Net Worth Poll

[Roger Van Zant]

You have lots of USD investments/savings? I thought you were British.

Pretty much all my money is in world index funds (mostly USD or largely denominated in USD).

Oh, I thought you had most of your wealth in eMaxis Slim All Country, in yen. My bad.

[RetireJapan]

You have lots of USD investments/savings? I thought you were British.

Pretty much all my money is in world index funds (mostly USD or largely denominated in USD).

Oh, I thought you had most of your wealth in eMaxis Slim All Country, in yen. My bad.

Oh, it is, but the contents of eMaxis Slim All-Country are not denominated in yen, so when the value of the yen goes down the price of the fund goes up, up, up.

[TokyoBoglehead]

You have lots of USD investments/savings? I thought you were British.

Pretty much all my money is in world index funds (mostly USD or largely denominated in USD).

Yes, less and less exposure. The shrinking yen has caused MSCI to decrease Japanese exposure in the MSCI ACWI and other indexes this month.

I honestly would not be surprised if Japan is 2ish% of the index by 2040 or so. Which is why these indexes are so fantastic. Everyone who buys Japanese equities directly remains increasingly overexposed.

However, I certainly price my net worth in Yen and USD for reference. I am not American though.

[RetireJapan]

However, I certainly price my net worth in Yen and USD for reference. I am not American though.

I've added USD and GBP to my spreadsheet. Gives a bit more perspective.

[Roger Van Zant]

However, I certainly price my net worth in Yen and USD for reference. I am not American though.

I've added USD and GBP to my spreadsheet. Gives a bit more perspective.

I don't understand how you work out your net worth in dollars just from your holdings of eMaxis Slim All Country in JPY.
Do you just look at the value of your holdings in JPY and then convert that amount to USD at the day's exchange rate?
Also, since you live in Japan, why is your net worth in USD useful to you?

[sutebayashi]

It's a trap! They're trying to make you change your long-set plans, cash in, and start timing the market!

Looking at my account, including YTD 2023, my investments are up call it 18% - 23% each year over the last three years.

This is way above the average performance that I was led to believe I would see for my asset allocation (call it 5-10%), but is significantly a function of the recent yen weakness.

Fortunately, I suppose, I am yen bear so I am not inclined to sell up and wait for a big currency reversal that will give me a chance to buy it all back 25% cheaper (and take a holiday in the Caribbean).

But at some point a nasty -20% or worse year at least should not come as a surprise, be it from currency or stock prices. I hope to be smart enough to only commit more money when that happens…

[beanhead]

I don't understand how you work out your net worth in dollars just from your holdings of eMaxis Slim All Country in JPY.
Do you just look at the value of your holdings in JPY and then convert that amount to USD at the day's exchange rate?
Also, since you live in Japan, why is your net worth in USD useful to you?

Try this exercise.

Take your portfolio value in yen.
Divide by 140 to get a USD amount.
Multiply that USD amount by 110.
The difference between this value and what Rakuten or whoever currently shows you is the difference in value created by the weak yen. 22%, if my calculation is correct.

[sutebayashi]

Do you just look at the value of your holdings in JPY and then convert that amount to USD at the day's exchange rate?

Yes I think that is the idea.

Imagine if you were a poor Zimbabwean global investor during their hyperinflation (actually they might be having another recently, but that aside).

You would have become a zillionaire in Zimbabwean dollars, but from another viewpoint you didn’t gain much, just the value of your currency plummeted.

The yen is not in that sort of situation and we can still use yen to purchase stuff, but my thinking there is it is better to not get fixated on a single poor measure of value.

Conversely, even when the yen was strong it was nice to look at in foreign currency terms and see how rich I felt. Those were the days

[Roger Van Zant]

I don't understand how you work out your net worth in dollars just from your holdings of eMaxis Slim All Country in JPY.
Do you just look at the value of your holdings in JPY and then convert that amount to USD at the day's exchange rate?
Also, since you live in Japan, why is your net worth in USD useful to you?

Try this exercise.

Take your portfolio value in yen.
Divide by 140 to get a USD amount.
Multiply that USD amount by 110.
The difference between this value and what Rakuten or whoever currently shows you is the difference in value created by the weak yen. 22%, if my calculation is correct.

Ah, I see!
Just did this and it came out to 21.43%.

However, it's all purely academic, right? Since I am only earning and spending yen?

[TokyoBoglehead]

It's a trap! They're trying to make you change your long-set plans, cash in, and start timing the market!

Looking at my account, including YTD 2023, my investments are up call it 18% - 23% each year over the last three years.

This is way above the average performance that I was led to believe I would see for my asset allocation (call it 5-10%), but is significantly a function of the recent yen weakness.

Fortunately, I suppose, I am yen bear so I am not inclined to sell up and wait for a big currency reversal that will give me a chance to buy it all back 25% cheaper (and take a holiday in the Caribbean).

But at some point a nasty -20% or worse year at least should not come as a surprise, be it from currency or stock prices. I hope to be smart enough to only commit more money when that happens…

I keep toying with the idea of currency hedged ETFs...