Pretty choppy month for US equities, was up then down then up again.

I guess more of that to be expected with Trump’s unpredictability.

On the other hand, gold rose a lot so did bitcoin, so overall the stellar return this month.

Current Portfolio:

HKD/USD cash: 3.55% (42.37%)

USD ST bonds: 4.37% (0%)

USD stocks: 29.21% (13.09%)

JPY stocks: 10.25% (8.14%)

Bitcoin (USD): 14.05% (7.98%)

Gold (USD): 45.45% (28.39%)

YEN cash: 5.58% (9.07%)

YEN shorts: -12.46% (-9.03%)

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Finally the $1.3M is mostly deployed. I’ve also made some decent allocation changes compared to previous targets.

The biggest change is US equity … I was planning to put only 20% allocation before. Now I’ve updated it to 35% and when I sell all the JP equities, will increase that to 40%. More below.

Decreased JP equity from 15% down to 10%. Will eliminate that position eventually. One of the biggest decisions I’ve made this month, also more on that below.

Crypto allocation staying constant at 15%. Gold also staying constant around 45%, will increase that to 50% once I sell the JP.

US Equity

Pretty choppy month for US equities.

Went up a lot before and after the inauguration due to stargate announcement and also no tariffs move on China so far – but tanked a bit with the “deepseek” scare.

Also went down a bit on the last trading day on the confirmation with 25% Canada and Mexico tariffs.

Anyway so why did I increased allocation from 35% (eventually 40%) from 20%?

First I was looking at the Nasdaq-Gold+ investment fund in Japan, which invest 100% in nasdaq100 and 100% in gold – with 100% leverage. I had talked about that in last month’s post so won’t repeat too much here.

After increasing the margin, gold was already at 45% and going beyond 50% doesn’t feel quite right – and after all US equities does have higher growth potential than gold, so I decided 35-40% allocation should be reasonable. It’s still smaller than gold anyways not counting bitcoin.

Also I’ve decided to be more aggressive inside the US stock portfolio as well, reducing big basket ETF like QQQ and removing UTES for more aggressive growth and AI story.

AI will revolutionize the world in the coming years and I will spend more time learning about it and trying to make the right long-term investment decisions. The volatility might be higher but the return should be much better and more significant than “the market” (ie SP500).

I was afraid of too much volatility and was thinking about adding BRK and maybe some defensives to the mix. But I realized that would just limit my returns without much good – the gold allocation is already doing the hedging so I feel like this strategy fits better with my overall investing thesis and convictions.

JP Equity

So I did some deep soul-searching about this last month.

I have decided to eventually completely remove JP equity from my portfolio.

The reasons are below:

• low return-to-risk score, especially in USD terms
• high correlation with US stocks, not a good hedge
• lack of understanding of Japanese companies
• low growth and limited innovation culture in Japan, cannot catch up with AI boom

Low return-to-risk, high correlation

Looking at the return-to-risk, the N225 basket is a terrible investment choice.

Considering I am looking for returns in term of USD, the picture gets even uglier.

My previous logic was to have some JP equities to hedge against yen appreciation and also Japan growth I guess in general (the more Japan growth I’ll be poorer here with no Japanese related income)

But the facts are – Japan is not growing, and Japan is not innovating.

It looks like it’s growing on paper in the past 10 years but it’s pretty much all QE growth, and the yen has depreciated accordingly.

Also with the high correlation, it’s just a terrible hedge and I can do much better just simply investing in the US stocks.

Lack of understanding

Also it is difficult to try to understand the individual Japanese companies, because it’s in Japanese and also the information is not too readily available.

When it drops, I don’t really understand why and I’m just passively holding onto it, hoping for the best.

Compared to the Mag7, I use these companies – apple, meta, google, tesla. And I can learn in depth about what these companies are working on, what is happening and when they drop, whether its time to bail, hold and wait, or buy the dip.

Low growth in Japan

Japan’s culture just does not foster innovation and it will take years to change it. Even then, it still will never catch up to what the U.S. is doing.

So my capital is better allocated to these high growth, highly innovative companies that I can understand much more in-depth, and save the effort and head space on having some small JP equity allocation.

Sure the portfolio might become just slightly more volatile this way, but these mega companies are changing the world and I am excited to allocate more and be a part of that disruptive tech innovation.

As Aswath Damodaran said though, expect a lot of the capex to go to waste, and some investment will be a loss. But the winners will provide so much value. The waste in between is unavoidable and I will keep that in mind as I keep investing more into these companies, and also learn about the trends and reallocate the portfolio when appropriate.

Gold

What a stellar month for gold. +6%, and I am fully invested for the 45% now.

Probably made somewhere around HK$80k this month just from gold.

I think it is due to the Chinese central bank started buying gold again. Maybe especially because Trump is in the white house now, with tariff threats and America First and all that, might make sense to further de-dollarize.

Anyways the mid-long term bullish gold story is in tact for sure. Will be holding almost half the portfolio here.

Now it will be the anchor to move to and from depending on how stocks and bitcoin move.

Crypto

Feels a bit flat but actually up quite a bit since last month. +9.25% if I am looking at the 1month chart.

The range feels like went from 90-100k to now 100k is the support and it’s consolidating between 100k and the ATH of 108k.

I think a breakthrough should be coming soon and 100k would be the support, breaking out to maybe 120k before consolidating again.

Probably won’t sell then but that break out should get me to fully invested allocation without adding funds.

Anyways I won’t be buying any more around the 100k range. If it dips back to 90-95k range I’d probably start buying again.