2019 YTD Investment Performance Thread

[robnplunder]

2019 YTD investment performance thread

Whew, what a choppy 2018! Let's hope that 2019 brings us a better investment year.

As before, this thread is about "investment" performance. That is, this thread is more about sharing what investment is working and not working YTD.


See http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/2018-ytd-investment-performance-thread-90118.html for past year threads.

 

[NW-Bound]

What? It's Jan 31st, and nobody has started the traditional YTD return thread so we can all brag/commiserate about money gain/loss as appropriate.

I guess I will have to do this dirty job.

I am glad to report that as of market close today, I am up 9.45% relative to Dec 31st, 2018. And that's counting every penny in every account, even my checking and HSA accounts. Quicken shows me the grand total of everything, and that's what I use. No home values included, of course.

I hope it will not be a repeat of last year, when I had a blowout January return, then never achieved that high watermark again. Indeed, I ended up losing -10.85% in 2018.

Here hoping this year will be better.

PS. Stock AA varied between 70% and 65% during Jan 2019.

 

[street]

LOL! I was hoping someone would get it going thanks NW-Bound. I just checked and not all numbers in yet.

 

[target2019]

Now we have two:
http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/2019-ytd-investment-performance-thread-95554.html

 

[NW-Bound]

Hah! Robnplunder did start it very early on Jan 3rd, and I missed it. Nobody has posted to that thread either.

I will ask a mod to merge this one to his.

 

[Gumby]

Hah! Robnplunder did start it very early on Jan 3rd, and I missed it. Nobody has posted to that thread either.

I will ask a mod to merge this one to his.

Done

 

[pb4uski]

+5.08% YTD Jan 31, 2019

vs +3.53% YTD Jan 31, 2018
vs 5.28% for my benchmark VSMGX

 

[KCGeezer]

VSMGX looks like a good benchmark for me as well pb4uski. Monkeychimp says 5.8% accounting for withdrawals.

 

[VanWinkle]

Jan 31, 2019 4.74%
Benchmark Vanguard 2020 TR 4.72

 

[Dtail]

4.74% on a 55/45 AA.
Very pleased so far and not tweaking the stock side unlike last year.

 

[sengsational]

It's not January 31st...it's December 62nd. And that means I'm UP for 2018 (about one percent!).


Oh, you conventional calendar folks might prefer reporting on the last 31 days... Nice number: Up 5.8% for the year. And like NW, that's "all-in" (all accounts). I do a spend adjustment (estimating a level spend).

 

[robnplunder]

Up 4.81% on this day of 12/62/18 per sengsational calendar. It suits me just fine since my b-day is 1/1.

 

[marko]

I was down 4.35% for 2018. As of this morning (2/1) I'm up 5.95%.

I usually set my expectation for a 6% annual return. As such, I've made my 2019 goal! I know it can't last at this rate, but it's nice to get some thick ice under our feet, no?

I've often mentioned how I prefer to monitor a 3 year average because it smooths out the roller coaster a bit. My 3 year is 9.5% despite '18 being a dog.

 

[ckelly78z]

Principal LCG up 9.87% as of today, and is the ONLY principal fund available out of maybe 20 funds in my 401K that is still up from 1 year ago (+3.5%). Today is a happy day !

 

[NW-Bound]

... I've often mentioned how I prefer to monitor a 3 year average because it smooths out the roller coaster a bit. My 3 year is 9.5% despite '18 being a dog.

You made me look.

My 3-year return of 1/31/2016-1/31/2019 is 34.34% cumulative.

Annualized, it's 10.34%/year. Stock AA has been around 70%, with the rest mostly in cash.

It's eye-opening looking up what I spent in 3 years, in order to do Moneychimp's method of compensating for withdrawal. It's easy with Quicken, but boy, it reminds me how much I spent.

PS. Of course an ER needs to withdraw money to live on, but it's sobering to see how much financial gain one gives up by retiring early. If instead of taking money from his stash one lets it grow, the compounding effect is huge. I am not even talking about adding more savings to it, because when the stash gets big, the additional yearly saving becomes insignificant.

I am not talking anyone into doing OMY, but one should realize that a low WR is needed if one is not to eat his seed corn.

 

[audreyh1]

PS. Of course an ER needs to withdraw money to live on, but it's sobering to see how much financial gain one gives up by retiring early. If instead of taking money from his stash one lets it grow, the compounding effect is huge. I am not even talking about adding more savings to it, because when the stash gets big, the additional yearly saving becomes insignificant.

I am not talking anyone into doing OMY, but one should realize that a low WR is needed if one is not to eat his seed corn.

Giving up financial gain? The whole point of retiring is to give up future earning power (financial gain) in return for doing what you want for the rest of your life!

Yes, I know exactly how much we spent since we retired. It’s amazing we have as much left, but otherwise it doesn’t bother me one little bit.

For me I’m delighted if our investable net worth is keeping up with inflation since retiring. Even that is not necessary as long as we don’t spend down too fast.

 

[NW-Bound]

I guess I was fortunate to be working part-time, and on-off too, for 9 years prior to full retirement. The income was enough to live on without withdrawing anything from the stash.

The work was interesting, and I could have gone on forever. I now have to create technical work for myself and spend money doing that instead of getting paid.

Can't be traveling all the time, ya know? It would become tedious, like work.

 

[street]

Up 5.85% YTD all in. I was -3.27% YTD for 2018, so very happy, we will see what happens.

 

[robnplunder]

Giving up financial gain? The whole point of retiring is to give up future earning power (financial gain) in return for doing what you want for the rest of your life!

Yes, I know exactly how much we spent since we retired. It’s amazing we have as much left, but otherwise it doesn’t bother me one little bit.

For me I’m delighted if our investable net worth is keeping up with inflation since retiring. Even that is not necessary as long as we don’t spend down too fast.

We can't spend down fast enough even if we wanted to. That's good news to our only child who is trying to make money by performing music . He will retire well. But still, we try our best to spend his inheritance .

 

[Andre1969]

I had to wait until this morning to get all the totals in, but it looks like for the month of January, my return is about 7.94%. Hopefully, it holds! I've now "made back" more in 2019, than what I "lost" in all of 2018.


And, of course, the year is far from over, but on a dollar basis (rather than percent) 2019 is already my 4th best year, ever! I only need that return to get to around 8.5% to make it my 3rd best, 11% to make it my second best, and 15.5% to make it my best ever. Again, on a dollar basis, not percentage-wise.

 

[NW-Bound]

All the above dancing emoticons do not bode well for future return.

I am glad I have many call options out to get some cash to cushion the fall to come.

 

[steelyman]

So far, so good. My primary retirement portfolio is up 7.61% in January. My benchmark is Vanguard's 2030 target date fund (VTHRX), which is up 5.97%.

Last year started out similarly but by year-end it wasn't quite as pleasant!

 

[Andre1969]

All the above dancing emoticons do not bode well for future return.

I am glad I have many call options out to get some cash to cushion the fall to come.

I went back and got rid of mine, in the hopes I don't jinx it. And, I don't think we're quite out of the woods, yet. January 2018 was a great month for me, as well. I think I finished the month up around 4%, although at one point during the month, I think I was up around 6% or more.


So, hopefully this isn't deja vu. I guess one nice difference is that, this time around, I hit my peak for the month on the last day, whereas in 2018, by the last day of January, things were already starting to pull back.

 

[pb4uski]

.... I am not talking anyone into doing OMY, but one should realize that a low WR is needed if one is not to eat his seed corn.

I expect to occasionally have to eat seed corn... but I'll have plenty left even if I do need to eat seed corn occasionally. I didn't build up a store of seed corn to hoard it.

And as to financial gain, I take the long view. Since we retired 7 years ago we have 20% more seed corn than what we started with, and 30% if I include the value of our Florida condo that we bought with seed corn.

 

[audreyh1]

I guess I was fortunate to be working part-time, and on-off too, for 9 years prior to full retirement. The income was enough to live on without withdrawing anything from the stash.

The work was interesting, and I could have gone on forever. I now have to create technical work for myself and spend money doing that instead of getting paid.

Can't be traveling all the time, ya know? It would become tedious, like work.

I have lots of other things to do when I’m not traveling. Busy playing with my new pellet grill and my new piano. Taking yoga classes again, resuming Dutch and starting to work on the fall travel plans. We’re supposed to be getting a new car. Need to get to work on that.....