Update: July 2021, Back in the USA

Our net worth increased in July to $107,189 and €90,838, which is a month over month rise of 4.81% and 6.05% respectively.

This is a surprising result for me, because I'm in the USA, and I'm spending money. The trip has been more expensive than I originally expected (though there was always an inner voice telling me to expect it), and the stock market sort of bailed me out. If you owned US stocks in July, you were likely rewarded. At least up until that last week.

Stocks Reporting Earnings

Some of my largest holdings reported earnings in July: Ally Financial, Apple, Alphabet, Charter, Amazon, Facebook, Paypal, and T-Mobile all reported earnings, and the news was generally good. These companies are continuing to grow, and their future prospects are strong.

That doesn't mean that the corresponding stocks were rewarded immediately for that growth. While Ally, Alphabet, and Charter rose following their announcements, Apple, Facebook, Paypal and, especially, Amazon fell in price. Those falls happened in the days after I recorded our net worth change, so they're not reflected in the above totals, but suffice it to say, they were meaningful. Amazon fell a little over 7% in one day, and since that's my largest taxable holding, it was a meaningful drop.

These drops and rises though are just noise though. They are meaningless for long-term success. And getting mad at the market for punishing strong companies' stocks is like shouting at the wind (which I've done at my more pathetic moments). We all see the comments on Twitter and Seeking Alpha that go something like, "Company x just announced a huge beat, and the stock is down 5%? How does that make any sense?"

Maybe it makes sense, and maybe it doesn't. Maybe the company is overvalued, or maybe large holders are taking profits. It's all a guessing game, and it's pointless to try and justify or deride every market move.

I write this, and I have to admit that only in the past year and a half have I been able to actually remain calm during these kinds of drops. My first stupid sale from a drop was Booking Holdings back in the fall of 2017. That kind of sudden reversal was terrifying for me, especially after the easy rise up the market had in 2017. From there to now, I've experienced a real maturation of my response to these movements.

The United States After a 2 Year Absence

I'm currently in the US after being absent from it for two years due to the pandemic. It's been eye opening. The country feels alive and dynamic in a way that I miss from Germany. Germany is solid, and it's treated me very well, but I've never regarded it as an exciting place. The US is exciting. It feels like stuff is happening, like deals are being done, like boundaries are being pushed, like money is bounding forth from all the dynamism.

I like this feeling. It's seductive.

At the same time, there's the dark side. I turn on the TV, and there are the drug ads. CBS Morning has a segment called "Bill of the Month", which highlighted a man with two separate insurance plans who still owed $150,000 after an accident that left him in an out-of-network hospital. I see that a pill that I take daily costs many multiples more than what I pay in Germany, even for a generic! Lots of peers my age are living with crippling student loans and few job prospects if they didn't choose the hot career of the moment.

And during my time here, I kept having to sequester myself from my family to continue working on the Streamlined Filing Procedure. I believe that once it's all done, I won't owe any money, and the IRS won't come after me. But I won't be entirely sure until the statute of limitations is up.

I've lost so much time and energy to this process in a period when I wanted to focus on my family. Since the IRS has to decide - somewhat arbitrarily - whether my actions were willful or not, I had to just hustle to get this done. I wanted to finish it before I left Germany, but I couldn't do it, and the whole thing kept underlining how absurd it is.

For example, I make some self-employment income on the side in Germany. In Germany, there's some threshold you have to cross before they start taxing you on that income, which means I've never been taxed on it even though I always declare it in my German tax return. In the US, that threshold is MUCH lower, and so during this process I essentially had to create a set of P&L books just for my US tax return. I also did the same for my wife's small business.

It's all crazy. Now I have to worry that the IRS is going to bother me about some write off for this tiny small business that I have in a foreign country where the foreign country itself doesn't even consider me worth taxing! These write-offs are to avoid social security, but they know I live in Germany, which has a Totalization Agreement with the US about Social Security, but to actually get out of paying SS in the US, I have to fulfill some additional paperwork that for some reason the German Rentenversicherung doesn't want to provide me (naturally, they just don't respond to my requests for it).

I just don't get why my home country is this way.

Suffice it to say, I have mixed feelings about America right now. It feels like a vibrant place full of opportunity, but it's also loaded with traps and harassment for its citizens.

Let's also not forget that the US is being hit by another wave of the coronavirus primarily because of vaccine hesitancy. To say I'm disappointed in many of my countrymen and women is an understatement. I have several family members who are ill with it, and I hope they pull through.

August Forecast

On the day that I left Germany, the third of the three stimulus payments arrived in our Postfach. However, I was out the door already, and so my wife has been sitting tight on that check. We also received our long-awaited German tax refund at the end of July. Both of those will contribute meaningfully to month over month changes in my August update.

My wife's work is also picking up. We'll see how long that lasts (since Germans are hardly free from this vaccine hesitancy madness), but for now some extra income is very welcome.

As for expenses, I expect to pay for our American and German tax preparers. I do not resent either of them personally since they've both been very good for us, but I do resent this system I've found myself in.

Until next time, stay healthy and look out for your loved ones.

Update: April 2021

Our net worth increased 10.75% in USD and 8.07% in EUR to $101,894 and €84,336 respectively. That's a year over year change of 78.77% in dollars and 60.24% in euros.

And what a year it's been. We're still masking up to go to grocery stores. My wife still isn't allowed to meet with people face to face and works from our home office entirely. Our incomes are still depressed. Our restaurant budget is still nothing. I still can't go to the gym.

But if you were long risk assets this past year, you've probably had a very good year financially. In fact, it's been such a good year, that I think a lot of assets have become overvalued and therefore risky.

April Contributors: Stocks and Stimulus

The factors that affected our numbers this month were primarily the strong performance of the stock market and a stimulus payment my wife got from the Germans because of the impact this whole mess has had on her business. That money went straight into an account for earmarked funds.

Germany has had various stimulus programs, but they've been pretty complex to use. Unlike the US, they haven't just shuttled money out to the citizens in waves of checks. The programs have been highly targeted, dependent on the state (Bundesland) to implement them, and you need to meet very specific criteria. For example, my wife missed out on one early stimulus payment because the timing of a vacation she took in 2019, which made the year over year comparison look better than it really was. But that meant zero help despite her income dropping to very low levels.

Additionally, because of these criteria, it requires the use of a tax preparer, whose fee reduces the impact of the stimulus. We love our Steuerberaterin, but we're sending her a lot of money in a very short time.

That's all to say, it's all a bit convoluted and over-engineered, which is kind of the German way.

Selling Stocks

I sold out of my positions in two companies yesterday:

Square (SQ)

And Cloudflare (NET)

Both had run up so much that I couldn't make sense of the valuation anymore. It's entirely possible that I'll regret this at some point in the future if/when they pop upwards, but such a pop would only further divorce them from their fundamentals, and their fundamentals suggest upwards of a decade before their valuations align.

Naturally, if they crash, I'll happily buy them again. And some other companies might also be on the chopping block once I figure out the tax implications.

However, selling is hard, and I often get it wrong. I sold Equinor (EQNR) and Ternium (TX) in the last few months, and both quickly climbed above my sale price. Much to my chagrin, I sold Foot Locker (FL) and Simon Property Group (SPG) a year ago at low prices and ate a huge loss, and both have recovered very well indeed.

My buying instincts appear solid, but my selling instincts need refinement.

Speculative Excess

Nevertheless, I can't help but feel like we're living in a moment of speculative excess, and that makes me more cautious. Speculative excess doesn't just affect the prices of assets, but it affects the way people talk about those assets and the way the press reports on them. It's self reinforcing and full of confirmation bias.

It's one reason I sold: I saw the confirmation bias in myself. I was looking for the angle that could justify my continuing to hold both of those companies, and seeing that in myself made me realize how flawed my own judgment was. The valuations don't make sense, and I was trying to make myself see that the valuations actually did make sense.

Beyond pure speculative insanity, we've seen several major blowups this year already from traders using too much leverage:

• Archegos Capital
• Greensill Capital
• Forced liquidations on Binance

Regarding crypto, whatever merits there are to cryptocurrencies, the proponents of crypto are behaving in the way you'd expect bubble proponents to behave: they are often dismissive and full of bile towards anyone who questions the basis for their belief (Disclosure: I have a tiny amount of Bitcoin and Ethereum).

Likewise, despite John Templeton's admonition that, "The four most dangerous words in investing are 'This time is different'", I've seen lots of arguing that this time really is different! It's hilarious. I've heard it in podcasts, seen it online, and heard it from friends who believe we've entered a new era in some way. They might be right, but it sure sounds like the same sort of rationalization that accompanied previous bubbles.

So what else is there we don't know about? How about fraud? It's likely lurking somewhere, since crypto doesn't solve people behaving like people.

Anyway, I'm feeling cautious.

Over $100,000

As mentioned in my last post, we crossed the $100,000 mark for the first time. I figured it would happen this year, but I didn't expect it to happen quite so fast. And I didn't expect the sudden difference in my mindset. It's not as if I'm going to quit my job to become a full time speculator, but I have a greater sense of autonomy and more emotional detachment from my job.

The Virus Rages On

But financials obviously aren't the only thing, and this past year has been very hard on just about everybody. Thankfully the vaccine rollout is happening faster in Germany, and there's some light at the end of the tunnel here. In fact, we have our appointment for our first shots in a week and a half.

However, the virus continues to hurt people around the world, and I continue experience cognitive dissonance about the relative ease of my life.

May Expectations

Nothing special will happen with our incomes this month. We won't be able to save much because of some fees around my wife renewing her work permit. Because she's self-employed, they require a special document prepared by our tax preparer for yet another fee to that preparer, plus the fee for doing the renewal.

Meanwhile, we're still waiting on our 2019 tax refund. Hopefully that will land soon. And one day we'll get those last two stimulus payments from the US government, but I won't hold my breath.

I'll leave you with this:

Guilty as charged. Until next time.