The universe has been aligned ever since I posted about my social media detox. With my new-found intention to start blogging more, I’ve been going down rabbit holes. 🐰

It started with (re-)discovering Neocities and finding cool internet concepts like a /now page.

It was 2004 when I first got embroiled in web development, making fan-sites for Habbo Hotel. Which led to me building communities, which then evolved to tooling and open-source.

I was following the trends closely, I was there when microformats and the concept of the indieweb got born. I however did not fully understand it as a teenager. I was just curious about the concept of data aggregation with microformats and getting better SEO in Google.

In november 2022 I left Twitter for Mastodon and I’ve been posting a bit there.

However, between work and parenting, I’ve noticed I didn’t have much time and most of all, I was getting imposter syndrome. I felt like I had to perform ’to be interesting'.

So I kinda stopped posting and interacting..

The same imposter feeling I got for my blog and website. However recently I’ve come around to that regarding the blog. I realised I’m mostly writing for myself; ‘cause it sure is interesting to read old blog posts from years ago. And as such, this actual blog post is an attempt to kickstart everything again.

A year has passed since my first post about my ROI stock portfolio and that means it is time to see how it went.

The portfolio

As of 10th of August 2023, using USD-based percentages, the portfolio looks like this:

In US Dollars this is a 14.4% return, which is not bad at all. Foreign exchange rates however gave me a -5% if I were to convert it to Euros straight away.

In a previous post about my ROI stock portfolio you could read what my plan was. We’re now 5 months further, and that means we’ve reached the halfway mark of the buying period. So how’s it going?

The portfolio

As of 10th of January 2023, just before I deposited another €100, the portfolio looked like this:

• ❌(-3.40%) Microsoft (MSFT) - ❌(-14.07%)
• ❌(-2.20%) Apple (AAPL) - ❌(-17.41%)
• ❌(-2.00%) Mastercard (MA) - ✔️(+5.32%)
• ❌(-3.93%) Qualcomm (QCOM) - ❌(-13.68%)
• ✔️(+0.72%) McDonald’s (MCD) - ❌(-3.06%)
• ❌(-1.36%) S&P Global (SPGI) - ❌(-5.01%)
• ✔️(+1.36%) Novo Nordisk (NVO) - ✔️(+13.02%)
• ✔️(+2.07%) Southern Copper (SCCO) - ✔️(+26.55%)
• ❌(-1.43%) Blackstone Inc (BX) - ❌(-17.91%)
• ❌(-1.65%) Paychex (PAYX) - ❌(-8.18%)
• ❌(-2.72%) Lousiana Pacific (LPX) - ❌(-1.89%)
• ❌(-2.32%) Rio Tinto (RIO) - ✔️(+14.96%)
• ❌(-1.36%) Vale (VALE) - ✔️(+17.29%)
• ❌(-1.42%) Applied Materials (AMAT) - ✔️(+4.07%)
• ❌(-0.27%) KLA Corporation (KLAC) - ✔️(+8.67%)
• ✔️(+2.79%) Vermillion Energy (VET) - ❌(-33.76%)
• ✔️(+0.55%) Crescent Point Energy (CPG) - ❌(-10.19%)

Volatile, that’s how it’s going. Just like the rest of the 2022 market. In fact, now with a couple of months of hindsight we can also see that my starting point, August 2022, was one of the ‘worst’ months to start.

When we bought our house in 2015 we got all the regular communication appliances; TVs and cable subscriptions, landlines, internet, etc.
But we soon realized that we prefer to be on our computers more and as such the TV was left unused, most of the time.

Recently I realized that I'm really using YouTube as if it was my cable TV. I could also clearly see the type of content that I'm watching, and it made me think that I've actually built my own TV channel.

After reading a bit about multiple well-known investors mentioning how important Return On Invested Capital is, I decided to generate a small portfolio (actually a pie within Trading212) with some metrics.

I used finviz to screen and since they don’t have ROIC, I used Return On Investment (ROI). This is a different metric but is the closest option there is. My screening options were as follows:

• ROI of 25% or higher
• Net profit margin of 25% or higher
• Market cap of 2 billion or higher
• Positive dividend
• Average trading volume of 1 million

So the important values are the ROI and net profit margins. However to give me some more established companies I also made sure that they have a market cap of 2 billion or more, enough trading volume and a positive dividend. This last option as a soft guarantee that the company is free cash flow positive.