Let's brag about mid-year performance!

[Andre1969]

Just doing a quick-and-dirty calculation, I figure I'm up about 14.6%, as of yesterday. Basically I just took my portfolio balance as of yesterday, and divided by my balance as of 12/31/06 plus half of the contributions I've made this year. Which I figure is pretty accurate if I assume that I've contributed regular, even contributions over the first part of this year.

 

[martyb]

I realize and admit freely I'm not the most knowledgeable guy in the world with this stuff, although I've learned a lot in my short stint on this board. However, at the risk of sounding like a DA, what exactly are we talking about here? Are we talking about the interest earned on investment money (ex my TSP/401k) earnings over the last 6 months of this year, or are we talking about how much % larger my account is in the same period including my contributions? I assume we're NOT talking about earnings over that last 12 months.... So, is we talking interest only, or interest + contributions, and for what period of time. I'm just wonderin' since my measly 7.53% has me feeling somewhat inadequate LOL!

 

[farmerEd]

I realize and admit freely I'm not the most knowledgeable guy in the world with this stuff, although I've learned a lot in my short stint on this board. However, at the risk of sounding like a DA, what exactly are we talking about here? Are we talking about the interest earned on investment money (ex my TSP/401k) earnings over the last 6 months of this year, or are we talking about how much % larger my account is in the same period including my contributions? I assume we're NOT talking about earnings over that last 12 months.... So, is we talking interest only, or interest + contributions, and for what period of time. I'm just wonderin' since my measly 7.53% has me feeling somewhat inadequate LOL!

I'd say just the increase in the value of your portfolio, not counting the contributions, in the period from 1/1/2007 thru 7/1/2007. If you had $100 on 1/1 and $115 on 7/1 and you didn't contribute any money, then you have a 15% YTD gain...etc.

 

[martyb]

Ytd

I'd say just the increase in the value of your portfolio, not counting the contributions, in the period from 1/1/2007 thru 7/1/2007. If you had $100 on 1/1 and $115 on 7/1 and you didn't contribute any money, then you have a 15% YTD gain...etc.

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. Guess I'm stuck with my 7.53% then. I'm right envious of those 10% to 15% folks, but don't really know how to get there. My investements are in my TSP account, and I doubt there's a way to have made that kind of money this year thus far. If I'd been 100% in the International Fund, I'd be up 10.98 for the YTD, but of course there's a lot of downside to being all in a single fund with your retirement only 5 yrs out. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Tiger]

13.7%

Cash - 12.33%
U.S. Stocks - 35.03%
Foreign Stocks - 23.31%
Bonds - 28.42%
Other - 0.90%

 

[LOL!]

Are we talking about the interest earned on investment money (ex my TSP/401k) earnings over the last 6 months of this year, or are we talking about how much % larger my account is in the same period including my contributions?

It's tricky. We are talking about running one of 3 programs to calculate your return: (a) Intuit Quicken, (b) MS Money, or (c) the XIRR function in Excell. We need to enter all the transactions in our portfolios between 1/1/2007 and today, with the exact amounts and exact dates, all contributions, all withdrawals, all buys, all sells, all exchanges.

We are also must include ALL our invested assets, not just the ones that are easy to calculate and give a good number. That is, I didn't include just my wife's IRA that is up 327% this year. I didn't include just 403(b) which is up 13% so far this year. I included everything including the REIT fund that went down, my money market funds, my bond funds, my stock funds, my annuities, ..., everything.

 

[martyb]

Ytd

It's tricky. We are talking about running one of 3 programs to calculate your return: (a) Intuit Quicken, (b) MS Money, or (c) the XIRR function in Excell. We need to enter all the transactions in our portfolios between 1/1/2007 and today, with the exact amounts and exact dates, all contributions, all withdrawals, all buys, all sells, all exchanges.

We are also must include ALL our invested assets, not just the ones that are easy to calculate and give a good number. That is, I didn't include just my wife's IRA that is up 327% this year. I didn't include just 403(b) which is up 13% so far this year. I included everything including the REIT fund that went down, my money market funds, my bond funds, my stock funds, my annuities, ..., everything.

Since I'm only tracking my TSP/401 performance (my other retirement income will be from 2 cola pensions) what I used for my YTD performance was info from the TSP website that showed a 7.53% gain for the L2040 fund since the beginning of the year. I don't know how they calculate it, but that's what I used. Last year I was in the L2030, and the gain on that fund for the whole year was 14.58% IIRC. Unfortunately, for the month of June this year, I had a negative gain of .092. My current allocation is as follows:

7.20% - Govt. Securities
9.80% - Fixed Income (Bond) Fund
41.20% - S&P 500 Index
17.60% - Small Caps Index
24.20% - International Stock Index (EAFE)

 

[Poundkey]

I use a weighted average spreadsheet. On a pretty conservative mix I've gotten about +6.5% YTD.

49.12% stocks..... which includes 8% international---4% small cap.
27.77% bonds. (Total bond index)
23.11% cash

 

[tryan]

Real Estate is DOWN about 15% in the north east. Safe to say it's a down year in the tryan household . Thank god for those rents .

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

Not the best, better than most. I ain't gonna show my cards, though. Getting superstitious about jinxing the run.

 

[Sam]

Getting superstitious about jinxing the run.

This coming from a Chemical Engineer? That's funny.

 

[Spanky]

I'm just wonderin' since my measly 7.53% has me feeling somewhat inadequate LOL!

My return is lower -- 6.5%.

 

[Spanky]

13.7%

Cash - 12.33%
U.S. Stocks - 35.03%
Foreign Stocks - 23.31%
Bonds - 28.42%
Other - 0.90%

Very impressive! This allocation if invested in index funds would only return about 7%.

Alloc Fund Return Port Return
12.33% Money MKT 2.50% 0.3082500%
35.03% Total Stock 9.07% 3.1772210%
23.31% Total Intl 14.15% 3.2983650%
28.42% Total Bond 0.82% 0.2330440%
0.90% ?? ?? ??
7.0168800%

 

[Tandemlovers]

Up 11.4%:

US Stock Market 60%
International Stock 20%
Cash 20%

 

[Nords]

which return do you guys report? The actual YTD (%) return or the Average annual return (%) YTD? Depending on where you get your data from (Quicken, mutual fund company, FA's statement...), the numbers reported might not be comparable.
My overall YTD (%) return is 8.2% but my Average annual return (%) YTD is 13.5%. I know the difference between the two, but which one are we using on this board?

I shoulda known that a board which can't even adopt a common definition of net worth wouldn't be able to handle the mid-year performance ambiguity.

5.6% YTD. I'm hoping that the rest of the year is flat!

 

[igsoy]

Okay, I have figured 12.05% YTD on our portfolio.

after gains our portfolio now stands at:
30% international
40% domestic (59%large, 11%mid, 30%small) (also 0%value, 31%blend, 69%growth)
4.8% bond
12.1% CD held in foreign currency (Euro/pound/Australian/New Zealand)
13.1% moneymarket/CD (would like to get half of this into the market, also may need to shell out for a new used car)

I've got one stock and an energy index and the international funds that have done gangbusters this year. I have another stock that went down a lot and is close to breaking even now, my bond fund dropped. Everything else domestic has beat S&P by some amount.

 

[unclemick]

Target Retirement 2015 - Vanguard site says 6.74%. That was easy.

Don't count my mad money male hormone individual stocks - cause I'm still canceling DRIPs and transferring - got a flaky 27% yr to yr(not ytd) when I try the performance analysis. Anywise - they don't count except as play money - unless I hit 'the one great stock' that buys the villa in the Bahamas.

heh heh heh .

 

[semtex]

Money amrket 2.5%
401k 8%
IRA(roth/rollover) 20%

 

[FIREd]

I have been thinking about the YTD return calculations outlined above by LOL! and I realized something: In a rising stock market environment, people who have contributed significant amounts of new money to their portfolio since the beginning of the year are almost surely bound to have lower returns than people who do not contribute to their nest egg anymore. I checked for my own portfolio. If I had not added any money this year to my wellington position, my YTD return would have been 6.66% according to quicken (which is pretty close to the YTD advertised by VG for wellington minus the ER). But because I bought quite a bit of wellington in april-june, my real YTD return for that very same fund is only 5.17% according to quicken (using the 1/1/2007-12/31/2007 time period). So having a comparatively low YTD return might not necessarely be due to poor investment and asset allocation choices, it might just be that you added a lot of new money to your portfolio at a time when the stock market was rising. So can we really compare each other's YTD returns (especially can we compare the YTD returns of those who have already retired and those who are still in the early accumulation phase)?

 

[LOL!]

So can we really compare each other's YTD returns (especially can we compare the YTD returns of those who have already retired and those who are still in the early accumulation phase)?

I thought we were comparing returns to our benchmarks and not to each other?

 

[jdmorton]

June Was A Kind of a Wild Ride...

For some reason, I've been tracking my 401(k) performance on a monthly basis this year. Normally, I just check it a couple of times a year and really just look at the year-to-year performance. June has been fairly wild. On May 31st, I had a return of 9.3%. The next day - June 1st - it was 9.8%. Sometime around the middle of June, it was 10.2%. On the last trading day of June (June 29), it was 8.9%.

Someplace, I wrote down the monthly returns, but as usual, I can't find where I put it

 

[FIREd]

I thought we were comparing returns to our benchmarks and not to each other?

First I see plenty of people on this thread comparing their returns to each others'. But the problem remains even if you compare your returns to a benchmark: Let's assume somebody invests solely in a the VG 500 index fund which is tracking the S&P 500. According to Morningstar, as of 07/05/2007, the S&P500 is up 8.55% YTD. According to VG, if you had not invested any new money this year in the 500 index fund it would have returned 8.47% YTD (close to S&P500 YTD return - ER). But let's say you invested a lot of new money in this fund in April-June, according to quicken your YTD return will be lower, say 7%. So now you report your numbers and it looks like you did much worse than the index (7% as opposed to 8.55%), even though you have the exact same AA than the index and you own the exact same stocks than the index. So the retiree who owns the 500 index fund but doesn't add to it will report a 8.47% return (in line with the benchmark) but the youngster who added a lot of new money to the very same fund will report a 7% return (18% below the YTD return of the same benchmark).
So isn't the only true way to compare our YTD return to a meaningful benchmark for us NOT to use an off-the-shelf index but rather use an index we craft ourselves to fit the specifics of our portfolio (taking into account our own individual AA, but also the dates on which we bought or sold securities)?

 

[2soon2tell]

YTD 13% - 75% Equity- mostly funds /25% FI- MM, Treas, Non Hedged Intl Bond Fund

2soon

 

[LOL!]

So isn't the only true way to compare our YTD return to a meaningful benchmark for us NOT to use an off-the-shelf index but rather use an index we craft ourselves to fit the specifics of our portfolio (taking into account our own individual AA, but also the dates on which we bought or sold securities)?

I see that if I sold a stock/fund earlier this year and run date range of 1/1 to 12/31, then MS Money makes the annual return outrageous. For example, my spouse sold a stock in her IRA after a 20% gain in first 3 weeks of the year. The "Annual % return" is 1225% when MSMoney is used with "current year" for that investment. Just a couple of situations like that will skew reported results.

Anyways, I can slice-and-dice my return calculations to get just about any number I want depending on the accounts, investments and dates chosen. That is, I can easily fool myself.

 

[retire@40]

I see that if I sold a stock/fund earlier this year and run date range of 1/1 to 12/31, then MS Money makes the annual return outrageous. For example, my spouse sold a stock in her IRA after a 20% gain in first 3 weeks of the year. The "Annual % return" is 1225% when MSMoney is used with "current year" for that investment. Just a couple of situations like that will skew reported results.

Anyways, I can slice-and-dice my return calculations to get just about any number I want depending on the accounts, investments and dates chosen. That is, I can easily fool myself.

Nothing wrong with that method as long as you apply it to ALL of your investments.

That one stock that earned an APR of 1,225% may only be .05% of your overall portfolio, so you have to weight it as such.

That's why one can't just pick his IRA to calculate his ROI (unless all he has is an IRA). All investments, including cash in the checking account and cash under the mattress have to be included and weighted.