The first quarter of 2020 has been a bit of a roller coaster ride. In the first two months we were slowly climbing, blissfully unaware of the impending drop waiting for us in March. As with all good roller coasters, our stomach lurched as we began free falling and our portfolio lost £31,000 in a matter of days. After staying strong and surviving the wild and unpredictable ride that was March, we have come out the other side, buzzing and ready for more!

After two months of record highs in the stock market, we were already £14,857 up and excited to beat our quarterly record. This all changed in March when Covid-19 rocked the markets and sent global stocks markets crashing. In just over 2 weeks our portfolio value shrunk by a whopping £31,000 and as a result we ended the quarter with £9,743 less than we had at the end of Q4!

As shown by the graph below, these market declines have had a significant impact on our total portfolio development. The swing we experienced in March dwarfed all that came before it and turned our portfolio development on its head, from February’s record high of 12.1% up we are now -15.82% down!

Instead of panicking, we saw this as a great opportunity and emptied our cash reserves into the market. Once the dust has settled on Covid-19 and the world returns to a new ‘normal’, this money will help power us forward to our goal to be Financially Independent.

Below you can find our ‘Stats Corner’ which displays our performance since we started tracking in January 2019.

As already mentioned, we saw the crash as the perfect opportunity to empty our cash reserves into the stock market. After all, who can resist discounted investment opportunities! In total we managed to invest £14,640 in Q1 leading to average investment rate of £4,880 per month. Due to this significant over performance, our long term average monthly investment increased by £189 to an average of £3,362 per month.

Over the 15 months that we have been tracking our portfolio performance our average annualised growth is now -14.5%. This has had a devastating impact on our predicted date in which we hit £1m and in just 3 months this date was delayed by 22 years! Once the stock markets start recovering we hope to see this date come down once more.

How is your journey towards financial independence going? We love to hear your stories. Let us know in the comments.