How has your portfolio done in 2011?

[ERD50]

Some are referring to their Net Worth, but the OP is talking performance (net of withdraws and contributions).

Also, as the song goes, "Compared to What?".

Looking at Yahoo adj prices, I get:

SPY                  +1.69%
VBTLX Tot Bond Fund  +6.5%
VWIAX (pssssst)      +7.84%

I'm heavily weighted Equities, and Junk (which I count as 1/2 Equities), and my main accounts (didn't add up some of the small ones), is 1.67%, just a shade under the SPY.

My options trades did not work to my advantage this year - the caps on gains exceeded the premiums received, but very close to break even on that. Better luck next year?

-ERD50

 

[Moemg]

My portfolio is up 4.6% as of today .

 

[nun]

My "1 yr" return is substantially higher than my 2011 YTD return, as is likely for most folks, due to the run-up at the end of last year.

Yep that's true, I was using Vanguards tools and they don't have YTD numbers. Also I included my after tax account and there's been a lot of activity in that to pay down the mortgage. For just the retirement portion I'm at +7.2% for one year and if I take YTD returns over beginning balance I'm at +5.4%. Thank you Wellesley.

 

[cardude]

Equities (70%) down 3.5%................Cash/bonds (30%) about flat.



I diverted some cash into my little used car lot however, and that's doing well!

 

[braumeister]

YTD, up a little over 5% which is enough to make me feel pretty good. I've beaten the S&P 500 total return for seven years in a row now, so I guess I'm doing something right. About 70% equities.

 

[NW-Bound]

What I meant was to ask about the portfolio performance, with any withdrawal or addition accounted or compensated for, but did not know the exact way to phrase it. But ERD50 understood me.

Some are referring to their Net Worth, but the OP is talking performance (net of withdraws and contributions).

Including everything in our portfolio (stocks, bonds, CDs, money market funds, mutual funds, precious metals):

+8.3% YTD using the XIRR method.
+7.6% YTD using: (interests+dividends+realized gains+unrealized gains YTD)/value of portfolio on 01/01/2011.

Good for you!

With all that gain, if you need to diversify away from foie gras and truffle, I just found out that one can mail order a 8-lb jamon iberico for a bit more than $1200. Something for you to consider.

Equities (70%) down 3.5%................Cash/bonds (30%) about flat.

Hey, thanks for posting!

I diverted some cash into my little used car lot however, and that's doing well!

Aren't you glad you have some other activities to bring in some revenue? It's the same here.

Anyone else in the red? Please be manly and speak up. Don't be shy!

 

[MDJO]

Overall, about .51 percent for the year. I am in the process of making my portfolio less aggressive, so I've starting buying short term bonds, dividend paying stocks, and have put a significant amount into MITXF.

 

[Tif7]

I'm -6% YTD.

100% equities. US portion of portfolio is flat. Hurt by non-us which is -13% YTD.

2011: -6% (YTD)
2010: +18%
2009: +34%
2008: -45%
2007: -3%
2006: +23%
2005: +14%
2004: +19%
2003: +41%
2002: -18%
2001: -4%

T

 

[Coolius]

My portfolio is up by 3.2% YTD, before retirement withdrawals.

After 9 months of ER withdrawals, it is essentially flat, which is not good, but acceptable given the upheavals of this year.

I was heavy in corporate bonds, bought in 2008, so the bonds are providing me with steady income. Equities did not do well this year, unfortunately.

May divert some to Wellesley, as I read here that many of you have done well in that fund.

 

[Alan]

IRR ytd is 5.26% and that takes into account the withdrawals and deposits throughout the year. AA is currently 32/64/4, invested mostly in Wellesley and target retirement funds, with a chunk in I-Bonds and a decreasing amount in CD's. (The last CD matures later this month).

 

[Bikerdude]

Our portfolio is up 4.7% so far. At least our withdrawal is covered this year.

+1. 38% equities, 42% bonds and 20% cash/cd's.

 

[clifp]

What I meant was to ask about the portfolio performance, with any withdrawal or addition accounted or compensated for, but did not know the exact way to phrase it. But ERD50 understood me.



!

I periodically run a balance sheet and separate financial assets from my couple of pieces of real estate and any mortgages associated them.
Figuring performance for my retirement accounts is easy since I am not withdrawing from them.

It is tougher to figure my performance for my non retirement accounts. I do have a fixed transfer from brokerage accounts to my checking account each month. But I have say I don't keep careful track of my actual spending and it isn't uncommon for me to move money back and forth from
checking to brokerage accounts. At the end of the year maybe I'll try and reconcile my cash flows.

One question I have all of you with real estate is how do you keep track of the performance of real estate. This year I bought a condo in Vegas. The purchase price I include in my financial performance. Sadly the damn thing isn't rented, so the $250/month expense I lumped in with my living expenses. Which I know is wrong.

At some point it will be rented and generating positive cash flow. These cash flows will then been invested first in financial instruments and then perhaps later in real estate. I am curious how to people separate these classes out for tracking investment returns.

 

[ziggy29]

My Fidelity 401K reports a YTD gain of 0.4%. The sad thing is that this easily beats a money market fund.

Like many others, this has been dragged down considerably by international equity funds.

 

[NW-Bound]

Wellesley for you too, ziggy?

Seriously, I did not do a lot of trading this year, and as I have weathered the storm up to this point, I am going to hold what I have for a while longer. My stocks are good companies, but they are more economic sensitive (high beta), hence got beaten down worse than the market. I am not going to change horse midstream now.

 

[heirloom]

My 401K YTD is 6.9%...bought/sold VGTSX, VIGRX, VMGRX while mkt was flip-flopping. Held PTTRX and Stable Value

IRA is -8.2%.....all stocks(they'll recove some time)

 

[Spanky]

can't really complain: 1.2%.

 

[CyclingInvestor]

11.4% IRR YTD as of Dec 9, 100% individual stocks all year (mid to large cap, US-based, dividend payers)

 

[clifp]

11.4% IRR YTD as of Dec 9, 100% individual stocks all year (mid to large cap, US-based, dividend payers)

You know it is really risky to have 100% of your portfolio in stocks, especially individual ones as opposed to indexes. Even more so in year when once again bond funds had higher returns than stocks.

Not that it matters much but I assume that your 11.4% includes your withdrawals? How do you calculate the IRR for your portfolio.

 

[John Galt III]

Overall my portfolio was up 3.8 percent in 2011. Almost all of it is in stable value funds. Most notable dog was Oppenheimer Emerging Markets ODVYX which has plummeted about 20 percent in 2011, but fortunately I only have a few thousand there.

 

[plex]

Down -2% YTD, the Van. Total Int. pulled me down 5% for the year. Tempted to buy more of it next year. Still up 15% over the last 5 years though (e.g. +3%/year).

 

[target2019]

Inspired by this thread, I went and downloaded my 401(K) transactions (about 20% of our total portfolio.

49.35% Small/Mid-Cap Indexed Equity
33.62% MSCI EAFE®Indexed Equity
13.61% Emerging Mkts. IndexedEquity
03.42% Commodities

3.91% IRR (company calculated 3.7%)

 

[Chuckanut]

I am down a bit, thanks to withdrawing some funds to travel to Europe.

 

[CyclingInvestor]

You know it is really risky to have 100% of your portfolio in stocks, especially individual ones as opposed to indexes. Even more so in year when once again bond funds had higher returns than stocks.

Not that it matters much but I assume that your 11.4% includes your withdrawals? How do you calculate the IRR for your portfolio.

Since I only make a few (72t) withdrawals a year, it is pretty easy to calculate with the built-in Excel functions (I keep all records on a few sets of spreadsheets).

The 11.4% is the actual investment return. Since I have withdrawn about 3.1% (of the starting balance) this year, my balance is about 8.3% higher YTD.

I do not agree that this all-stock strategy is particularly risky over the long haul. My withdrawals are completely covered by the dividends (plus about $1700 this year), so I never need to sell anything. The dividends have increased by about 50% in the 5+ years I have been retired giving me a substantial cushion over what I need, and the stocks I hold (PG, JNJ, KO, ADP, MSFT, MMM, AFL, MDT, SYY, etc) are unlikely to cut dividends. Of course, I do not recommend others do this unless they also enjoy analyzing balance sheets and earnings forecasts.

 

[Sandhog]

I don't measure performance by year to year the percentage but total net value divide by my contribution. For example, if I had $100K in contribution to my Portfolio and it dropped 50% one year then my net value would be $50K. And following year it went up 50% then my net value is only $75K. However, if $75K/100K it's 75%-100% = -25%/2 years = -12.5% average loss for two years.

If I start the withdraw phase, I'll do the same to keep the performance true to actual value of portfolio.

I'm at +1.2% for average of past 8 years when I went back to paying off my 401k loan and start contributing again.

 

[clifp]

I do not agree that this all-stock strategy is particularly risky over the long haul. My withdrawals are completely covered by the dividends (plus about $1700 this year), so I never need to sell anything. The dividends have increased by about 50% in the 5+ years I have been retired giving me a substantial cushion over what I need, and the stocks I hold (PG, JNJ, KO, ADP, MSFT, MMM, AFL, MDT, SYY, etc) are unlikely to cut dividends. Of course, I do not recommend others do this unless they also enjoy analyzing balance sheets and earnings forecasts.

I guess we need a better sarcasm emoticon or maybe a tag. Our strategies are very similar and we both outperformed in your case by a wide margin in my case by only a few points (but in my case that has been true for several years running) so I mocking the "riskiness of high equity exposure in individual issue" that we read in Bogleheads and sometimes here.