Portfolio - January 2013 Update

Not much happened during January. Watched the snow fall outside and pondered my navel about what to do with my life now my job has ended.

In the meantime, the fund rolled on and had a nice little tick up from the continued FTSE rally.There was just one dividend payment in January, from Raven Russia Pref shares of a massive £5. Not exactly going to get rich from that! New money was put into the HSBC Pacific tracker fund bumping that up a little.

The really exciting news is that the fund has now fully recovered from the financial crisis and is now in positive territory again.

Of interest in other people's blogs over the last few days:

Mr Money Mustache reviewed his progress in the Lending Club - a peer to peer lending site for business funding. As an early lender with Zopa I found this interesting. However, I couldn't believe the rates he is getting for his money (13% after defaults!). Thinking I might be missing out on something I checked out Zopa (max 8%), Funding Circle (exact rate hidden but guessing about 7.5% after defaults) and Rate Setters today (max 5.8%). None of them have returns even close to the claims in Mr Money Mustache's article.

The Share Centre blog continues to churn out interesting information. Last week's post took an alternative view of what's wrong with the economy, comparing it to evolutionary change, and the need for something out of the ordinary to happen before it can break out of its busted cycle.

McTurra had a nice little run-down of Google+ vs Facebook. As a devout Facebook hater I enjoyed his comparisons.