2016 YTD investment performance thread

[robnplunder]

Wow, what a rocky start for the 1st day of 2016 trading day! I hope we can all beat the market this year despite the poor start. I am starting 2016 YTD investment performance thread early. Feel free to update your progress at the end of month, quarter, year, whenever.

A few notes:

2015 thread is here - http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...ead-75654.html.

This thread is about "investment" return, not how much your asset went up due to saving + investment, went down due to spending + investment, etc..

This thread will be helpful if you share your strategy, both what is working and what is not working.

Best wishes & good luck to us all!

[ejman]

In the spirit of establishing what I hope will be the lowest benchmark, according to Quicken my 2016 YTD annualized return is -48.3%...

[Coolius]

My portfolio is primarily income producing Preferred Stock/ETD, and a corporate bond ladder.

It works well in what I hope will be the situation in 2016; slow increase in rates, sluggish economy, and lots of volatility from commodity & geopolitical events. OTOH, it will lag badly in a growing economy and a strong market.

2016 YTD performance was actually up 0.1%. Considering the losses in large caps, I was pleasantly surprised that some income issues actually went up enough to offset the losses.

[LOL!]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ejman In the spirit of establishing what I hope will be the lowest benchmark, according to Quicken my 2016 YTD annualized return is -48.3%...

Well, you did write "annualized", but that's probably a user error. For Quicken to report YTD (not annualized) return one must change the date range to the full year: 1/1/2016 to 12/31/2016.

[ejman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOL! Well, you did write "annualized", but that's probably a user error. For Quicken to report YTD (not annualized) return one must change the date range to the full year: 1/1/2016 to 12/31/2016.

No, that was intentional, thought it would be nice to put in a doom and gloom bottom to the performance reporting by annualizing that bad first day... Hopefully everyone will do better than that going forward

[Looking4Ward]

After dumping a large position in Vanguard Energy last year, my taxable account (which represents two thirds of my portfolio) consists of:

14% Vanguard Healthcare Fund
17% Vanguard Wellesley
69% Vanguard Wellington

My tax deferred account consists of:

5% Vanguard REIT Index Fund
8% Vanguard Dividend Growth Fund
15% Vanguard Healthcare Fund
72% Vanguard Wellington

I don't plan on making any changes at all this year and will be very curious to see how I do.

[dallas27]

First day worked out well for me, I had a big contribution post at mid-day and was able to buy near the trough.


Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum

[dvalley]

According to Personal Capital here's what my portfolio looks like, mostly index funds. Alternatives below is mostly REITs. No idea how this will do in 2016 but probably similar to 2015 which was -1.x% overall.

Class %
U.S. Stocks 60.03%
Intl Stocks 12.32%
Alternatives 10.13%
U.S. Bonds 8.63%
Unclassified 3.46%
Cash 2.85%
Intl Bonds 2.57%

[HFWR]

Apologies to all. When I retired on 12/31/15, the market must have thought I said "Whee!"...

Down about 1.5% thus far.

[robnplunder]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HFWR Apologies to all. When I retired on 12/31/15, the market must have thought I said "Whee!"... Down about 1.5% thus far.

Congrats on your retirement!



Pundits predict a so so market for 2016. I wonder if anyone here made significant changes form their 2015 investment strategy. I am staying put with the same mutual funds I had in 2015.

[NW-Bound]

Congrats to HFWR too. Now he has more time to watch his stash go down.

About making investment changes, no big move for me. I already sold off much of energy and foreign stocks 4 months ago. So, my stock portion no longer drops more than the S&P on a bad day and only matches it.

I have been trying to reload some positions by writing out-of-the-money put options a couple of months out. If stocks drop that low, that forces me to buy. If not, I get a few grands in cash to help pay for travel.

[kaudrey]

I'm down about 1/2%.

But I'm facing a dilemma - I have been slowly lowering my AA to 80/20 over the last year (I was about 87/13 at the beginning of 2015). I finally got there as of last week. So, in theory, I should just keep going and invest like normal every two weeks/month as I usually do, but I am SO tempted to take some of my cash and invest TODAY. I resisted yesterday, and I guess I just resisted again today because the markets just closed, but if things continue, I'll want to buy tomorrow......

[DrRoy]

I don't do the return calculation until month end but I did reduce my AA from 75/25 to 72/28 as I had planned to do already. I would expect to be down proportionally with my AA since I am heavily indexed to the S&P500. I also for a couple years have had nearly no international, especially emerging markets, which has been a good thing.

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HFWR Apologies to all. When I retired on 12/31/15, the market must have thought I said "Whee!"... Down about 1.5% thus far.

LOL! Congrats!

[eta2020]

I am making no changes to 100% equities. I will probably add to SCHD and mid cap/small cap index as a year goes on.

I have no idea what to expect this year so I expect nothing.

[VFK57]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HFWR Apologies to all. When I retired on 12/31/15, the market must have thought I said "Whee!"... Down about 1.5% thus far.

Congratulations on your retirement. During past few days my stocks went down more than 4.5%. Yet unless you sell it, it is not a loss. In 2009 my rental property was down 50% yet by 2015 it recovered all losses. I also think that this year is going to be a bear market unless Feds actions would trigger higher than normal inflation.

[Spanky]

-.63% -- planning to increase equity allocation from 40% to 60%.

[mickeyd]

I have no idea after 3.5 trading days in 2016 what may accounts look like. I probably will not seriously look at them until late in the year when I have to initiate my second RMD.

[Willers]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HFWR Apologies to all. When I retired on 12/31/15, the market must have thought I said "Whee!"... Down about 1.5% thus far.

Congrats!

[Mulligan]

Up 0.3% so far this year....Thanks for nothing VTSAX. I knew I should have sold all of you at the end of the year.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk