October 2025 Dividend & Private Credit Update: AU$5.1k Income and AU$21k Deployed

What I earned

It’s been a while since I last gave an update on what I have been doing on my portfolio since August so here goes:

October was a solid, workmanlike month for my Income Factory.

According to the performance summary on page 3 of my October report, my portfolio generated AU$5,154 in dividends and interest for the month, up from about AU$3,596 in August. That’s a healthy lift of roughly 43% in monthly cash flow.

The main payers this month were:

• VAS (Vanguard Australian Shares ETF) – just over AU$2,236 in fully franked distributions.
• VHY (Vanguard Australian High Yield ETF) – about AU$1,311 in income.
• MOT (Metrics Income Fund) and other private credit holdings – together a few hundred dollars, but importantly they tick over every month.

I still think of my portfolio as a boring cash-flow machine. October proved that even with a slightly softer capital value, the income side can keep grinding higher.

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Changes made (new shares purchased or sold)

To work out what actually changed between August and October, I compared the share quantities line by line from both reports and only counted positions where the unit count moved.

Here are the key moves:

• Added 9 units of VAS – lifting my holding from 1,497 to 1,506 units. Using the October price of AU$110.36, that’s roughly AU$993 of fresh capital into the core Aussie market exposure.
• Big top-up in SOL (Washington H. Soul Pattinson) – my holding jumped from 780 to 1,252 shares, an extra 472 shares. At the October price of AU$37.60, that’s about AU$17,747 deployed into this diversified, dividend-friendly conglomerate.
• Small top‑up in VHY – units increased from 847 to 869, so 22 new units at about AU$79.00 each. That’s another ~AU$1,738 into high-yield Aussie dividends.
• Private credit tweaks:
  • La Trobe 12‑Month Fund units edged down from 12,218.7 to 12,053.7, a reduction of 165 units at AU$1.00 – effectively a AU$165 withdrawal.
  • Plenti grew from 11,194.37 to 11,344.14 units, so about 149.77 new units (~AU$150) as interest was reinvested.
  • A new Helix property-backed P2P loan adding AU$1,000 to the private credit sleeve.

No direct share positions changed – all the movement there came from price action rather than trading.

In total I put a little over AU$21k of gross capital to work between August and October, mostly in SOL and the income ETFs, partly funded by portfolio cash flow and a small La Trobe redemption.

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Portfolio snapshot – August vs October

To keep the high-level picture simple, I grouped the holdings into five buckets and summed the values from the August and October reports.

Category	Aug 2025 (AU$)	Oct 2025 (AU$)	Change (AU$)
Passive Funds (A200, VAS, VGS, VLC, VSO)	239,969.52	239,685.00	−284.52
Income Funds (LICs, high-yield & option-income ETFs)	169,852.50	184,279.88	+14,427.38
Direct Shares (individual ASX names)	130,063.90	111,094.94	−18,968.96
Alternatives & Credit Funds (KKC, MOT, MRE, La Trobe, P2P, etc.)	101,526.98	97,828.87	−3,698.11
Cash	845.07	6,267.72	+5,422.65
Total portfolio	642,257.97	639,156.41	−3,101.56

A few observations:

• Despite deploying around AU$21k into new and existing positions, the headline portfolio value slipped by about AU$3.1k. That’s the market reminding me that prices move around, even when the income keeps flowing.
• The Income Funds bucket jumped by over AU$14k, driven largely by the big SOL top-up and the extra VHY units.
• Direct shares and credit funds were weaker on price, explaining most of the capital decline.
• Cash is now over AU$6k, giving me a small buffer for future opportunities or to smooth any irregular income months.

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Plans for next month

Looking ahead from this October snapshot, my priorities are pretty simple:

1. Let SOL and VHY bed in – Having added meaningfully to both, I’m happy to sit back and let dividends and franking credits do the heavy lifting.
2. Keep private credit sized sensibly – With ASIC focusing more on standards in the private credit space, I want to stay diversified across managers and underlying loans rather than chase the very highest yields.
3. Watch for value in quality cyclicals – If we see further wobble in names like WES or MQG, I’d be interested in small top‑ups, but only if the yield and balance sheet quality look compelling.
4. Build the cash buffer gradually – I don’t feel the need to be fully invested at all times. Adding a little to cash each month gives me dry powder for any genuine bargains.

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Market view

The mood in October felt like a tug‑of‑war between “soft landing” optimism and ongoing rate‑sensitive nerves.

• Equities: The broad Australian market drifted but didn’t fall apart. My diversified mix of passive ETFs and direct shares meant some names (like ANN and AGL) did well, while others (such as WES and KKC) gave back ground.
• Private credit: Yields remain attractive, but spreads are no longer widening aggressively. The big story is more about governance and transparency as regulators and research houses push for higher standards from managers.
• Rates and inflation: Central banks are still talking tough on inflation, but the data is slowly moving in the right direction. For an income investor like me, that means coupons stay chunky for now, while duration risk is less of a headache than it was a year ago.

Overall, I’m content to stay cautiously fully invested: happy with the income I’m pulling in, realistic about price volatility, and ready to nudge the portfolio toward quality whenever markets throw a tantrum.

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If you enjoy this sort of transparent, numbers‑driven income update, consider following along or sharing this post with another dividend tragic. The whole point of my Income Factory is to show how steady, diversified cash flow can be built over time – one month, and one reinvested distribution, at a time.