2015 YTD investment performance thread

[simple girl]

So, for those of you who are invested in energy holdings, which are down hard (I hold PRNEX, which is down 16%), would you throw your cash into that sector now? I need to rebalance and normally would do that since I am now low on my allocation for the fund...seems like the right thing to buy low and rebalance, but still not sure...

 

[simple girl]

I need to hire you to manage my portfolio. That's excellent in this market.

Oh geez, thanks, but I think it is how I run my numbers. I use the bogleheads returns sheet someone posted a while back. We modified it to include our equity in our rental property. We consider it to act like a bond fund - I've seen some on here view it that way. So I suspect that is raising our return number up because it's value hasn't declined along with the rest of the market. Not sure if that is correct or not.

Also, hubby is still working full-time, and fortunately we are still able to save a good chunk of cash every month which further helps to build our portfolio.

So we base our total portfolio on stocks, bonds, rental property equity, and cash. I imagine that is why my numbers aren't down as hard. I definitely consider myself a novice compared to most on here, lol!

 

[utrecht]

So, for those of you who are invested in energy holdings, which are down hard (I hold PRNEX, which is down 16%), would you throw your cash into that sector now? I need to rebalance and normally would do that since I am now low on my allocation for the fund...seems like the right thing to buy low and rebalance, but still not sure...

All the research shows that rebalancing to the under performing sectors works. It forces you to buy low and sell high. The easy part is sitting back rationally and making that plan. The hard part is sticking to the plan when you are right in the middle of it. If it was easy to buy low, everyone would do it. Who wants to buy something that sucks right now? Stick to your plan.

 

[Christine]

I'm 8% up YTD but 1.3% down the last month.

I do not track in great detail but my global index fund is up and my Euro funds are one up and one down so a wash. I probably have more Euro funds than many - around 60%. And my allocation is 40/60-ish but gradually becoming 60/40.

 

[sengsational]

Oh geez, thanks, but I think it is how I run my numbers. I use the bogleheads returns sheet someone posted a while back. ... Also, hubby is still working full-time, and fortunately we are still able to save a good chunk of cash every month which further helps to build our portfolio.

If you're adding cash to your portfolio, one needs to calculate IRR or otherwise adjust for that fact. I'm not sure if that spreadsheet does that, or just takes the simple ($start-$now)/$start. Although not as good as IRR, you might try ($start-$now-$addedSinceStart)/$start.

 

[simple girl]

I need to hire you to manage my portfolio. That's excellent in this market.

If you're adding cash to your portfolio, one needs to calculate IRR or otherwise adjust for that fact. I'm not sure if that spreadsheet does that, or just takes the simple ($start-$now)/$start. Although not as good as IRR, you might try ($start-$now-$addedSinceStart)/$start.

It has a spot for contributions and withdrawals. So far I've been just putting in our 401K contributions (and HSA/Roth's, etc. when done). So you are saying whatever cash we end up left over from our income, after expenses, should also be added to contributions? (aka our cash savings every month is considered a contribution?)

 

[simple girl]

All the research shows that rebalancing to the under performing sectors works. It forces you to buy low and sell high. The easy part is sitting back rationally and making that plan. The hard part is sticking to the plan when you are right in the middle of it. If it was easy to buy low, everyone would do it. Who wants to buy something that sucks right now? Stick to your plan.

That's what I was thinking, just good to hear it from others. Thanks! Now to discuss with DH.

 

[NW-Bound]

Oh geez, thanks, but I think it is how I run my numbers. I use the bogleheads returns sheet someone posted a while back. We modified it to include our equity in our rental property...

For rental properties which are income generators, that makes sense. My homes on the other hand are money pits. I do not include their values on Quicken, and their effect is simply to cause me to have a higher WR to get cash for maintenance.

 

[redduck]

QUOTE=utrecht;1630329] ...Who wants to buy something that sucks right now? [/QUOTE]

Let's have a show of hands.

 

[simple girl]

For rental properties which are income generators, that makes sense. My homes on the other hand are money pits. I do not include their values on Quicken, and their effect is simply to cause me to have a higher WR to get cash for maintenance.

Drag! Ours doesn't make us a ton of money, but it isn't in the red, either...finally!

 

[HF63]

My best investment is up ~ 13%, this is the pillow money that gets converted in to pesos when I sent it over to my mom. All other investments ~ 1% or even.

 

[simple girl]

I need to hire you to manage my portfolio. That's excellent in this market.

If you're adding cash to your portfolio, one needs to calculate IRR or otherwise adjust for that fact. I'm not sure if that spreadsheet does that, or just takes the simple ($start-$now)/$start. Although not as good as IRR, you might try ($start-$now-$addedSinceStart)/$start.

OK, so I just modified the input data and took out all cash - the return now based on stock, bond, rental property equity and contributions via 401K, etc. is: - 1.42% YTD.

So Dawg, not nearly as good as I had thought, but I'll take it! (Assuming my math isn't fuzzy...these calculations, even with a fancy spreadsheet, are not easy to figure out!)

 

[kcowan]

YTD just under 3.3% decline.

 

[sengsational]

It has a spot for contributions and withdrawals. So far I've been just putting in our 401K contributions (and HSA/Roth's, etc. when done). So you are saying whatever cash we end up left over from our income, after expenses, should also be added to contributions? (aka our cash savings every month is considered a contribution?)

OK, so I just modified the input data and took out all cash - the return now based on stock, bond, rental property equity and contributions via 401K, etc. is: - 1.42% YTD.

So Dawg, not nearly as good as I had thought, but I'll take it! (Assuming my math isn't fuzzy...these calculations, even with a fancy spreadsheet, are not easy to figure out!)

Sometimes the fancy spreadsheet is the problem! The reason I say that is without a good understanding of what it's doing, it's easy to create your inputs in a way that wasn't what the spreadsheet "expects".

To calculate internal rate of return, you'd need the starting balance, all deposits and withdrawals that would affect the balance, plus the date of each of those. And the last bit of information would be the balance now. I've posted a simple spreadsheet where the portfolio starts with 10,000, $250/month is added, and there are random gains each month recorded. The IRR would have been 4.1% without the $250/month, but is 3.7% with those monthly deposits.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6X74x23Hx7DUXRObkhxZ0duOEU/view?usp=sharing

 

[robnplunder]

Down 1.9%. I hope this was the correction I have been waiting.

 

[papadad111]

Currently market is -8.6 percent on the SP500. ( down from all time highs).

My Portfolio -9.1 percent...

Difference is a bet on international stocks that has not panned out as intended (vxus) and a tilt toward Russell 2000 that is held by VTI as compared to my benchmark, the SP500

 

[Sunset]

Well now that the market is correcting, I wish I had know it was wrong to start

I don't like to calculate how far down I am because it doesn't change the fact that I'm going to buy more now that it's on sale, while thinking about how long my cash has to last.

A little mental tug of war...

 

[BTravlin]

-.78% as of 9/1/15 with a 40/60 AA.

 

[simple girl]

Sometimes the fancy spreadsheet is the problem! The reason I say that is without a good understanding of what it's doing, it's easy to create your inputs in a way that wasn't what the spreadsheet "expects".

To calculate internal rate of return, you'd need the starting balance, all deposits and withdrawals that would affect the balance, plus the date of each of those. And the last bit of information would be the balance now. I've posted a simple spreadsheet where the portfolio starts with 10,000, $250/month is added, and there are random gains each month recorded. The IRR would have been 4.1% without the $250/month, but is 3.7% with those monthly deposits.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6X74x23Hx7DUXRObkhxZ0duOEU/view?usp=sharing

Thank you so much! I will definitely take a look at that later when I have a bit more time!

 

[target2019]

I use XIRR. The result looks like this:

12/31/2014 10000.00
1/30/2015 250.00
2/28/2015 250.00
3/31/2015 250.00
4/30/2015 250.00
5/31/2015 250.00
6/30/2015 250.00
7/31/2015 250.00
8/31/2015 250.00
9/1/2015 -12269.01
xirr 3.72%

Confirms what Seng says on his sheet.

 

[kimcdougc]

Up .42%.

 

[audreyh1]

I'm tired of looking at it. Up 1% one day, down 1% the next. It's such a moving target I think I'll wait until the end of the year.

 

[sengsational]

I use XIRR. ...

XIRR() was apparenlty added to Excel later, so I've been using IRR() which requires equally spaced time intervals (in the example, it's one month).

Good to know XIRR() is out there...it would make it even easier to get YTD performance, even if there have been deposits and withdrawals. My 15 year old Excel doesn't have it though, so I need to stick with the approximation of bunching the transactions for the month into one number.

 

[target2019]

XIRR() was apparenlty added to Excel later, so I've been using IRR() which requires equally spaced time intervals (in the example, it's one month).

Good to know XIRR() is out there...it would make it even easier to get YTD performance, even if there have been deposits and withdrawals. My 15 year old Excel doesn't have it though, so I need to stick with the approximation of bunching the transactions for the month into one number.

I think you may be talking about ancient history. I found XIRR in an Excel 4.0 manual that is labeled for Macintosh. But I know the PC and Mac versions were very close. What version are you using? It may be in a toolpak or something like that.

Of course I had no idea what it was until 2005! It took me a while to get it to work. Lots of confusing instructions on the net about it. It's a popular topic. But it's finicky. I always seem to get one thing wrong and need to filter my inputs better. Formatting is important too.

I used XIRR against a few mutual funds in my 401K and found the results to be almost identical to the performance reports I could pull from the 401K site. The contributions were equally spaced, but I change my allocation 2 or 3 times during one year. XIRR was able to handle that.

 

[nun]

YTD I'm down 2%. Luckily (and that all it was) I moved $300k from equities to TIAA-Traditional when the DOW was over 18k as part of a strategy to buy into my state's DB plan. So that's ticked along at an annual rate of 4%. I also have money in Wellesley and that has held up relatively well to offset some of the equity losses. I have rebalanced once moving money from a bond fund to a total stock market index fund.