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Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 10,252
Re: Cramer's YTD Retrun
Quote:
Originally Posted by justin
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I incorrectly queried the weekly closing prices on Yahoo Finance and got the Jan 7 closing price of $26.60 instead of the first closing price of the year, which is the Jan 3 closing price of $27.09.* Friday's close had a price of $29.93.* I did this calculation: $29.93/$26.60 = 12.5%.* I should have used $27.09 in the denominator to get this equation: $29.93/$27.09 = 10.5%.* So, my actual return YTD on this fund is 10.5%.* I still stand by my 6% overall return as a conservative guess of where my portfolio is YTD.* *
I didn't realize that agthx had dropped ~2% during the first week of January - That is why my YTD returns were 2% too high.*
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On 12/31/2004, AGHTX closed at 27.38 so that's the number you should use instead of $27.09.* Did AGHTX pay any distributions in 2005?* If so, you've got to include those.* A YTD return above 9% for such a humongous large cap growth fund is pretty fine.
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On 12/31/2004, AGHTX closed at 27.38 so that's the number you should use instead of $27.09. Did AGHTX pay any distributions in 2005? If so, you've got to include those. A YTD return above 9% for such a humongous large cap growth fund is pretty fine.
I used the Jan 3 closing price, because that is the price you'd pay if you bought the fund at the beginning of the year. In essence, the Jan 3 closing price is the opening price for someone investing in 2005. To get the 12/31/04 price you quoted, you'd have to buy in before 4:00 pm on 12/31/04, in other words, in December of the previous year. That's how I'd look at it anyway.
I'm with Unclemick and Cut-Throat on this one. I'm not good enough to beat the market and don't know how I've done this year.
Congrats to those who are doing so well.
Count me on your side. I'm not god good enough either. I thought I remember reading a whole bunch of gloomy posts here just a few weeks ago when the S&P was at 1178.
I assume Cramer earns-has enough money that he can quit tomorrow, get zero return and still live quite nicely (saw a film clip of him chillen on his farm). I can't see how people watch him seriously on TV.
Of course, I wouldn't have posted here if I underperformed most major indexes.
Alright, that's it, I'm taking the vegas-syndrome challenge from you & Cut-Throat.
I'll post a market-beaten return. Maybe even the lowest return in the thread. Someday.
My 60% or so negative exposure to a rising dollar could help.
I have made a lot dumber moves than that, so don't feel bad - We have all made our 'investing' mistakes. That is why I'm a passive index investor now.
Luckily, I made my mistakes at the beginning of my investing career when the mistakes didn't cost me too much. I had the "fortune" of the dot com bubble bursting to teach me about risk and the downside to stock investing. Now it is strictly mutual funds, and it'll probably be all passively managed index funds, or low ER funds.
Ok,* I had to know, so I buckled down and did the calculations.*
I already had a spreadsheet which shows what % of my total portfolio each investment is. So I just multiplied that times the YTD return for each stock or fund.* Then I totaled that column.
I think this makes sense, right??
The grand total was
>>>>>>>Drum Roll Please<<<<<<<<
4.45%* *:P* *At least I beat Cramer.*
The scary thing is that the various funds I own had returns from a high of 13.89% (Developing markets) to 0.77% (Fidelity Asset Manager).
Meantime, my little "play money fund" that I started just over a year ago to play around with picking stocks shows a gain of 25.56%! The reason this is scary is it might cause me to think I 'm good at this, instead of just lucky* :
It really was a good excercise to see what the YTD returns on the various funds were. I need to pay more attention to this in the future!
Upon further thought, 10% sounds a bit high for my Oct-Oct returns. I'm too lazy to double-check, but I've had doubts about Vanguard's personal rate of return calculations before. I'm very roughly 25% total bond index, 10% international index, 10% REIT index and the rest in whatever makes up the non-bond and non-int'l portions of Wellington and LifeStrategy Moderate (mostly large-cap stocks, mostly market cap weighted). I don't think that mix is up 10% 10/31/2004 - 10/31/2005. (But I've been steadily contributing, so that complicates things. I think I also added REITs during that time period and rebalanced some other things.)
Regarding previous posts, it is interesting that fudging a week on either end or even a day at the beginning of the year rather drastically affects the YTD returns numbers. It makes it difficult to compare notes over terms of months or even a couple of years.
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Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Central MS/Orange Beach, AL
Posts: 9,067
Re: Cramer's YTD Retrun
Not easy getting a true overall YTD % but looks like I come in around 4.4%. My 401k account is in a balanced fund and that hurt my overall return. Not getting rich, but I can sleep at night.*
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Ok,* I had to know, so I buckled down and did the calculations.*
I already had a spreadsheet which shows what % of my total portfolio each investment is. So I just multiplied that times the YTD return for each stock or fund.* Then I totaled that column.
I think this makes sense, right??
Yes, this sounds right! Myself, I use Quicken and I'm not sure that that I trust their calculation. As you can see figuring the YTD return is not a simple exercise. Look at all the mistakes that have been made in this one thread.
So take all of these 'heady' returns with a grain of salt. One time last year someone on this forum included their additional savings as part of their 'return' - No way could you compare this type number to anything.
Not easy getting a true overall YTD % but looks like I come in around 4.4%. My 401k account is in a balanced fund and that hurt my overall return.
Yeah, the Lifestyle fund that I am pouring all my 401K $ into had pretty poor returns. But the international funds that I've been berating as dogs for 10 years saved my bacon.
Ahhh.....so that's what this diversification business is all about, eh
It's a lot more complicated than that!* - For example if you got a bonus of $10,000 in Nov. and invested it.
value of portfolio= $120,000
beginning balance=$100,000
re-invested dividends = $1,000
additional investments = $12,000
total invested=100,000+13,000=113,000
YTD = (120,000 - 113,000)/113,000
YTD = 5.38% * and all you changed was a deposit last week of 10 grand, and by your calculation your return was lower!
However your biggest mistake was not realizing that the $1,000 of dividends was also = to 1% return of the portfoilo* but you counted it as new money invested!, just like savings
value of portfolio= $110,000
beginning balance=$100,000
re-invested dividends = $1,000
additional investments = $2,000
total invested=100,000+2,000=102,000
YTD = (110,000 - 102,000)/102,000
YTD = 7.84% is closer to your real return, without taking in consideration of the time of new investment money added this year.
Actually, doesn't it get even MORE complicated than that?
Isn't the return on investment = (ending value - beginning value + cash outflow - cash inflow) / (beginning value *+ cash inflow - cash outflow).
And to get even more specific, you could make the cash inflows and outflows time-weighted.
Why is the $1K reinvested dividends considered "new" money? *Isn't it part of the actual *return?
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Actually, doesn't it get even MORE complicated than that?
Isn't the return on investment = (ending value - beginning value + cash outflow - cash inflow) / (beginning value *+ cash inflow - cash outflow).
And to get even more specific, you could make the cash inflows and outflows time-weighted.
Why is the $1K reinvested dividends considered "new" money? *Isn't it part of the actual *return?
Yes it does get more complicated than that. I was only pointing out 2 large mistakes.
And you quoted the following:
However your biggest mistake was not realizing that the $1,000 of dividends was also = to 1% return of the portfoilo* but you counted it as new money invested!, just like savings
For simplicity sake, most people don't consider cash flow part of their portfoilo return - But you certainly could, and that makes it even more complicated!
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Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 18,085
Re: Cramer's YTD Retrun
Guys, the part of the CFA that made my head ache the most was calculating returns. I am happy to just skip it and leave it be. Now I think you see why.
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I basically have a 10x10% base portfolio split in 10 "block": VEIPX/BRSIX/VTRIX/VWO (VEIEX start of year)/VNQ/PCRIX/VGPMX/TIP/PFUIX/PEBIX and while they do not always REMAIN 10% (because I let them wander from the model set-up) a fair calculation is still in my view to simply take the Morningstar YTD returns and divide by 10.
I also hold 2 "blocks" in a foreign hedgefund that added to my overall return but even leaving that out:
VGPMX up a whopping 30% ytd, VWO(VEIEX) 21% and PCRIX a healthly 17% with several others (VTRIX/PEBIX/VNQ) at or around the 10% with only PFUIX being a bad boy and losing money (due to stronger USD).
I have not checked todays base portfolio YTD return but anybody take those 10 nos from morningstar and divide by 10! Cheers!
I found a document from my fidelity 401k plan explaining how to calculate a "personal rate of return". The general idea is to break up the analysis period (in this case, 1/1/05 to date) into multiple analysis periods. The break points would be the dates of contributions or withdrawals. For example, if you look at the year to date returns for your portfolio, and you made a contribution on 6/1/2005, you would figure out the rate of return from 1/1/05 to 5/31/05. Then determine return for 6/1/05 to date. Then use the formula: (1+rate of return pd. A) x (1+rate of return pd. B) - 1 = personal rate of return. If the return for the first period (pd. A) was 0.04 (4%) and the return for the second period was 0.025 (2.5%), then you'd have (1+0.04)x(1+0.025)-1= 0.066 or 6.6% total personal rate of return.
To calculate return for each sub-period, return = (end value-begin value)/(begin value). If you start with $2000, and the end value for that period is $2080, (2080-2000)/(2000) = 0.04 or 4%. For contributions or withdrawals, use the value AFTER the contribution or withdrawal has been made as your begin value.
Using a spreadsheet, it only took me 5-10 minutes to determine a personal rate of return for my latest investment that had 11 purchases this year.
Here's a clip from the Fidelity report explaining personal rate of return.