Financial Review 2014

A little late, but here is the financial report for 2014.

In short from a financial year it was a year that I could live with but still remained disappointing.

Annual return on my net assets without property adjustments: 3.41%
Annual return on combined household net assets with property adjustments: 7.6%

The actual returns would be a bit higher as the above numbers include (i) income from our part time jobs and (ii) all our household expenditure during the year. Since our returns were higher than expenses + inflation, this is acceptable

The two factors which were most significant to portfolio performance in 2014 were:

1. what I didn't have - almost no exposure to the well performing US and European markets

2. currencies - with considerable exposure to the AUD and NZD which declined against the HKD

There is a lesson in diversification there.