How's your YTD

[Cut-Throat]

Did you eat your dividends or re-invest them?

All re-invested!

 

[TromboneAl]

Thinking out loud here...

Vanguard will be telling you the return from 11/30/04 to 11/30/05.  Are you calculating from 1/1/05 to 12/24/05? 

Are you comparing Personal Rate of Return with the return for the fund?

I see the REIT Index Fund Admiral shares reported as a 17.46% 1 year return as of 11/30/05.

Depending on when you bought, you could see changes in value such as 12.1, 18.2, or 24.2%. If you bought on 3/30 and sold on 7/30, your annual rate of return would be 68.1%!

 

[TromboneAl]

Where are you getting the 26.5% figure?

 

[Cut-Throat]

Where are you getting the 26.5% figure?

First of all I never sold my REIT holdings. I am getting my 10% figure from Quicken. And that is from 1/1/2005 thru today. The 26% figure came from vanguards website.

I just didn't think the numbers could be that far off.

 

[TromboneAl]

That figure is for 9/30/04 to 9/30/05. 

But it shouldn't be that far off, and I think the problem is Quicken.  Have you entered all transactions and historical prices for that fund in Quicken?  That may be the problem, or Quicken may just be screwy. 

For example, I have a 500 Index fund for which I sold all shares in April.  Quicken shows the YTD IRR for that fund as -15%.  I think it's because I didn't enter all transactions along the way, and Quicken is looking at the year 2000 high for that fund as the price on Jan 1, 2005.  I haven't really figured out what's happening, but I know that I didn't lose 15% in a few months on that fund.

So, thanks to Quicken, I'm not really sure of my YTD return. 

However, now I use transaction downloading, and all transactions are represented properly.

 

[Cut-Throat]

Looking over some reports, I have determined that Quicken is the culprit! - I really am getting about 25% on the REIT fund. One Quicken report I ran told me that I had an ending market value of TWICE of what I really had in the REIT fund and told me that I gained over 100%!! -This is when I customized an investment performance report for just the REIT index fund.

Another Quicken report said 10%.

I lose more faith in Quicken every day!

 

[TromboneAl]

Well, look at their three year growth of 10,000 graph, and you'll see that it goes from 17,889 on 12/30/04 to 20,037 on 11/30/05.  That's an annual rate of 13.1%, so that's pretty close to what you have.

 

[REWahoo]

I lose more faith in Quicken every day!

I gave up on Quicken years ago (DW says I have "incredible" patience ). As I said in another thread, "...my attitude towards their [Intuit's] entire product line is that you should open the lid on the toilet and throw them intuit."

 

[Spanky]

Let's show how YTD calculations are troublesome.

Suppose I have on 12/31/2004 $30,000 I invest an additional $5000 on Jan 4, 2005 and now I have $40,000. Since the $5K was there almost the whole year, it's like a $35K at the start, $40K at the end, so for all practial purposes the YTD is 14.3%

But suppose I invest the $5K on 12/22/2005. In essence, the $5K wasn't in the account long enough to make a difference. It's like I have $30K invested the whole year that increased in value by $5K to $35K, then I added $5K. So my return is very close to 16.7% (35K/30K).

In essence, one needs to carefully consider the amount of time each bit of money was invested. And that's what MSMoney, PFROI, and Quicken are supposed to be good at.

You can try this link: http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/returnrate/returnrate.jsp
Return on investment

Annualized Return: 16.45%
Return for the entire period: 16.45%

Starting date: 12/24/2004
Starting value: $30000

Ending date: 12/24/2005
Ending value: $40000

Additional deposits and withdrawals:

Addition: Date 11/24/2005 Amount $5,000.00

Or you can do the same in Excel (starting in Column A):
Values Date
-30000 12/24/2004
0 1/1/2005
0 2/1/2005
0 3/1/2005
0 4/1/2005
0 5/1/2005
0 6/1/2005
0 7/1/2005
0 8/1/2005
0 9/1/2005
0 10/1/2005
-5000 11/24/2005
40000 12/24/2005
Using this formula: =XIRR(A2:A14,B2:B14,0.1) = 0.164566571

 

[JB]

12/24 YTD: 6.8%

I calculate this by comparing by total assets - total spent vs. total assets last year.

My allocation is:

Stocks: 57%
Cash/CDs/Bonds: 43%

 

[AltaRed]

I gave up on Quicken years ago (DW says I have "incredible" patience ).  As I said in another thread, "...my attitude towards their [Intuit's] entire product line is that you should open the lid on the toilet and throw them intuit."

I agree one must be careful with Quicken. I am using the 2002 Deluxe version and look at Investment Performance reports (not graph) reporting out to make sure all the inputs and outputs look right. Other than having to remember that re-invested dividends on mutual funds are investment returns and not starting balances, I then calculate return on my own calculator.

 

[TromboneAl]

Every Intuit employee should be in jail. Happy Holidays!

 

[haha]

I did mine by first adding back the $25,000 that I withdrew from my account for living expenses. I then subtracted from this number the year end 2004 values as per statements, and divided by the yearend 2004 value.

Figured this way, my return for 2005 to today is 13.7%. Which is slightly more than my long term return in the only untouched account I have had for >30 years, my Keo.

I carried a lot of cash all year and some puts which expired worthless. But that drag was made up by very strong results in energy and Japan, and fairly strong results in gold.

While I am hoping for a positive year in 2006, when we do this next year I will feel ok if I can report any result >= 0.

There is literally no class toward which I have a confidently bullish disposition.

Ha

 

[Lancelot]

Quicken YTD = 8.69% (seems that Quicken excludes cash)

Quicken December 24, 05 - Portfolio spread sheet balance Dec 31, 04 = 6.6% (includes living expense withdrawls, cash, everything...)

I've started keeping a spread sheet listing Dec 31 portfolio balances (including cash), total living expenses and withdrawl percantage.

I can understand the importance of YTD figures, but total portfolio percentage increase/decreases are the most meaningful to me.

Lance

 

[Tadpole]

Let's show how YTD calculations are troublesome.

Suppose I have on 12/31/2004 $30,000   I invest an additional $5000 on Jan 4, 2005 and now I have $40,000.    Since the $5K was there almost the whole year, it's like a $35K at the start, $40K at the end, so for all practial purposes the YTD is 14.3%

But suppose I invest the $5K on 12/22/2005.  In essence, the $5K wasn't in the account long enough to make a difference.  It's like I have $30K invested the whole year that increased in value by $5K to $35K, then I added $5K.  So my return is very close to 16.7% (35K/30K). 

In essence, one needs to carefully consider the amount of time each bit of money was invested.  And that's what MSMoney, PFROI, and Quicken are supposed to be good at.

I computed the gain on only that money I had at the start of the year based on share values and interest rates. I didn't bother to try to track this years contributions.

 

[Spanky]

I use Excel to keep track of my portfolio. One sheet lists each fund or stock with gain/loss and annualized return. This shows how well each holding is performing. Another sheet shows the overall gain or loss vs the Wilshire 5000 benchmark and the Coffee House benchmark for each year.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I gave up on quicken and stopped trying to use Money after a brief time tinkering. In my experience, none of the products download the information correctly, a number of financial institutions (ameritrade is a good one) download the wrong information, and even if you can manage to get the info correct the results still didnt match up.

I found that both Intuit and the financial institutions involved could care less about fixing the problems. I chased ameritrade for three years on their download problems and finally took my money elsewhere.

So now I do it simply: One bank (Digital Credit Union) except for cash slush at emigrant direct, and all my investing at vanguard. Whatever they say I have is what i've got. Delta from one year to the next is my change in investment valuations.

 

[NYCGuy]

I have had some problems with Quicken, but they always turned out to be errors I made by inadvertantly including or excluding accounts or categories in reports. I never download transactions from financial institutions because to do so defeats the purpose of running a home accounting system: reconciliation of my view of what happened to their view of what happened.

 

[Nords]

I never download transactions from financial institutions because to do so defeats the purpose of running a home accounting system: reconciliation of my view of what happened to their view of what happened. 

Like TH, I don't download transactions because it just freakin' doesn't work right!

 

[LOL!]

I never download transactions from financial institutions because to do so defeats the purpose of running a home accounting system: reconciliation of my view of what happened to their view of what happened. 

I am happy to report that I download our TDWaterhouse bank account transactions without problems into MSMoney.
We do not have enough brokerage/investment account transactions to make it worthwhile to download those, but I really respect and like NYCGuy's rationalization of why not to do that.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

reconciliation of my view of what happened to their view of what happened.

I used to worry about this a lot. After ten years of scrutinizing my bank and investment statements I found a lot of little screw ups. It always turned out to be my mistake. So I just look for big stuff now (like 14,000 charges to my mastercard from nigeria).

Granted this is only with the outfits that havent really screwed anything up, like DCU and vanguard. Ameritrade, american express and a few others have seriously and persistently made mistakes. My favorite of all time? I had an investment account with american express and at one point transferred all of my fund holdings (all Janus...hey...it was the late 90's) directly to the fund holder. In one of those "you have to be kidding" moments, they transferred all of american expresses entire holdings in all Janus funds into my Janus account.

I'm not making this up. They had to ask me for written permission to take it back. How tempting to say "NO!".

For a day or so I was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. You can bet I took that end of month statement showing "my holdings" to the bar to pass around to my buddies and ask them if they had any ideas on changes to my strategy.

So far, worst thing DCU has done to me is persistently open my CD's with dividend reinvestment rather than paying it out like I note on the forms. No errors on my vanguard acct.

 

[AltaRed]

Quicken YTD = 8.69% (seems that Quicken excludes cash)

Quicken December 24, 05 - Portfolio spread sheet balance Dec 31, 04 = 6.6% (includes living expense withdrawls, cash, everything...)

I've started keeping a spread sheet listing Dec 31 portfolio balances (including cash), total living expenses and withdrawl percantage.

I can understand the importance of YTD figures, but total portfolio percentage increase/decreases are the most meaningful to me.

Lance

Yes, Quicken excludes cash if in an account category called bank accounts. And there is no way I have found to make it include back accounts in a custom report (pretty useless if you cannot have it include bank cash in Portfolio Value or Asset Allocation charts for an overall evaluation).

 

[HFWR]

10.8% with the help of a bunch of end-of-year divs and gains.

 

[Merlin]

5.79% according to Quicken.

 

[charlie]

The good news is that the equity part of my IRA returned
10.64%, thanks to the "coffeehouse" allocation with an
extra helping of international.

The bad news is my 40/60 allocation and a 17% hit on my
GIM drug the overall IRA down to only 4.5% return for the
year. The GIM hit does not worry me as I expect the US
dollar to go south in the future (eventually). Since I am
drawing down the IRA at a 6% rate, the meager 4.5% overall
was disappointing.

Cheers,

Charlie