.

So for example, invoice comes in for Ā£12,000, Ā£2000 is VAT I put that aside in the bank account because it must be paid in 3 months time. I pay myself a small salary of Ā£1,000 and depsoit the following Ā£9,000 into the brokerage account and buy $TSLA. Over the year I obviously more claim expenses so itā€™s less. But letā€™s assume, the Ā£9,000 is all profit, corp tax on that is 19% - Ā£1,710. But I donā€™t need to pay this until the end of the financial year + 6 months, so invoices at day 0 of the financial year, I donā€™t need to pay corp tax on for almost 18 months. During that time I compound the total Ā£9,000 at a good rate.

When corp tax time comes, I take out margin to pay it, thus not incurring any cap gain tax. The idea is to never sell, only buy & let $TSLA make me retire early. Hopefully later this year.

None of this is financial advice, just what Iā€™m doing. And bare in mind itā€™s a more high risk strategy.

Ok yes, I was just clarifying in case I had misunderstood as investments are not pre-tax so you are doing some complicated hedge that I donā€™t understand perhaps as I donā€™t want to use margin. It is good that you accept that its high risk as a couple of bad years for your sole holding of Tesla could come back to bite you with margin and tax liabilities, but I assume your job is secure and you are a high earner and can cover it. I wish you good luck, I donā€™t have that appetite I am a value investor :rofl:

If I were to do it in the future would simply create a separate investment ltd co and loan from standard company to investment company to separate the assets and liabilities but I appreciate we are different situations and I am not aiming to retire anytime soon so happy to play things safe and grow.

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Got ya, I started as a value investor back in 2013 then I had my face ripped off LOL.

Iā€™m still a proud value investor, my definition of value is future value discounted to current day not current value :joy:

If I could temp you over to the dark side it would be this, how to retire in 10 years by investing Ā£500/month:

Yeah it makes no sense.

I used to keep an Excel tracker until I get heavy into CFD trading and stopped due to it being too time consuming. T212 have an export .csv function, which I have yet to use but Iā€™m hoping to use that for both the Invest and CFD side of the platform.

@Vedran One of my main reasons for moving to The Netherlands a few months ago. As a foreigner hired from abroad, the first 30% of my salary is tax free for 5 years.

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I lost 6% but closed all my trades when the market trend changed to negative otherwise I would have been the same probably :))