Our Monthly Portfolio Update - May 2026

**Ren** (0:00)
Everything you're about to hear is for education and entertainment purposes only. Whilst we are licensed when not aware of your personal financial circumstances, any advice is general advice. Equity Mates operates under Australian Financial Services License 540697 Some stocks had some tough moments, and I've made some big changes in my stock portfolio. I've sold a lot, and God, I found it hard to sell.

**Bryce** (0:24)
Some of the positions in my portfolio are really no good, because it's just like crap.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:29)
Why do I even know this?

**Bryce** (0:33)
Welcome to another episode of Equity Mates, a show where we explore what's possible in the world of investing. If you've just joined us for the first time, a huge welcome to our community. My name's Bryce.

**Ren** (0:42)
And I'm Ren, and today we are doing our monthly portfolio update where we share everything we own.

**Bryce** (0:48)
These monthly updates are proudly brought to you by Sharesight. Sharesight is the portfolio tracker that we use that brings in all of our positions so that we can easily keep up to what we're doing.

**Ren** (0:58)
And obviously the budget's been big news in Australia. Sharesight developers have been working night and day. It's been a tough couple of weeks for them. But they have just launched their new capital gains tax calculator and reporting. So if you're a bit worried about calculating annual inflation rates and indexing your cost base to make sure you're getting the full discount that you can get under this new regime, well rest assured that Sharesight has got you covered.

**Bryce** (1:24)
You can sign up to Sharesight today and save four months on any paid Sharesight plans. We should say as well that you can sign up for free to test it out.

**Ren** (1:32)
Yeah.

**Bryce** (1:33)
Head to sharesight.com/equitymates to find out more.

**Ren** (1:36)
All right, Bryce, well, let's get into it. The structure of this episode, we're going to talk about what's happened this month. We're going to also add what's happened in markets this month before we say what's happened in our portfolios. Then we're going to talk about any particular things we've been working on. Then we're going to close the episode by just going line by line in our portfolios and talking about everything we own. So if you're interested in us saying everything that we personally invest in, stick around for the end of the episode. But let's start with what's happened this month, because God, it's been a big one.

**Bryce** (2:09)
It has been.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:10)
Today, as you know, the board decided to raise the cash rate by 25 basis points. The shock to oil and some other commodity prices has worsened the trade-off between inflation and growth.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:21)
The federal budget handed down last night, the 50% capital gains tax discount will be replaced by the taxation of real gains from 2027-28 for all assets and will face a minimum tax rate of 30%.

**SPEAKER_6** (2:34)
Trade is clearly the biggest win for this administration as they wrap up these two days here in Beijing.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:42)
NVIDIA is still at the forefront of that demand story. 85% year-over-year revenue growth from the best player and the biggest player in the market.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:50)
SpaceX taking a very big step towards what's almost certain to be the biggest IPO ever.

**SPEAKER_7** (2:55)
SpaceX is seeking evaluation around one and a half trillion and that's on the conservative side.

**Ren** (3:02)
All right, well, Bryce Budgets, Summit, SpaceX, it's all happening, all of that noise. Let's start with the headline numbers. How have our portfolios gone? We run a core and satellite approach, the core being index tracking long-term market cap-weighted low-cost ETFs.
If that jargon is too much, all you need to know is we buy a bit of everything in one simple transaction, and we just take what the market gives us, and then our satellite portfolios are where we try and beat the market. So how have you gone this month?

**Bryce** (3:36)
It's been a good month. Overall, my total portfolio up 4.59 percent. That's against VDHG of 3.17.
That's my benchmark. Core is up 6.75 percent for the month, and my satellite up 1.9 percent for the month.

**Ren** (3:52)
It's been a good month.

**Bryce** (3:53)
It has been a good month. Yeah. I think the core has really been driven by two positions. GGUS, which is Leveraged US, has absolutely gone on a run.
Up 20 percent for the month. And then the second position that has had a very good month is actually the Vanguard Asia X Japan Emerging Markets. It's not well classified as emerging markets, but it's really Asia. It's up 10 percent for the month.