2015 YTD investment performance thread

Audreyh1, re: "gutsy move"... into long term bonds, mostly, I was after the 4.5 % yield. I put $50k into this BLV etf in April just to try it out. I figured it would be OK even with it's 14 year duration. I decided almost immediately that I wanted a lot more of it but had to wait as the price kept unexpectedly climbing. Then in September it pulled back a bit. We put $250k more in then. I never anticipated it would climb another 10%, but that is what it has done.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Early Retirement Forum mobile app
 
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athena53 said:
Down 1.3%; we have a fair amount of international exposure.


The ADR for the stock in my Switzerland-based former employer did nicely. Too bad we have only $4K in it!
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Most global/internationals have done better than US equity YTD. What was yours in, if I may ask?
 
As of this morning, I'm up 0.15%. But with the big swings in the market this year, could easily turn down any day. I'm staying the course, though.
 
robnplunder said:
How are you all doing? What is working YTD for you? What changes do you plan to make?




With S&P 500 index down for January, most of the members should be outperforming the index given the "balanced" nature of the members' portfolio. I am no different. I am up 1% as of 1/28 due to good YTD performance from Gold, Global & Emerging market funds, Bond funds, and a bit of short term trading with my "gambling" money. It's a welcome change (?) from last year when my portfolio underperformed the index the entire year. I may continue to trade given the choppy market condition.
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My TSP is at 5.6% at this point in Feb 15. Roth is about 6% DW's 401K is at 5.1%
 
I presume this is annualized performance, not results for just January.
 
audreyh1 said:
We're down around 0.6% for Jan, but 4 days earlier we were up 0.4% for the year, so it's hard to pay any attention to the noise.
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One trading day later - down only 0.1%. Just a lot of noise.

Wake me up when the S&P drops below 1900. Then I might want to start paying attention.
 
Well, so far it's kind of like those first moments after stepping on the scale - watching the numbers fluctuate wildly, wondering where things will level out ;)

Gee, today I'm a genius investor again!
 
wingfooted said:
At least for my report, no - all results YTD.
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Most reported YTD results except Brat. One of my short term trading (gambling, fun?) account's annualized return is 115%! But it's such a small amount that my overall YTD gain is only around 1% (2% after today - dow up 300+ :)).
 
My YTD as of yesterday is 1.1%. Heck if I could do that every month we would be sitting pretty as annualized that is over 12.6%. All in IRAs, no additions to base.
 
Theseus said:
Well, so far it's kind of like those first moments after stepping on the scale - watching the numbers fluctuate wildly, wondering where things will level out ;)

Gee, today I'm a genius investor again!
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Yeah, pretty much. I expect to be positive again YTD after today! :)

Then I'm going to quit looking!!! :mad:
 
My end of month update:

Up about 3% thanks to the recent stock run. Not a single investment is in red but an international bond fund with some exposure to Russia is flat. With stock hitting all time highs, I have reduced my short term trading frequency. In January, buy low and sell high strategy worked well :). I am afraid to buy at all time high even for short term trading.

Making no changes to the current investment strategy although I was tempted to dump the aforementioned international bond fund. Oh, well.
 
robnplunder said:
My end of month update: ...
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You must be using some Mayan or Klingon calendar. For us regular folks, the end of the month of February is in a couple of days. February bond fund dividends will generally be unknown until Saturday morning.
 
LOL! said:
You must be using some Mayan or Klingon calendar. For us regular folks, the end of the month of February is in a couple of days. February bond fund dividends will generally be unknown until Saturday morning.
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I was using my internal clock/calendar. Today felt like a Friday which is the last biz day of Feb. But it's only Thursday! This happens when you are working and yearning for Friday to come quicker :facepalm:.
 
Yeah, I'm going to wait until my next set of dividends are known in a few days.
 
11% YTD.

largely b/c we're FI and still working for another year or so, heavily weighted to equities - 80% or so. S&P Index funds and a handful of individual issues that have done very well so far, incl AAPL, GOOG, PCLN and other well-known names.

All the volatility has also been good for my options trading strategies.
 
Current value + YTD withdrawals = 102.8% of beginning of year value, so up 2.8% YTD. 60/34/6 AA
 
I guess I'm an outlier. I check my balances about twice per year: Mid Dec to see if I need to take any year-end tax moves (tax loss harvest, etc), and then after I do my taxes I rebalance.

I don't spend time tracking it. I can't control it, it's only significant over the course of years/decades (not days/months), so . . .Ignoring the fluctuation in the balance helped me keep investing over the long haul. I kept telling muyself I was buying shares--tiny parts of companies-- and that they all paid tiny dividends and would grow in value over the long haul. Their value might go up and down, but the number of tiny share portions would keep increasing steadily as I kept doing the monthly automatic purchases from my paycheck. Anyway, it worked for me ("if something is stupid but it works, it's not stupid")
 
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