• First the title, Idd like to specify that I do not believe Belgian real estate will crash 60%! BUT a few Belgian REITS have lost over 60% and up to 70% of their value. That is why I invested extra into REITs, and will talk a bit more about Belgian REITs bellow.
• Net Worth dropped to 617536 EUR (-10997) , making it the worst month for my stocks since September 2022
• My cash percentage in my Net Worth was 14.66%. Now my cash percentage is 7.35% after extra investments. If the market continues to drop so will this percentage.

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Before we dive into the details of this red market and my predictions for the half year, I should note that my November update will probably not appear on time. I will be travelling to Thailand without laptop so will most likely not be able to write this report. I plan to write it the last week of December together with a short report on my Thailand trip.

US stock market vs International Stocks

The US Stock market has short up in the last decade, this might give the impression that the US is the best place to put your money in and will outperform every other country. Keep in mind the increase came together with a valuation increase. Meaning companies in the US are valued at a much higher multiple then 10 years ago. In my oppinion its unlikely that this will happen a second time in the next decade.

Belgian REITs

I identified 6 Belgian REITs worthwhile tracking. The good news is a lot of them fall under better Tax Schemes then other stocks, allowing lower corporate taxes, but also for some lower taxes on rent.

Belgian real estate is on sale, I invested more into 1 REIT I already owned, and purchased 3 additional. At my dividend Portfolio you can see a deeper analysis of why I am pouring money into REITs right now.

The everything sell of in October and the death of the Magnificent 7

$VWCE had a good run this year, however, after major sell offs since they topped in summer they reached a new low. The 6.93% rise was mostly thanks to 7 US tech stocks (AAPL, MSFT, GOOG, NVDA, TSLA, META) who held up for a very long time and posted nice gains. But the band has broken up after TSLA dropped almost 30% and was passed by Bershire Hattaway who currently has a YTD gain of 2%. It means $TSLA has lost almost all their gains of earlier this year and might even post a loss after horrible Q3 earnings.

By this the Large Tech Caps are joining the other 1000s of stocks who had already been selling off.

Meanwhile most of my stocks are also approaching 12 months lows, however I do see some recovery the last week of October as earnings are coming in, and I fully expect a Santa rally to occur going well into 2024 as dividend dates are approaching.

So thats why I bought much much more this month then any other month!

How is your portfolio doing YTD? Leave a comment bellow!

My Portfolio

My Portfolio has increased to 361677 EUR (+31991). The stock market had a huge drop but I deposited around 45000 in my account that I invested mostly into Belgian REITs. So I am actually down quite a bit, but at the same time I used this opportunity to finally buy some REITs that I considered overpriced for a very long time!

ETFs

The core of my long term strategy is ETF‘s and over the long run the perform very well! This month they dropped about 8000 EUR, but I do not see this as an issue, they will recover eventually.

Dividend portfolio

Novartis had a stock split this month, I right away sold off Sandoz Group and booked the sale as a dividend. Sandoz dropped 20% not long after, so in the short term I made the right call.

The portfolio fell as a whole the first 3 weeks of October but stabilised near the end and even went up the last week. By doing so the Portfolio almost broke even but did end on an additional 500 EUR loss.

In green are the new additions to my Portfolio. A lot of these REITs came from all time lows and are trading up to 45% under book value right now (coming from trading 40% over book value).

• Aedificia ($AED): Aedificia had a forward dividend yeild of 7.7%, it falls under a low tax scheme of 15% dividend tax, and its debt is around 40% and under control. The company itself is a great company, its investing in Elderly care, its diversified over multiple European countries and it has a great track record. I was very happy I could add such a good company at those prices to my portfolio!
• Cofinimmo ($COFB): Cofinimmo has been doing the conversion from a pure office REIT to a healthcare REIT for a while now. By doing so it would get the same Tax benefits as Aedificia and Care Property Invest. It now has 74% Healthcare Real Estate, and needs 80% to succeed. At the current speed it should get there in about 18 months! It debt is under control (around 40%), the forward dividend yeild was 11% when I bought the stock, and of course it was trading at a ridicilous valuation.
• Wereldhave Belgium ($WEHB): the last REIT I bought was an office REIT. They only have 30% debt, however its all floating so they will be hit the first by increased rates. The forward dividend is at 10% but might not be sustanable. Its the only REIT that did not confirm the 2023 dividend yet. Additionally a large portion of the company is owned by mother holdings such as Wereldhave Netherlands that is trying to take over the company at bottom prices. So owning this stock comes with more Risk, however the low debt, nice dividend, and good (pre-covid) track record have made me decide to add it in

I also bought additional Care Property Invest (healthcare REIT), Cliq Digital and AT&S who are all trading at very good valuations.

Growth Portfolio

My Growth Portfolio continued to Perform terrible. Both of these companies are however doing share buybacks and I hope this will eventually support the shareprice. Also on this portfolio I am down 500 EUR, which is huge considering the size of the portfolio.

Crypto

Crypto is the only asset class that is on overall performing well this month. It seems CRO is also taking advantage of the Bitcoin ETF. Once a Bitcoin ETF comes out why not a CRO ETF?

If you want to use my referral link to get a crypto.com visa card, you can use it here, then both of us will get 25$. I’ve been using mine since October 2021.

Real Estate

I currently owe one apartment that I purchased in 2010 for 136.000. I got it re-estimated in 2020 at it was valued at 185.000 EUR. I did a re-evaluation of my apartment that values it at 205000 EUR.

Startups

Right now I have 1200 EUR still active in startups.

I am using Spreds to purchase these startups, but given my return it is not something I recommend to do.

Check out this post if you want to know how you can invest in startups.

Peer to Peer

Ill give a short update this month about how the recovery of cash is going.

Kuetzal: via the Lawsuit I was able to recover 38%. I got the last bit of this month. Its unlikely that the other 62% will ever return, so I am closing that case.

Grupeer: while the lawsuit has been ongoing for now almost 3 years, I still have hope that once we can declare Grupeer bankrupt we will be able to recover funds from the lender facilitys that were real. A few were totally fake like Primo invest, however I did not invest much into that, so I am still hoping on recovery of funds.

Crowdestor: I have my last 100 EUR stuck in CrowdEstor, CrowdEstor keeps coming up with excuses why the recovery of funds is not working. My last investment actually has real estate as part of it, and real estate has only gone up right? They should stop behaving like a Ponzi Scheme and show progress to the investors.

Mintos: Right now its scheduled to pay me back by 2026-2028. By this time the value of the money they should pay back will have dropped significantly. But at least there is a plan.

Retirement funds

I get an update just once a year, so I will update it also just once a year. This is from end of 2022. I will update it again in December 2023.

Savings

This was last updated on 31-10-2023.

As I moved significiant amounts from this account to my broker I have updated this numer. As you can see it has dropped with 54000 EUR that was moved largely into my brokers account to invest extra. I would prefer that this account would contain only an emergency fund, so I plan to bring it down by end of Q1 2024 to about 15000-20000 EUR.

I will need some of this cash to purchase a new car. I plan to buy a small second hand car of around 10000-15000 EUR.

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What blogs are coming up next?

• For now mostly videos and monthly portfolios are planned!

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