Post your NISA holdings/results

[RetireJapan]

As a complement to yesterday's blog post: http://www.retirejapan.info/blog/nisa-progress-2017 I would love to see what other people are doing with NISA.

Feel free to write in as much detail as you like

[N00bster]

Thanks for sharing your holdings! This kind of information is priceless when you begin and don't know what to buy.

As for me, I started NISA at the beginning of this year. Here are my acquisitions for 2017 with their current value, as well as a few lessons learnt along the way:

• 1329 ｉシェアーズ日経２２５ ETF (3 units, 70,650 円)
• 1348 ＭＡＸＩＳトピックスＥＴＦ (110 units, 206,030 円)
• 1550 ＭＡＸＩＳ海外株式 (130 units, 304,720 円)
• VTI (10 units, 155,775 円)
• VT (20 units, 166,707 円)
• たわらノーロード 先進国債券 mutual fund (12,700 円 to finish my NISA allowance)

I think this allocation is nothing too surprising for the people reading this forum, but comments are of course welcome.

How it evolved, though, is more interesting.

First, the big mistake you cannot see above unless you summed up. Early this year I also bought 300,000 円 worth of a company stock I believed would take off soon. At first it did. Then it tanked. I panicked and sold at a loss 2 months after buying it. I cannot even claim the capital loss since it is on my NISA account, and wasted 300,000 円 of precious allowance. What a moron.

Lesson 1: Do not try to be smart with your NISA and buy stocks. Just buy stuff you know you will keep for 5 years, and has a good chance of appreciating during this time (because no capital loss claim!).

Besides this mistake, this portfolio performed nicely. Especially VTI which gained 15%. The rest, not so much. Why? Because I bought VTI in February, thinking the market was already high, delayed my other purchases, and eventually bought the rest between October and December. The market has appreciated meanwhile, and I have paid more for owning less.

Lesson 2: Do not try to time the market, or rather, time in order to maximize your time in market. NISA can be used for 5 years (or 10 if you carry over?), and you should try to be in the market for as long as possible. Stuff you buy in December this year will only be in the market for 4 years. You lose 20% of potential appreciation.

So I think my strategy for next year will be to max out my NISA between January and February with more of the same and then forget about it. But what if the market tanks afterwards? Then I will use my regular account and side-money to buy the bargain. Or will buy cheaper the year after if the market has not recovered yet.

So there you go, I screwed up my NISA's first year so you don't have to. Well it's still positive to be honest, but it's not what it could be. My Theo account, where I was not pulling any string beyond wiring money monthly, did much better. However the lessons are now imprinted forever, and I shall not make these newbie mistakes again.

[RetireJapan]

That is fantastic

It seems a common mistake (well, so far both you and I have made it) is to end up selling something and 'wasting' the NISA allowance/time in the NISA.

Anyone else?

[MyTime]

Here’s what I bought in 2017, my first year of investing in NISA. As with Noobster, comments and feedback from the members is gratefully received. I bought everything at the end of July/beginning of August.

- 1550 Maxis Global Equity(390 units, 206,360円) (70% of holding), Gain since purchase: 8.39%
- 1348 Maxis Topix ETF (110 units, 206,360 円) (16%), Gain: 13.29%
- 1681 Maxis MSCI Emerging Countries Equity (80 units, 125,200円), (10%) Gain:11.47%
- 1343 NEXT Funds REIT (30 units, 53,250円),(4%) Gain (well, loss actually): -1.44%

So, the average gain for the almost 5-month period that I have held the funds is currently 8.98%. Not too shabby I reckon. Only the REIT fund is letting the side down a bit.

[Tony]

I started my NISA about halfway through the year, and because of saving for our honeymoon, haven't put all that much in, also waiting for this last paycheque and doing a final buy (last days for Japanese stocks is 12/26, American stocks is 12/22 and Japanese funds is 12/25 at the earliest), so on Christmas day I'll be doing my last buy.

I think I've said it before but I break down my assets into 85% equities / 15% bonds. That equities part I further subdivide between World (ex-Japan), Japan, JREIT and Emerging. The bonds I'm splitting 50/50 JGB and foreign bonds.

So this year for NISA I bought:
1348 ＭＡＸＩＳトピックスＥＴＦ (Japan)
1550 ＭＡＸＩＳ海外株式 (World ex-Japan)
1476 ＩシェアーズＪリートＥＴＦ (JREIT)
1582 ＩＳエマージング株ＥＴＦ (Emerging)
BND バンガード・米国トータル債券市場ETF (Vanguard Total US bond fund)
＜購入・換金手数料なし＞ニッセイ 外国債券インデックスファンド (Foreign bond fund)

For foreign bonds I initially bought BND, but didn't like the currency exposure, so I switched to the Japanese based fund from Nissay. For JGBs, they can't be held in NISA, so they're just chilling in a regular account.

For my asset allocation, I take into account all my investments (only NISA and ideco at the moment), before buying more. As we can't really re-balance in NISA accounts without wasting our allowance, each time I buy is based on balancing my portfolio as a whole at that time.

As I will be going on our honeymoon next year and the Australian government is hunting me down and forcing me to pay back my university debt, I've switched to tsumitate nisa for next years allowance. Still waiting to see how to set that up (I've done the paperwork to change it over, but nothing about how to actually define allotments, or where the money is withdrawn from and how much).

[Rezz]

Great idea for a post. It's nice to see how others are progressing. I started around April and my choices were as follows:

- ＭＡＸＩＳトピックスＥＴＦ 1348 (Japanese stocks) +15.24%
- イオン 8267 (Japanese supermarket) +15.47%
- ＭＡＸＩＳ海外株式 1550 - (Foreign stocks) +9.37%

- たわらノーロード 新興国株式 - (Emerging markets) +15.28%
- ＜購入・換金手数料なし＞ニッセイ 外国債券インデックスファンド (Foreign bonds) +4.6%
- 三井住友・日本債券インデックス・ファンド (Japanese bonds) +0.28%

Total gains (including dividends): +121,715 (+10.04%)

While not as good as some others here, I'm happy with that considering I missed a few months at the start of the year.

My AA was intended to be: 20% Japanese stocks, 50% world stocks, 10% emerging markets and 20% bonds.

In my case, mistakes made were:
- Not clicking the NISA button when buying a fund so that it went into a regular investment account (I had to sell and rebuy within the NISA).
- Putting AEON inside my NISA, probably should have kept it outside and stuck to the whole Japanese market. I bought 100 shares to get the stockholder card and get 3% off my shopping. So far so good though...
- Too much into bonds. I'll probably reduce this to 10% with the new allowance and shift to 20% emerging markets.

Regarding timing the market, I'm still considering whether to dump the whole 1.2 million new year allowance in at once from next month or not. I guess the advice on here would be to do all it in one go, but the crash is coming soon..... surely.....?

[N00bster]

- Not clicking the NISA button when buying a fund so that it went into a regular investment account (I had to sell and rebuy within the NISA).

Haha, I did that one too. Easy to fix, thankfully.

[Tony]

- Not clicking the NISA button when buying a fund so that it went into a regular investment account (I had to sell and rebuy within the NISA).

Haha, I did that one too. Easy to fix, thankfully.

Me three. Unfortunately mine wasn't a fund but an etf, meaning I couldn't put in a purchase order until my units had been sold because then I would be selling to myself, which is illegal.

[RetireJapan]

Me three. Unfortunately mine wasn't a fund but an etf, meaning I couldn't put in a purchase order until my units had been sold because then I would be selling to myself, which is illegal.

I've done that several times. Easy mistake to make!

[RetireJapan]

Regarding timing the market, I'm still considering whether to dump the whole 1.2 million new year allowance in at once from next month or not. I guess the advice on here would be to do all it in one go, but the crash is coming soon..... surely.....?

I'm also torn on this. The literature seems to say that all at once, as soon as possible, is the optimal play. That also gets you the max tax-free dividends.

But the crash is coming...

I'll keep thinking about this. I let the dividends build up in the account so could potentially buy my entire allowance in January instead of January/July as I was planning. I guess I could buy the dip later if there is a crash in the tax-reporting account, but then the gains would get taxed. Hmmm.