Mid October already…only 9 weeks to Christmas. Time flies…
In September Financial Education was again in the Belgian news. There is a clear need for financial literacy education. The Flemish government has been discussing for several years now and still nothing has been put in the educational programme of kids. An analysis of the university of Ghent showed proof that 12% of the Flemish youth scores BAD for financial literacy. In 2012 this percentage was 8%. The educational system uses the PISA test to say that the youth scores higher than the OESO average but did you as a parent look athe PISA test content ? I did…this is really VERY BASIC STUFF !
The Flemish government defined 14 KEY COMPETENCES for the students. Today only budgetting is defined as a required competence. The sad part is that not all schools teach even this competence. Well..we are not going to wait for the school..we already gave our kids first class in budgetting…at the age of 12 !
Blogpost Kids Financial Education Lesson 1 : Budg€t Fun
Wikifin, a project of the financial organization FSMA helps schools with offering financial literacy classes but the number of schools using is limited. In september I had a meeting with two school teachers who educate financial literacy in their school. They developed a great course tailormade for the different levels of intelligence of the students. We investigate whether we can colaborate together in the future. Personally I am convinced that each parent has the responsibility to teach his kids financial literacy. You can not always rely on the schools to do the best education for your kids. The main problem is that the parent himself is not even teached financial literacy so how can you expect then the correct education or behavior of the child ? The lack of financial literacy shows clearly with the financial behavior of people putting more money on their savings accounts….where they HAVE THE GUARANTEE OF LOSING MONEY EVERY SINGLE DAY ! So if you are a parent, a millenial or teenager, we encourage you to either teach yourself or teach your kids financial literacy.
Another sad fact is that the different educational school systems want different things which leads to the failure of this required change within the educational programme. They prefer 2 hours a week teaching religion instead of teaching 1 hour a week financial literacy….It becomes a power game between school systems while the key focus should be the content (financial literacy) for the Belgian (Flemish) youth. We won’t wait for the politicians, nor the directors of schools (systems) to decide…we are already planning ahead for our next financial literacy class for our kids. Keep on following us…
So let’s go towards to our Market Analysis.
Market Analysis
When we analyse the performance of the SPY (screenshot 18 October September) we can conclude that the bull market remains strong. We keep on breaking All Time Highs one after the other…The Dow broke 23000 points..never seen before. 
Wall Street isn’t just in a bull market, it’s in an “epic” one, Morgan Stanley wrote recently.
“We say this not as hyperbole, but based on a quantitative perspective,” the investment bank explained. “Dispersions in valuations and growth rates are among the lowest in the last 40 years; stocks are at their most idiosyncratic since 2001; and equity hedge fund beta is at its highest since March 2008.”
Only two of the 11 primary S&P 500 sectors are in negative territory for the year, and for broader indexes, even mild pullbacks of 3% have basically been nonexistent for months. Volatility is near record lows.
Other regions have also reported strong gains: European equities are up more than 20% this year, as are emerging markets. Basically every country—as gauged by the most popular single-country exchange-traded funds—is positive on the year.
The move higher hasn’t been without controversy, given concerns over valuations, the pace of global economic growth, political uncertainty, and questions over the effect of the Federal Reserve’s effort to unwind its balance sheet and increase the cost of borrowing. However, the relentless march higher has defied bears, who argue that the too-lofty valuations aren’t supported by fundamentals, and emboldened bulls. “While investors have at times appeared reluctant to embrace the recent rally, there is evidence from last month that risk appetites are increasing,” Morgan Stanley wrote.
The higher we rally, the higher the risk of a strong bear correction we believe…investors are ignoring the risks in the market. We keep on working on our blogpost describing the dangers we see going forward. In the meantime the bull market remains climbing higher. The SPY index did climb to 255,72 points. We are in a positive trend channel and the trend is your friend ! If we fall back, 250 level will be the first support line.
Let’s dive in the numbers of my September Dividend Income Report.
Dividends received in September 2017
In the month of September 2017 we received the TOTAL of 559,96$. Another solid month above 300$, our 2017 yearly objective.
Actually we received only 326,16 $ dividend payout but our bank gave us back 233,80 $ dividend from last year. They made apparently wrong calculations and gave us money back ! Well..we can’t complain about that, can we? So this gave us a nice payout about 500$.
Portfolio Analysis and Growth
No unpleasant surprises in our portfolio compared to last month August. No new purchases either. We focus now on how we can generate money with options investing. How can we put the money at work for our portfolio ? I did sell in September my first covered call.
The Euro/Dollar trend
We keep on following the EURO/USD valuation. The EURO rallied above 1,20. We did convert more euros in our Kids portfolio to dollar at price of 1,20. In the other portfolios there was no need as our dividend payers give us dollars each month. The EUR/USD is now at 1,18 and we expect the dollar to get stronger again.
Going forward
How are we doing on our journey towards our 2017 Objective?
We did a SMART objective of 6600$ for 2017 and we keep on grinding back to our yearly objective.
We keep swallowing away our august loss and focus on options investing. Our September dividend payouts brings our yearly result back above 6000$ and to a new total of 6372,17 $.
We should still be able to hit our yearly objective with the payouts of the remaining months if we don’t have another unpleasant surprise. But we remain positive and prepare ourselves for different market conditions.
Below you can see the summary table of our monthly payouts.
What do you think about our monthly performance ? Don’t hesitate to leave your comments and feedback. Let us know what you think.
Good luck with your personal finance strategy! As usual we end with a quote.
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