How I’m Investing My Money

Where my capital has gone and will go for the near term

Life’s been busy for me recently. As a result, I was shocked when I looked at the S&P 500 YTD return this weekend.

I know it’s been struggling — but down 10% in less than two months; why didn’t anyone tell me??

With my lack of time to analyze the market as much as I’d like, I’ve reverted to familiar dollar-cost averaging strategies partnered with a few other decisions sprinkled in.

Everyone loves investing when returns are easy to come by. Its when the markets are facing turmoil that people lose their discipline. With all that is going on with markets, the economy, and on a global scale, below is what I’ve been doing and plan to do with my money in the three asset classes I invest in.

Stocks

Starting off where most of my money is parked. Starting 2022, stocks held the large majority of my investments.

Most of the money I’ve invested this year has been in the stock market. I’ve built out a sizeable, diverse portfolio over the years. 2022 so far has been about adding to positions. All my money has gone to existing holdings — no new positions entered into.

Over the last two months, I’ve been buying in as the market has dipped, especially on days the market has gotten badly beaten up. And we’ve had several days like that to start 2022 due to inflation / Federal Reserve concerns and Russia / Ukraine tensions.

The one holding I’ve put the most money into is SPY — an S&P 500 ETF. I’ve also contributed heavily to two other ETFs, Vanguard’s VUG and VGT.

I’ve kept my same strategy with individual stocks, which is buying into large, established companies that are leaders in their industry. Some of the holdings I’ve added to include Nike, Intuit, Microsoft, AMD, Adobe, and NextEra Energy.

In the coming months, I plan to add to a few other large companies I already own. But I’m in no rush to do so. The same goes for my approach to the overall market. I plan to add more to my SPY position.

I will dollar cost average consistently into stocks. But I also plan to invest a little more money if the right opportunity arises. I don’t plan to go crazy as I did in March — April 2020, when markets had a huge sale. I don’t anticipate us having an opportunity similar to that. I except some small, slow bumps in the market, especially with a more “hawkish” Fed, and potential international issues.

And I still firmly believe in the US economy. I don’t expect us to have another year of 20+% gains, but over time the market will reward investors.

Real Estate

Real estate is an asset class I always want to learn more about. I don’t own any real estate but am invested through Fundrise. Going into 2022, my goal was to increase my assets in Fundrise to catch up to how much I had in crypto.

I decided to dollar cost average each month into Fundrise.

Additionally, Fundrise recently went through an iPO (internet public offering) where Fundrise investors could buy an ownership stake in Fundrise, the company, itself. I invested as much money as I possibly could — meaning I don’t have as much cash left for other assets, mainly stocks, if they keep falling.

I believe investing in companies before they go public is the path to creating vast amounts of wealth. The minute I meet the criteria to become an accredited investor and invest in not-yet public companies, I will do so.

Going back to Fundrise and real estate, I plan to keep dollar-cost averaging each month. I believe the real estate market will keep doing well, especially as crypto and stocks might falter. The housing market does not seem to show any signs of slowing.

Crypto

The troubled child in 2022. I had ridden the great 2020 and 2021 returns to amass a decent crypto holding. That has since shrunk since the beginning of this year.

I bought some of the dips in January. I mainly bought Ethereum and added a little to my Polygon and Avalanche holdings.

And I’ve started moving all my holdings from BlockFi or Coinbase Pro into Celsius. Celsius offers me better interest rates on my holdings and offers more coins available for earnings than BlockFi. Celsius also offers low-rate loans but I haven’t experienced that yet myself.

I plan to also dollar cost average monthly into the crypto market, but I am waiting a month or so to see where things are headed before determining how much to allocate.

It may take months, or even years, for crypto and a normal economy to coexist. It will be interesting to watch how the Fed’s behavior and decisions impact the crypto landscape.

Final Thoughts

Slow and steady wins the race. Consistently investing over time will create a great portfolio.

Currently, there is more reason to be pessimistic than optimistic about markets, and markets may have a rocky few months. But we don’t know for certain what the future holds. Slow, compounding growth will get me where I want to go — it’s why I have it written on a note right above my desk.