How has your portfolio performed

[Marquette]

I haven't been watching the markets but Sarah just informed me that this market sucks... so I checked my 401(k). Down 18% YTD. I might be curious enough to check all of my accounts later, I'm sure I'm out of line enough for a rebalance.

I don't count my cash position as it's short-term (3-5 year horizon) money and not part of my investment portfolio... if I counted that for investment purposes, then I'm sure I'm down a lot less as we're putting a significant percentage into cash.

I'm sure I'm just insane, but I'm sleeping pretty well at night. Then again, we have zero debt, almost no fixed expenses (rent is $500 and I can cut back on eating out if needed), no kids, and three jobs between the two of us... no danger of underemployment, just trying to fight off overemployment right now (side job turned into a 40 hr/week deal for the short term)

 

[ziggy29]

I'm sure I'm just insane, but I'm sleeping pretty well at night. Then again, we have zero debt, almost no fixed expenses (rent is $500 and I can cut back on eating out if needed), no kids, and three jobs between the two of us... no danger of underemployment, just trying to fight off overemployment right now (side job turned into a 40 hr/week deal for the short term)

That's a good point. I do worry a little bit about the employment situation, which is why my wife has started looking for w*rk with decent benefits in case I lose mine. We have no debt, the house is paid for, and we have about a year's worth of expenses in the emergency fund. I guess that makes it a bit easier to not be freaked out -- though I would be a little more secure and placid if my wife had an income stream and a backup set of bennies.

 

[pasadenaDC]

75/25 stocks/bonds
-12.8% YTD
-18.8% 12 months

 

[kyounge1956]

What tools are you using to track your portfolio performance? I am still accumulating for another few years. I just look at Morningstar and see whether the box is green or red. So far the box for returns over the last three years is still green even though the others are fluctuating wildly, so I am not changing anything. In fact I made a math mistake figuring out how much to put into my 457 plan and am adding extra until the end of the year to make sure I make the maximum contribution, so I guess I am "buying low".
However, such a lackadaisical method will be totally inadequate when I actually need to use the nest egg for living expenses. It makes a difference when money is withdrawn and whether from equities or fixed income and so on, plus rebalancing. How do you keep track of all this? I have Quicken but I have only used it to track my checking accoount. Is it a good tool for managing a portfolio too?

 

[shotgunner]

I made my own

I created my own program using Excel.

 

[TargaDave]

I just feel sick! Must not watch news, must go to yahoo page, must not go past a newspaper

If you're gonna be fair add this to your list: must not spend endless hours hanging around on this site.

 

[HFWR]

Haven't looked in the past few days, but it ain't perty...

 

[samclem]

I'm doing that.
As I said earlier I think people are making a psychological mistake comparing it to the high.

Agree. Fortunately, here again my natural laziness has saved me, since I compute my balances so infrequently that I don't know what my high water mark is/was. I generally only look at the balance when I do my taxes--once per year. As it happens, I was tuning up our [-]budget[/-] spending plan spreadsheet the other day, so I had to calculate everything. I was surprised our equity-heavy (70%) portfolio hadn't taken a bigger hit--we're down approx 5% from March 08.

Another place laziness saved me: Last year I just put my Solo401K $$ contribution into the default money market holding account at Fidelity, I never got around to putting it into equities. I'll do that soon. Am I really a dirty market timer if it happens by mistake?

 

[utrecht]

I'm down 3.3% YTD. I worked to mid-year and have been living off my portfolio since then. AA is 39/7/39/15 (equities, international equities, bond, cash). It's a little out of whack, but I won't rebalance until January (when the non-cola pension kicks in).

Social Security is many years away.

-- Rita

I dont understand how some peoples portfolios are still doing so well (relatively) even when they are diversified like this....

I calculate this 39/7/39/15 portfolio to be down about 7.2% as opposed to the -3.3% return posted here.

I used these assumptions:

39% VFINX (-16.5% YTD)
7% VWIGX (-22.5% YTD)
39% PTRAX (+1.1% YTD)
15% Money Market (paying 3.5%)

It seems to me that this guy should have a bigger loss than posted

 

[Canadian Grunt]

I thought I was down 7% for the year based on the current tracking through my brokerage account, however, after checking the numbers from December 2007 I am flat for the year.


I made some trades that I failed to account for as I was up a fair bit in June and rebalanced. It's definitely instructive to use past portfolio numbers than read your account balances, especially when it's all red

 

[DangerMouse]

My net worth has decreased 4% since 31 December 2007. However that includes all my additional contributions in 2008. So truthfully we have no idea how much we are down, not really bothered as we have examined what we are holding in our investments and we remain happy with our choices.

What helps us sleep is we have always held a large cash position, at the moment our allocation is 42/58. We have enough cash to last us at least 5 years.

 

[Gotadimple]

I dont understand how some peoples portfolios are still doing so well (relatively) even when they are diversified like this....

I calculate this 39/7/39/15 portfolio to be down about 7.2% as opposed to the -3.3% return posted here.

I used these assumptions:

39% VFINX (-16.5% YTD)
7% VWIGX (-22.5% YTD)
39% PTRAX (+1.1% YTD)
15% Money Market (paying 3.5%)

It seems to me that this guy should have a bigger loss than posted

Well, I look at the value of the TOTAL portfolio as of the end of the prior year, and each time I update values, my spreadsheet compares the value of the current total portfolio and calculates a percentage gain/loss from the 12/31 figure.

I also hold about 25 investments ranging from Money Markets, CD's, index funds, and individual stocks.

-- Rita, the "guy"

 

[Gardnr]

Well, I look at the value of the TOTAL portfolio as of the end of the prior year, and each time I update values, my spreadsheet compares the value of the current total portfolio and calculates a percentage gain/loss from the 12/31 figure.

I also hold about 25 investments ranging from Money Markets, CD's, index funds, and individual stocks.

-- Rita, the "guy"

That works OK if you have made no "deposits" or "withdrawals", but otherwise you're not computing the true return. That would be similar to the Beardstown Ladies method.

Not to disparage any particular individuals on this board, but I'm always skeptical of people stating their investment returns because many don't really understand how to compute them and there are many ways to make mistakes (not to mention sometimes cherry picking the data). Not taking into account cash flow in/out of the portfolio is one of the biggest and easiest mistakes to make.

Quicken is not very helpful either because it will not compute a total portfolio return including non-investment type accounts like CDs, savings, MMs, etc. So I've gone to a lot of work tracking my portfolio return in a spreadsheet using the XIRR function in Excel. This requires the close tracking of cash flow in/out of the portfolio.

BTW, as of Sep 19 my total portfolio is down about 6.4% YTD, 7.5% from the market high in Oct '07.

I'm currently 67/33 stocks/FI. And I've poured $57K into stocks this year; 30K of new $, 27K moved from FI (actually more than that since I moved a bunch that was in TSP Lifecycle funds to all stocks in the 1st quarter, but it's too complicated to figure out), with 32K going in since the end of July. I'm optimistic that I'll look back at this as a great buying opporunity. Time will tell!

 

[FIREd]

Quicken is not very helpful either because it will not compute a total portfolio return including non-investment type accounts like CDs, savings, MMs, etc. So I've gone to a lot of work tracking my portfolio return in a spreadsheet using the XIRR function in Excel. This requires the close tracking of cash flow in/out of the portfolio.

I solved that problem by moving all my money to Vanguard. My EF (Prime money market fund), CDs (through VG's bond desk) and investments are all included in the "investing center" section of Quicken. The only account not included is my checking account. So when Quicken calculates my return, its the real return on everything (cash savings included). Quicken also takes into account cash flow movements in its return calculation.