The Investor Diaries: Week 6

The background for anyone reading this for the first time:

This blog series follows 9 small investors with different risk (and personality) profiles (for their profiles read this post, and your can find their investment strategies here).
I’m a fan of equities (because I believe in productive assets) and of passively-managed exchange-traded index-tracker funds (because I mostly don’t believe in investor management fees) – so this is also really an experiment to see how the Satrix SWIX Top 40 (an equity ETF) bears out against the other options available for small investors.

In their own words:

The Contented Pragmatist

Meh.

What really happens in a week? Although, I should probably switch out to that retirement annuity ETF that I posted about on Tuesday.

Sometimes, it gets really boring doing the boring investments. But at least I’m not in Nasper shares. Wow.

China does some censoring of Tencent, and Naspers just plummets like a rock. And also, those kids have a PE ratio of 56. 56!! Oh yes, and of course, now that the shares have been dropping off, all the “analysts” are coming to the table with “Naspers is fully-valued” and “Don’t buy any of it” – which is a little late, frankly. Especially as it started its dive at the beginning of March…

Equity analysts. Bah.

The Recent Finance Graduate

What HAPPENED? I should sell. Should I sell? Maybe I should buy more because everyone else is selling. Maybe I should go and be a contrarian. Why is this all so difficult?

*later that night: bemoans stock price in bar, blames Chinese government, uses distasteful epithet*

The Goldbug

This week, I did some research into the gold price. It seems that there is something about the US Federal Reserve dropping its stimulus program even further that is causing the gold price to stay “depressed”, as they say.

Bastard central banks.

The Daredevil

I made R16.62 this week. Honestly, I am so sure that I could make more just doing something with the cash.

The South African Bear

Honestly – does no one else realise that the AMCU-Platinum strike has gone on for 3 months already? 14 weeks of strike action. It’s almost stopped being news. It’s only 12% of the annual global platinum output gone. And how’s that going to affect South Africa’s trade deficit, eh? Badly, is how.

And those AMCU clowns had the temerity to call Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum and Lonmin a “platinum cartel”, accusing them of union-bashing. The cheek of it. What do they think a trade union is? A labour cartel, is what.

I don’t care if the Rand strengthened briefly. It can’t possibly carry on. Wait until those election results next week. Just wait.

The Art Enthusiast

This week, I discovered @myspacetom on instagram. I honestly can’t believe how beautiful his photographs are. And actually, I was surprised – because who remembers the founder of myspace these days (who even remembers myspace)? And how he sold his company to News Corp for $500 million just as it was taking off in 2005 (thanks wikipedia), and now he gets to circle the globe taking awesome instagram photos. It’s not fair – artists should be struggling. And buying books that lose two thirds of their value on purchase date.