Your average ROI in the last 15 years

[Sam]

This is not a contest.  There is no winner or loser here.

Just curious as to how you did with your portfolio in the past 15 years.  Mine is 11%.

Sam

 

[mathjak107]

13% for the last 20 years......... following a newsletter ,not all my own genius ........although not a market timing newsletter i might add....

 

[veritasophia]

13% for the last 20 years

Mine is 11%.

Nice job guys! Hope my ROI is as high for the next 15 years.

 

[Sam]

Wow! We got one vote for [over 16%]. Congratulations, whoever you're.

Sam

 

[wabmester]

Congratulations, whoever you're.

Hey, I thought this wasn't a contest.

What the ROI doesn't tell you is volatility. What you really want to know is alpha.

My long-term ROI is pretty high, but a lot of it is attributable to the year I sold my business (something like a 4000% ROI).

 

[Sam]

Hey, I thought this wasn't a contest. 

No, it's not a contest.  But [over 16%] for 15 years definitely deserves a round of applause!

Sam

 

[HFWR]

No idea...

 

[Sam]

No idea... 

You're kidding, right?


Come on people, it's almost a day now, and we only got 17 votes so far.  What's holding you up?

Sam

 

[maddythebeagle]

no idea either. 8)

 

[Sam]

no idea either. 8)

OK folks, I have added a new field for the poll.  You can now vote even if you have no idea about your average ROI.

Sam

 

[preben]

I did not start seriously investing any dough before 1998, and only started actually measuring returns a bit more seriously around 2000. Guessing around 10%/year for the entire period. Cheers!

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

house (not yet actualized): returning between 15.3 & 16.7% yearly (optimistically discounting current dip in market) over past 13 year period.

401k: not really sure. i wasn't very knowledgeable on investing so just kept it diversified among 9 different funds plus company stock which split twice. don't know delta % over the years but seems to me i did pretty darned good. turns out i rebalanced yearly even though i had no idea what rebalancing was. i was just tidying things up so it would look nice.

inheritance: what would that be, a 100% return? though considering the trouble i caused at least for the first 15 years maybe i did a little better than 100%. add to that my adolescence (17-18 was brutal) and roi is priceless.

 

[REWahoo]

Come on people, it's almost a day now, and we only got 17 votes so far. What's holding you up?

Sam...some of us are busy being retired, and resent hate abhor detest loathe object to deadlines.
You want that information WHEN?

 

[Sam]

Sam...some of us are busy being retired, and resent hate abhor detest loathe object to deadlines. 
You want that information WHEN?

Yesterday!

 

[REWahoo]

Yesterday!

OK, just let me know when the next yesterday gets here.

PS...I've already responded. Did it yesterday! (10.6%)

 

[scrinch]

I've wondered the same thing about my ROI recently. Networth has gone up 8x in the past 11 years since I've been keeping track from $300K to $2500K. But there are lots of contributions in addition to the appreciation, and I haven't been keeping close enough tabs on them to know what the ROI is. I'm too lazy to try to go back and find out, so, no idea is the best I can do.

 

[Sam]

I've wondered the same thing about my ROI recently.  Networth has gone up 8x in the past 11 years since I've been keeping track from $300K to $2500K.  But there are lots of contributions in addition to the appreciation, and I haven't been keeping close enough tabs on them to know what the ROI is.  I'm too lazy to try to go back and find out, so, no idea is the best I can do.

Wild guess (based on your data) is [over 16%] for that 11 years period. Wow!!!

Sam

 

[Nords]

Wild guess (based on your data) is [over 16%] for that 11 years period.  Wow!!!
Sam

Gotta watch the effect of the contributions. That's what skewed the Beardstown Ladies' returns.

 

[Sam]

OK, just let me know when the next yesterday gets here.

PS...I've already responded.  Did it yesterday! (10.6%)

Which yesterday? The one coming up next?

 

[REWahoo]

Which yesterday? The one coming up next?

Let me think about that and I'll get back to you by next yesterday. Promise.

 

[jerryo]

Gosh. Do folks really keep such accurate records over 15 years? I have no idea what my ROI was over that entire period. I do loosely calculate my ROI from year to year and certainly for specific investments. But, more generally, I just keep track of my net worth and whether it's heading in the right direction. I've never really tried to figure out what my ROI is over time net of savings, 401k contributions, a small inheritance, etc.

That said, my net worth has grown from something like $500-600,000 in 1991 to $2.5-$3.0 million in 2006, so I guess I don't need to worry.

 

[wabmester]

How about this as a heuristic for those who have no idea:

1) Guess at your net worth in 1991. Use that as "current principal."

2) Guess at your average annual investment (mine was usually a paltry 15% of income, for example)

3) Play with a compound interest calculator, using a fixed annual contribution while varying the interest rate until you get to your current net worth (future value).

Use that interest rate as your ROI.

calculator

 

[grumpy]

I have no idea what my ROI was. I do know that over the period 1993 thru 2005 my net worth increased at an average rate of 19.75%. That includes all savings plus investment returns.

Grumpy

 

[scrinch]

Okay, based on the Fidelity calculator and the wab swag method, ROI is 11-12% while networth increased 18-19% annually.

 

[Nords]

Gosh.  Do folks really keep such accurate records over 15 years?

We bought our first copy of Quicken in 1992 and shortly afterward started paying our bills by Checkfree. Every few months I'd add some more data and eventually got our investments recorded all the way back to late 1985.

Quicken was primarily a budgeting tool back then. We still enter all our transactions-- old habits die hard and it sets a good example for the kid-- but today we use it mostly as history. ("When's the last time we replaced this #$%^ing faucet?!?") But you can push a few menu buttons and generate an IRR report, too.

With over 100,000 transactions in a database there's bound to be some problems. I just realized that spouse's conventional IRA shows the correct total number of a fund's shares but one transaction has a number that's incorrect. Even on the summary screen you can see that the numbers don't add up. Unfortunately Quicken's "sell" transaction depends on the individual entries, not the summary, so to sell off all her shares in the account I'm going to have to fiddle with the data to make it come out right. The IRA custodian, of course, had no problems doing the transaction...