Following are my current invested levels. One of the more interesting realisations for me in preparing this each month is how much the the changing equity values effect the percent invested. I know that may seem completely obvious, but I used to concentrate more on the cash levels. I now realise that although my cash levels may change significantly that I was concentrating on the smaller part of the picture.

Here’s my investometer for the end of January showing actual percent invested in equities.

My only purchase of note was in January was Catch The Wind. I continued to accumulate cash in our SMSF and am busy investigating opportunities. Nothing tickles my fancy at the moment.

2009 was quite a year. I’m looking forward to future buying opportunities as good as that, though I imagine there’ll only be a couple of those in the rest of my investing life. As my investometer shows I acted opposite to my plan for the year. Weird that. Particularly when it is the second year in a row I’ve failed to follow through with what transpired to be an excellent plan. I would resolve to follow my plan for 2010 to the tee, that is if I had a plan. …

While the Investometer chart shows large changes in both accounts this month the reality is I increased cash by 9% this month. As I commented the other day I’ve been selling down fairly to overvalued US stocks, notably FDX and II-VI, and buying undervalued Australian shares.

The growing account with regular cash flow is the SMSF I manage. Due to regular personal and employer contributions, the coming capital return from Biota and other dividends I’m happy maintaining a lower cash balance in the SMSF. If the market goes down I’ll have …

Invested levels didn’t change this month, but four calls sold raised cash near the short term peak.
The FI Fund briefly returned to positive territory during October. It was good to pop into the green and lets hope we see more of that soon.

A quick look under out SMSF and a Fusion Portfolio update.

This morning I thought I’d check up on my version of reality. We all suffer from rosy retrospective from time to time, you know when you think the past was better than it was. If only my Latin teachers had taught useful phrases like “memoria praeteritorum bonorum” (the past is always recalled to be good), instead of all those damn conjugations I might have learnt something useful.
I went back through my account statements for the last year to check our percent invested each month. I’d previously checked some months and thought …

As promised the other day here is my updated Investometer. I introduced the investometer back in November and like many things due to the frenetic pace of the market I have not maintained it as originally promised. We have continued to raise cash and reduce the number of positions we own, aprticularly in the US. As I’ve commented before I was sucked into the path of diversification a few years ago and have been slowly extricating myself ever since. I am determined to return to my concentrated ways, which for me means 20 or less equity positions. My favourite quote on diversification remains, you concentrate to accumualte wealth and diversify to perserve wealth.

I’ve accelerated my buying of late, particularly in our Self Managed Super Fund (SMSF) account. As I mentioned the other day the fund was cashed up and with new funds regularly added it makes sense to be buying more now.
I could start using margin in the months ahead, but most of the margin will be held in reserve for the next bull market to begin.
I liked MACQUARIE GROUP LIMITED (MQG) half yearly results. The presentation is worthwhile.The strong often prosper at these times and with the loss of some …