Saving for Retirement - Stock Market Exchange Traded Funds | August 2023

Welcome to this month's ETF Investment Update

Guest author: @hoosie

What is SPI?
SPI tokens are growth investment tokens that pay a weekly dividend. They have been circulating for over 2 years, on STEEM HIVE. Mostly sold for 1 HIVE, each token today is worth over 4 times its HIVE issue value and 12x its dollar value. On top of that, token holders receive roughly 8% every year from weekly dividends. We raised $13k from issuing SPI tokens which has been used to grow a diverse portfolio of investments, many of which provide streams of passive incomes. SPI tokens are part ownership of all SPinvest tokens, accounts, assets and income. The price of each SPI token is its liquidation value as SPI tokens are 100% backed by holdings. Hardcapped to roughly 94,000, no more can be minted or issued. Adding, hold and compounding has us on the road to major growth and these tokens are still growing in value.

SPI tokens are part ownership in an actively managed fund. We have our hands in over 20 investments with the lion share being HIVE, BTC & ETH. We do not FOMO or chase pipe dreams. Tried and tested works best and is safest. Our motto is "Get rich slowly" and compounding down on sound investments is our game. You should invest in SPI tokens with the mindset of not selling for 3-5 years minimum. Follow @spinvest for weekly holdings and earnings reports.

Introduction

I invest in stock markets through Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and Share Funds via Fidelity UK. My investment strategy is for long term gain (5+ years), and I tend to DCA in when I can (but I wouldn't bet my mortgage on it or put my family at financial risk). I invest in ETFs and funds as I like spreading my investment across a basket of shares, as opposed to trying to pick individual shares, which would be too risky for me. I tend to stick to solid funds within the US, UK and Europe, and have a liking for tech funds. I do not day-trade, or look for short term flips. Please take that into account, and always do your own research!

What's Happening This Month

Monthly KPIs

I use a number of Key Performance Indicators to help me gauge how the overall markets are performing and it also helps me to try to understand where money is moving.

Looking at the monthly change columns:

• BTC is down a little, and the others are up very small amounts. Nothing really stands out at first glance,
• It looks more like one of those months where everyone is waiting for someone else to move first before they do something, and the move could be in any direction,
• However, during the month, there has been some good results announced from US tech stocks. That can been seen in the higher increases in the S&P500 and the Nasdaq and they've recently hit annual highs - but I'd like to think they both have further to go.

Recent Trade activity

I've had some nice dividends this month totaling close to £300, so I had some spare cash burning a hole in my pocket. I decided I wanted to buy into another new fund in order to spread my investment across a wider range in order to reduce risk further. I'm also rather heavily into US tech stocks, which are great, but wanted another option. So I looked around and found quite a nice UK focused fund that ticked a number of boxes, and decided to plump for that this month. The monthly focus section below describes how I picked it and provides some more detail on the fund.

Monthly Fund Focus

This months focus is on SCKZI, the new fund that I have invested in.

Schroder UK Listed Equity Income Maximiser (SCKZI)

The Fund aims to provide income by investing in equity and equity related securities of large UK companies. The Fund aims to deliver an income of 7% per year but this is not guaranteed and could change depending on market conditions. The Fund invests at least 80% of its assets in a passively managed portfolio from the top 100 listed UK companies by market capitalisation.

Credit - Fidelity.co.uk website - accessed on 02/08/23

I've been focusing a lot more on growing my dividends, so that I have a more regular flow of cash to re-invest in funds. As such, I used Fidelity's fund investment finder in a simple way to display income focused funds, with a low on-going charge (less than 0.5%).

The investment finder is pretty handy as you can use various filters to sort through the hundreds of funds they offer. Todays search was pretty straight forward:

Credit - Fidelity.co.uk website - accessed on 02/08/23

I set the 'ongoing charge filter (%)' to '<0.5', and the 'Distribution' filter to 'Income'. That threw up 215 potential options. I then sorted the resulting list by 'yield (%)' - highest to lowest. Below is the top 10 results from that search.

Credit - Fidelity.co.uk website - accessed on 02/08/23

Two things caught my eye:

• Schroder UK Listed Equity Income Maximiser (SCKZI), right at the top - nice yield and lowish ongoing charge. I also have money in other Schroder funds - they have a pretty good name, so that was nice to see,
• That a number of the other funds shown were actually bond related funds, not shares. In particular I liked the look of the 4th one down (Liontrust Sustainable Future Monthly Income Bond Fund Class P Gross Income) - nice yield and very low ongoing charge of just 0.26%.

Before buying, I was keen to know if SCKZI was also growing in value over time.
I've seen some higher income funds that are rather flatish, so although you are getting good dividends, the individual shares themselves are not gaining in value over time.

Credit - Fidelity.co.uk website - accessed on 02/08/23

As can be seen from the growth chart above, the SCKZI fund shows a fairly consistent uptrend over time, although the fund is only 3 years old. So it was ticking my main three boxes - nice dividend income, low ongoing charge and consistent growth in share price.

Credit - Fidelity.co.uk website - accessed on 02/08/23

As per above, in terms of dividends, it gives out quarterly. If I've read it right, I'll also hit the next payment date. That is, I need to be holding the funds on the 31st of Aug, to receive the next payment in October - all good !

In terms of holdings, its UK focused, and as can be seen by the list of top ten holdings above, these are all pretty major companies - they are well managed and provide consistent share price growth with good dividends (on the whole).

The other thing that caught my eye from the top 10 from the search was the Liontrust bond fund. I dont have anything in bonds yet. They tend to yield a fairly consistent APR interest, although the funds themselves are certainly not massive gainers, and can easily go down in price. Many provide a monthly dividend, which is nice - and I was considering buying some of this fund. However, on the BBBC News today (wed 2nd Aug) I then saw the article about the Fitch downgrade of the US rating (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66387419), which I was quite shocked at, and its news like that that can affect bonds. As a result I decided today wasnt the day !

However, to be fair, I dont quite know enough about bonds to be launching into them, so I'd need to do more research on that front anyway.

Round-up

It was great to get some dividends to play with, and it was nice to add a new fund to the portfolio, with a different focus from US tech stocks. Heres hoping I've picked well !

US techs look like they are doing well and it will be interesting to see if the recent upward trend will continue. I'd like to think so !

Thats my round up for the month.

If you have any advice to share or tips for funds, I'd love to hear about them - and feel free to leave feedback on the post - I'd love to know what you think !!!

All the best @hoosie

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