Let's brag about mid-year performance!

[chinaco]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chinaco I do not have all of the numbers yet (missing a statement). But... It looks like approx 10%.

Mine is YTD... Plus I am allocated @ 70/30. We are a little heavy on the large cap allocation in equities. Plus, we have a substantial $ amount about 14% of the portfolio in DW MegaCorp profit sharing plan (that cannot be sold). On a Total return basis, that stock has declined a small amount (YTD).

All in all, If I can hang on to the 10% this year... I will be happy. Like everyone else, I want all I can get from the market... but my projections show me hitting my target ER amount in 4 years @ at a little less than 7%. . Now that I have about 10 Years of Withdrawal $ in fixed, any normal market correction or bear for several years should not upset my plans.

Oh... and by the way!

ARGHH... This limit on number of smilies is limiting my creativity!

[bpp3]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOL! OK, if you do this, you must tell us what your benchmark did.

I don't know absolute numbers yet, but my portfolio is mostly index funds, whose benchmarks are, um, themselves. My individual stocks seem to be up a couple percent against their benchmark index YTD, but I suspect that is statistical noise. Haven't figured out a good benchmark for my individual bonds yet -- hmm, sounds like a good project.

But overall, my portfolio pretty much is its own benchmark.
Look ma, no tracking error!

[farmerEd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FIREdreamer I have a question, which return do you guys report? The actual YTD (%) return or the Average annual return (%) YTD? Depending on where you get your data from (Quicken, mutual fund company, FA's statement...), the numbers reported might not be comparable. My overall YTD (%) return is 8.2% but my Average annual return (%) YTD is 13.5%. I know the difference between the two, but which one are we using on this board?

My 14.7% is YTD...annualized it would be 29.4%...now wouldn't THAT be nice.....here is how mine is broken down by category:

[LOL!]

For Quicken and MSMoney users, one must use the reporting dates or period 1/1/2007 to 12/31/2007 to get the proper YTD return. If you use 1/1/2007 to say 7/3/2007, then the percent return is much higher.

An article on figuring out a good benchmark is found in the WSJ: Better Ways To Measure Your Portfolio - WSJ.com

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Quote:

Originally Posted by yona I was very lucky this year. In the future I aim to 20-30% a year

Gain or loss?

[ziggy29]

For the first time since I started my asset allocation model (in 2000), I'n lagging the S&P 500. I'm currently at about 5.6% in my largest rollover IRA.

I'm getting killed by the 10% I have in REITs (down nearly 10% YTD), and the 20% in short term bonds are basically flat (up about 1.5%). The only asset classes beating large cap domestic in my portfolio are the internationals, largely due to the tanking dollar -- all of those are up in double digits.

Still, I'm not complaining; I was down only 5.4% in 2002 with this asset mix as the S&P fell 22%. And I've beaten the market every year, as I said, since I began this allocation model. It's overdue to mean-revert, though, which means large cap domestic has finally stopped underperforming, which will likely put my streak of 'beating the index' into the history books.

My 401K, though, is up about 8.5%.

[kumquat]

Being arithmetically useless and spreadsheet shy, I calculated the return from various portions of out NW. FWIW our holdings are about:

25% DC pension fund
20% real estate (house, condo, farm land)
25% one big stock holding
20% diversified stock portfolio (mostly Canadian)
10% cash

Results are:

DC pension 5%
RE (boom on in western Canada) ~15 - 20%
big stock holding 46%
diversified stock portfolio 9%
cash 1.8%

All calculations use in C$, our American holdings have been clobbered by the rise of the C$. Since we don't include the RE in SWR calculations, I have no idea what this all means other than I should reduce the big stock holding.

[LOL!]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOL! For Quicken and MSMoney users, one must use the reporting dates or period 1/1/2007 to 12/31/2007 to get the proper YTD return. If you use 1/1/2007 to say 7/3/2007, then the percent return is much higher.

Just to give you an idea of the difference that the date makes, I generated a report with MS Money "Performance by Investment Type".

If I pick "Year to date" which is 1/1/2007 to 7/4/2007, it reports 18.5% as the "Annual % return".

If I pick "Current year" which is 1/1/2007 to 12/31/2007, it reports 8.9% as the "Annual % return".

If I pick "Last 12 months" which is 8/1/2006 to 7/4/2007, it reports 22.2% as the "Annual % return".

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Now we know why a lot of whizbangy funds, newsletters and 'systems' report great results...starting in 2002 or 2003...

[FIREd]

Using the 1/1/2007 to 12/31/2007 date range, the annual % return for my overall portfolio is 8% which is close to the 8.2% YTD return I approximated from Quicken's "investing activity" report..

[Andre1969]

Just doing a quick-and-dirty calculation, I figure I'm up about 14.6%, as of yesterday. Basically I just took my portfolio balance as of yesterday, and divided by my balance as of 12/31/06 plus half of the contributions I've made this year. Which I figure is pretty accurate if I assume that I've contributed regular, even contributions over the first part of this year.

[martyb]

I realize and admit freely I'm not the most knowledgeable guy in the world with this stuff, although I've learned a lot in my short stint on this board. However, at the risk of sounding like a DA, what exactly are we talking about here? Are we talking about the interest earned on investment money (ex my TSP/401k) earnings over the last 6 months of this year, or are we talking about how much % larger my account is in the same period including my contributions? I assume we're NOT talking about earnings over that last 12 months.... So, is we talking interest only, or interest + contributions, and for what period of time. I'm just wonderin' since my measly 7.53% has me feeling somewhat inadequate LOL!

[farmerEd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by martyb I realize and admit freely I'm not the most knowledgeable guy in the world with this stuff, although I've learned a lot in my short stint on this board. However, at the risk of sounding like a DA, what exactly are we talking about here? Are we talking about the interest earned on investment money (ex my TSP/401k) earnings over the last 6 months of this year, or are we talking about how much % larger my account is in the same period including my contributions? I assume we're NOT talking about earnings over that last 12 months.... So, is we talking interest only, or interest + contributions, and for what period of time. I'm just wonderin' since my measly 7.53% has me feeling somewhat inadequate LOL!

I'd say just the increase in the value of your portfolio, not counting the contributions, in the period from 1/1/2007 thru 7/1/2007. If you had $100 on 1/1 and $115 on 7/1 and you didn't contribute any money, then you have a 15% YTD gain...etc.

[martyb]

Quote:

Originally Posted by farmerEd I'd say just the increase in the value of your portfolio, not counting the contributions, in the period from 1/1/2007 thru 7/1/2007. If you had $100 on 1/1 and $115 on 7/1 and you didn't contribute any money, then you have a 15% YTD gain...etc.

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. Guess I'm stuck with my 7.53% then. I'm right envious of those 10% to 15% folks, but don't really know how to get there. My investements are in my TSP account, and I doubt there's a way to have made that kind of money this year thus far. If I'd been 100% in the International Fund, I'd be up 10.98 for the YTD, but of course there's a lot of downside to being all in a single fund with your retirement only 5 yrs out. Thanks for the clarification.

13.7%

Cash - 12.33%
U.S. Stocks - 35.03%
Foreign Stocks - 23.31%
Bonds - 28.42%
Other - 0.90%

[LOL!]

Quote:

Originally Posted by martyb Are we talking about the interest earned on investment money (ex my TSP/401k) earnings over the last 6 months of this year, or are we talking about how much % larger my account is in the same period including my contributions?

It's tricky. We are talking about running one of 3 programs to calculate your return: (a) Intuit Quicken, (b) MS Money, or (c) the XIRR function in Excell. We need to enter all the transactions in our portfolios between 1/1/2007 and today, with the exact amounts and exact dates, all contributions, all withdrawals, all buys, all sells, all exchanges.

We are also must include ALL our invested assets, not just the ones that are easy to calculate and give a good number. That is, I didn't include just my wife's IRA that is up 327% this year. I didn't include just 403(b) which is up 13% so far this year. I included everything including the REIT fund that went down, my money market funds, my bond funds, my stock funds, my annuities, ..., everything.

[martyb]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOL! It's tricky. We are talking about running one of 3 programs to calculate your return: (a) Intuit Quicken, (b) MS Money, or (c) the XIRR function in Excell. We need to enter all the transactions in our portfolios between 1/1/2007 and today, with the exact amounts and exact dates, all contributions, all withdrawals, all buys, all sells, all exchanges. We are also must include ALL our invested assets, not just the ones that are easy to calculate and give a good number. That is, I didn't include just my wife's IRA that is up 327% this year. I didn't include just 403(b) which is up 13% so far this year. I included everything including the REIT fund that went down, my money market funds, my bond funds, my stock funds, my annuities, ..., everything.

Since I'm only tracking my TSP/401 performance (my other retirement income will be from 2 cola pensions) what I used for my YTD performance was info from the TSP website that showed a 7.53% gain for the L2040 fund since the beginning of the year. I don't know how they calculate it, but that's what I used. Last year I was in the L2030, and the gain on that fund for the whole year was 14.58% IIRC. Unfortunately, for the month of June this year, I had a negative gain of .092. My current allocation is as follows:

7.20% - Govt. Securities
9.80% - Fixed Income (Bond) Fund
41.20% - S&P 500 Index
17.60% - Small Caps Index
24.20% - International Stock Index (EAFE)

[Poundkey]

I use a weighted average spreadsheet. On a pretty conservative mix I've gotten about +6.5% YTD.

49.12% stocks..... which includes 8% international---4% small cap.
27.77% bonds. (Total bond index)
23.11% cash

[tryan]

Real Estate is DOWN about 15% in the north east. Safe to say it's a down year in the tryan household . Thank god for those rents .

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

Not the best, better than most. I ain't gonna show my cards, though. Getting superstitious about jinxing the run.