Tag: Inspiration

Portfolio news – Summer 2018

Finally after all the buying of ETF’s too balance the portfolio out in a better way, it’s now time too add a few handpicked stocks to the portfolio. Buying ETF’s isn’t anything really interesting too talk about. Hence not many portfolio updates over the last few months.

Now that everything is balanced out a bit more, I have added a few stocks to the portfolio. Europe is pretty much still lagging behind because of all the political themes , Brexit, Italian budget concerns and trade wars. Timing for me is like magic and I am not a licensed magician. So I just went down my what to buy when I have the money list and came up with a few good ones. The new positions are :

BMW

BMW is in a tight corner, diesel gate , trade wars, currency problems and the omission of a decent electric vehicle have made a considerable dent in the image of not only BMW but the whole German car industry. There is not a lot of music in the stocks , and there hasn’t been for some time.

On the other hand, every car the ensemble , sell with a pretty decent profit. Enough too get their heads around building a decent electric vehicle too get into competition with the established electric car makers. It’s a bit of a waiting game lately with all the political and economical turmoil at the moment. Surely in the short term they will hurt a bit. But with the brand still having a status symbol status and quality cars they have all the potential for being just that in the future. And in the meantime they will still be paying out dividends.

Reasons enough for me too buy BMW, just not the car itself.

Starbucks

Wish list item for a while now. Now with the funds available I finally added Starbucks to my portfolio.
Since 2010 they are paying a steady stream of dividend and their goal is growing the dividend stream.

Starbuck’s stock price has been under pressure for most of the year and is now finally seeing some upward potential. So buying in the summer has been a unexpected bonus. The position of the company is still very solid with nice growth numbers in Europe , The US part is falling behind a bit , but that’s a work in progress in getting things sorted again.

All in all one I had my eye on for some time and finally made an entry in the portfolio.

Nike

Last but not least, Nike. A lot of hustle and bustle around Kaepernick and sales figures. After having their main rival Adidas in the portfolio which had reached a very nice profit margin where the dividend percentage didn’t make sense anymore I simple sold it and banked the profit. Now it’s time to own Nike. The other power in sports and leisure branding.

And same as Adidas , not for any numbers and other boring date. Just looked at the brand and seeing lots of people still growing up with Nike as a brand people wanting too own stuff from, especially sneakers , but also other stuff. Everybody has that one pair of sneakers they wanted and saved up for. And not being able getting the other pair. In later life , they still buy these models. And every generation has them. Same with Adidas.

They still have a large following , limited edition runs, collabs and a lot of sub cultures have in some way shape or form incorporated Nike in their style.

They keep up marketing wise and make bold statements. Which still resonate with young and older crowds. And I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

August 2018 – Dividend

August is almost over , dividend wise for it’s over already in my case. Another great month in dividend streams. Some new positions payed dividends for the first time, which has the traditionally weak month of August catching up too the rest. Percentage wise an increase of 150% , but as already stated this has to do with the new additions to the portfolio.

The exchange rate between the Euro and the American dollar pulls it all a bit downwards. Despite of Apple increasing it’s dividend percentage it’s result is pretty much the same.

all in all a nice improvement which I can only be happy with, other things in life might not be as upbeat , this is. Which hopefully makes me less dependent on others in the future, that’s the broader goal. For now the numbers :

DateStockCurrencyAmount
24-08-2018StarbucksEUR4,66
16-08-2018AppleEUR6,46
13-08-2018NSI N.V.EUR12,48
13-08-2018Flow tradersEUR67,50
03-08-2018Amsterdam CommodotiesEUR24,00
TotalEUR115,1

Dusseldorf citytrip

Another experiment in my never-ending quest in how far can I take it without failing miserably. A citytrip to lovely Dusseldorf. And as with a lot of citytrips over the years , another marathon. My third Dusseldorf marathon. Preparations were not ideal. I could not escape the flu and I hurt my left leg during a random walking down the stairs, resulting in a bruised left calf. Hopefully I recovered just enough.

Combined with the anticipation of a long travel and hustle and bustle of a big city I was pretty nervous. But we were prepared, planned a full day for both the journeys , Saturdays an empty day , so staying sharp en fit for the marathon should be doable.

the outward journey didn’t go with the fast ICE due to maintenance , so we went with the regular train services. First off to Venlo, then a simple stop at every stop you can find train towards Dusseldorf. The trip went well and we arrived at noon. Luckily the room was ready and we just took it easy the rest of the afternoon.

We went for a walk and a lunch in the city , got my racing number and just walked around a bit. We ended up passing a truly giant supermarket just around the corner from our hotel. Got some breakfast stuff once we found it and took a break at the hotel. Late in the afternoon we went to our favorite Burger restaurant in Medienhafen.

Saturday morning after breakfast we went to Niederkassel for some relaxing and to visit the Japanese garden. Unfortunately it openend hours later so we went on a walk around the neighborhood. With a bit of coffee and cake on the way. A very beautiful place too live indeed. Lot’s of green , parks and cool houses. And very close to the city centre. Happy few only I’m afraid. After the nice walk we went back towards the city, grabbing lunch at our favorite breakfast lunch spot. It’s still there !

Back to the hotel after getting some supplies from the mega Edeka. Taking the afternoon to catch some sleep and make sure I get enough rest. Even dinner at the hotel with fresh salads bread and deserts and getting a nice early rest. Tomorrow is marathon day !

Sunday morning, marathon d-day, nerves are definitely at their post. Early breakfast and preparation time. Main question of the day is , do I have enough endurance to get to the finish line without breaking down at some point. Only one way to find out.

We walk towards the start , which is at 9:00 in the morning, via Altstadt where the last remaining people are kindly swept out of the bars. There was a bit of a celebration in the city due to the promotion of Fortuna Dusseldorf on Saturday.

This being a relatively small marathon, about 4000 runners, there is plenty of space to do a nice warm up at the start and my girlfriend is able to be at the starting grid. I did a few test sprints to see how well my left leg felt. It felt good which added to the confidence a bit

About 10 minutes before the start I get in my starting position and it starts to rain a bit. Because of the course spectators can actually see the runners a lot , the course returns in a small part of town a couple of times so they can easily walk and be on time at different points in the race. Fun and good for moral.

Een 10 minuten voor de start zoek ik mijn startvak op en begint het wat te regenen. Mijn vriendin kan gezellig naast het vak staan en gaat even later naar het eerste punt, door de opzet waarbij je steeds weer terugkomt in een klein deel van de stad is het ideaal voor toeschouwers en kunnen ze de lopers vaak voorbij zien komen. Leuk en goed voor de moraal.

It’s there start , and the running can begin, all nerves went away immediately , which always happens when I start running. I am in a group with pacers who have 3:14 as a goal. I know that is a bit of a stretch for me but for now the pace is good and being in a group provides some heat. Which is great because of the increasing rain. My liquid intake isn’t great apparently because I have to take 4 restroom breaks along the way. First 2 times I got back with the group but I gave up on that because it took too much of my energy.

I am in a good pace and feel good, I take a drink at every stop and some gels and bananas. While running thru Niederkassel and Oberkassel the rain really starts pouring and I am soaked and a bit cold. Mainly on the return trip over the bridge. I still maintain a nice pace, After 30 K my legs het heavy and I can’t keep the pace. Which is fine by me and I decide not too force anything and stay in one piece. Just maintaining pace as much as possible which works great. In my mind I reached the giant 40 K sticker on the road pretty fast and the sun has started drying me and warming me up. Which is nice. The final stretch downhill towards the finish line and I am there. As usual my muscles immediately stop working after crossing the finish line, which is always a bit of a strange feeling. As is the time my watch tells me 3:21:11, en new course record. For me that is. I am extremely pleased , not one moment of pain or troubles along the way. Race seemed over before I knew it. Another milestone , in experience and running.

After the finish we find each other again and go for a curryworst lunch. Getting some food in is always great. Afterwards we walk back to the hotel and the sun is still shining. At the end of the afternoon we go to Medienhafen and get a drink and some sunshine. It’s hot by now. We walk back to the hotel via an unknown part of the city which has nice shops and restaurants. A new discovery for future visits.

Dinner is at a Thai restaurant near the hotel and an early bed , travel time tomorrow. Weather the next day is bad , well luckily travel time which went well as well and we are back home in the afternoon.

This citytrip went well and has given me a lot of insight in how to plan a trip. Running a great marathon was a very nice bonus. This learning experience has given me a lot of hope in getting on with our main hobby. Traveling.

2 years on

2 years on, seems like an eternity since my encephalitis, but today marks the two year anniversary of my hospital discharge. Could be a day sooner or later but that can’t dampen the spirit.

On this blog I have written about my recovery and the strange road I have been traveling ever since. A very short recap, 1 year of revalidation, a move too calmer surroundings, a new work experience place at Utrecht University , lot’s of learning and luckily lots of running. With the Amsterdam marathon as the cherry on the cake.

Has it all been happy days then ? Not quite , my short term memory regularly abandons me , and my operational speed isn’t very speedy anymore. Speech wise word juggling happens, as in random words in sentences, Yoda like sentences and just plain gibberish also occur. I can manage around this pretty well and every time I meet someone new I try and find an opening quickly explaining the reason behind possible errors in conversation.

That’s the practical side of things , it’s still very strange not to have a ‘real job’ , as in some sort of control over your career , future and possibilities. It makes me feel very dependent of other people and policies. Maybe control has always been an illusion in a way but at the moment I feel powerless sometimes. It’s also not a position I have chosen to be in, like when you take a year of for a trip around the world.

I have enough time behind recovering behind me that I understand that this is as good as it gets. I will have recovery periodes for every daily or not so daily activity in my life.

I sometimes compare it with pro sports, you have to keep training and take into account very parameter in order too stay sharp and fit. Slacking for a few days and forgetting about the balance between activity and recovery and it takes its toll.

Ik ben nu ver genoeg in mijn herstel om te beseffen dat het niet heel veel beter gaat worden dan dat het nu is.
Ik zal altijd rekening moeten houden met herstelperiodes voor allerlei dagelijkse en niet alledaagse zaken.

It kind of takes the spontaneity out of life a little. Just take a short unplanned weekend trip is out of the question. Getting something you forgot during shopping, not that smart. It forces you planning everything you don’t want to plan.

I am fully aware of the fact I’m very lucky and privileged in simply being alive and in the shape I am in.
I just need too accept the fact the old ways of doing things is no longer available.

It’s also taught me time is only there in an unknown quantity enjoy it while you can.

Portfolio news – May 2017 changes

Well this post is a bit overdue, but not too late. In May I added one new position to my portfolio and used the remainder of the cash to buy ETF’s , specifically the Vanguard FTSE all world ETF.

The new addition is a Dutch investment company called HAL investments, It’s the investment vehicle of one of the most famous Rotterdam shipping family’s, Van der Vorm. They used to own the Holland America shipping line , hence the name HAL. It’s not my usual investment but for me it’s an interesting one. It’s not as much about the company’s they own which are available on the stock exchange. It’s the ones that are not.

For small time investors like myself it’s hard getting in on good company’s that are not listed on one of the exchanges. This is were HAL becomes interesting. They own parts of Coolblue, infomedics and others.

The family holds most of the shares which is a nice vote of confidence. They pay a healthy dividend which contributes nicely to my goal of living off the dividends that come in every year.

the downside is they are a bit heavily invested in the exploration for oil & gas, which has not been that great of a sector the past few years. Still they manage to make a nice profit anyway.

It’s been going strong since 1989 and I believe they will do a good job investing in company’s for years to come. Hopefully they will make more investments in company’s without a listing.

What’s better ?

What’s better?, interesting question. While having less energy too spend on any given task it also has advantages. I used to do a lot of things simultaneously and as fast as possible , because I wanted to do a lot. I find a lot of stuff worth doing or exploring. And it’s a lot of fun. Learning new stuff. As a result I never really found the focus to concentrate on one particular thing. I always did it all, let’s take hobby’s as an example. I like too listen to music, make music , photography, writing and drawing. Mostly I only did one of these things for an hour a week at most.

This week I looked trough old files I found in a back-up, bits and pieces of sketches, unfinished music and maps of photo’s that never really went anywhere. As I am searching for new ways too train my brain and expanding my focus it needs to be a small task which can easily be cut into very small pieces. Well any of my hobby’s will do this just fine. I have some musical instruments I haven’t mastered yet, this can be nicely done in 10 minute intervals. Editing photo’s or reading about how it actually works can also be cut into little pieces. And writing as well.

By being limited I can now focus better on one thing at a time , and not allow my brain to go all over the place. Because it’s simply too exhausting. When working on stuff for just 10 minutes you need to define the task to strict boundaries. Which has helped creativity enormously. Less is more is really true , well for me now anyway.

What else has become better, time spend with friends and family. Which has always been very valuable, but now I appreciate it much more. This sounds very very cliché , I know. But it’s true. So everyone, you know who you are, Thanks for spending the time and being patient with me.

The time I can now spend on actually working on the recovery has been a better experience then I thought it would be, It’s given me insight in myself and I am now figuring out what’s important. One thing I learned is that everybody needs some time to figure stuff out, taking real rest and moments for reflection. So I encourage everyone to really do this. Not just for an hour but regularly and consistently over time, rest and think about life, it’s worth it.

Redesigning everyday life – Change

Change, it’s slowly but surely making it’s way into my everyday life, a change that I meet with resistance one time and embrace on other moments. I am now getting better results from my new planning system and also being a lot more aware of my energy. A challenge is too really relax and take it one day at the time. It’s mostly the day to day stuff that’s getting better. Less crazy dips when I should have been able to avoid those. The avoiding is going well, after being inside for almost a complete week due to a knee injury I found that staying inside actually helped in controlling the amount of incentives , consequently I kept avoiding going outside. Which I am now doing a again every day. I can’t stay inside all the time, so I am now picking that up again. It’s also important too maintain a social life and keep connecting with people. Also something I need to focus on more. The new way of distributing my energy should yield a better base line and more stability in the next 3 or 4 months. After this point I can gradually increase my activities.

With all day to day stuff going better I slowly need too look ahead. I am now trying to get permission to get a coach with a lot of experience in getting people with cognitive problems back to work, since I am now receiving payment via the government they have too approve this. So hopefully I will have a meeting within the next few weeks. So I can get this started.

So all in all many good things, in many small steps.

Redesigning everyday life – Carpe diem

The biggest question of all, how far will the recovery go. Nobody knows the answer, or can give you a range. I knew that from the beginning. What I didn’t know is what it meant for me and everybody around me.

I am slowly learning what it means. I have to give up my desire to control things, which is hard to do because I have always had some sort of plan and knew if I followed the plan , the goals would be reached. Most of the time anyway. You can’t win them all.

I’m trying to let go of my old ways of doing things, which was to work hard and work harder if it didn’t go as planned.
Fighting was my number one response if events didn’t go my way.

It was my first response in my recovery, I wanted to get back to normal as fast as possible. So I went back to work pretty quick and set out to up my activities almost on a weekly base. Not just the hours at work but also activities at home. I felt tired pretty quick but tried to fight it and push on, which normally worked upon till some degree. I kept this up until my contract at work ended and I felt just how much energy this had taken. And I suffered the inevitable set back most people experience in their recovery. I had tried to train my way out of it. But it’s not sport or even studying were you put in the time and effort and it mostly pays off in the end.

I was simply draining myself and burnt the energy I needed to recover. So after the dip I had to really rethink the approach and take taking my time to recover seriously. I talked about this period with the people who help me recover and they said it was time for me to accept my current situation and not trying to compare everything to the way I was and did things before. Most of the progress is with acceptance and trying to live one day at the time. So it was back to the drawing board, the result was a new system for energy management which allows me to go into more detail when planning my energy and some extra help in acceptance and the psychological side of things.

The new energy management system will show results after 3 to 4 months give or take. If the balance is solid I can them go and experiment further. the other part is the acceptance bit. Given the results of the Neuro psychological tests I can’t expect to fully recover to my former self in terms of concentration , analytical capabilities and information intake and memory. Most likely I can’t return to my old job. The funny thing is , I was already exploring other options before I got this. Off course the cards have been shuffled differently since then, and I never pulled the trigger on those options. It was easier and way faster to go back into my ‘old’ job then it is to make a real switch.

Now I have the opportunity to explore things I am really passionate about , and step outside of my comfort zone and habits, without going all practical about it all the time. I have never taken these kind of exercises seriously in the past, Amusing yes, but my practical side always took over and I just continued with life. In general there are always more excuses to stay on a course that feels safe and secure, or feel that way. So when I was told that it’s a good exercise to brainstorm what it is that makes me happy in life, my first reaction was a bit sceptical.

But then again what do I really have to loose ? All my prior attempts failed because of self imposed boundaries and limits. And without having a solid outlook I just as well go and think out of the box and give this a real shot. I always found people living by the day a bit naive, never planning ahead seemed like a path to certain failure. But now it’s really time for me to incorporate some of that ‘Carpe diem’ in my life and find out where it takes me.

A new start with music

After a lot of years of on and off music making and never really finishing anything I sold most of my music gear and only kept a few software bits. The software never really inspired me, I simply like knobs and things, also the never ending possibility’s in software made me go nuts. As in I simply got lost in making sounds and not tracks. So I decided to get a few bits of hardware and use the computer as a recorder. So just jamming and I will see what happens.

Got a old boss effects processor, an Emu ESI 4000 sampler an Elektron machinedrum and I already had a small and incomplete (as if it will ever be complete) Eurorack. I will start with those.
And although I fear this, will put it on the website.

Hopefully I will find the energy to get very active again. It will also help me focus on one thing and this will be good for my recovery.