Personal year in review

[williaa68]

Baring some spectacular santa claus rally, I've just totted up my gains and losses for the year and the result for the year will be a total return of just over 4.5% for a portfolio that is about 60% equities, 25% cash / terms deposits and fixed income and 15% alternatives. Not bad, and a tiny bit above my own mental hurdle rate of 4% but rather disappointing, although against a backdrop of a generally down year in equity markets. What does shine through though is that those investments managed by fund managers did much better than my single stock positions. I guess that shouldn't be surprising but all of my best investments for the year (Scottish Mortgage, BACIT, Edinburgh Worldwide, Fundsmith Equity) are definitely not closet index trackers. My worst are my commodities related shares and funds - BHP, RIO and Blackrock World Mining. My only good single stock position is Washington H Soul Pattinson - a strange Aussie conglomerate which is a legacy of my time living there. My biggest bond fund holding, Kames Strategic Bond, has been very disappointing, basically flat for the year. I suspect the result is down to me not selling stuff that I should have sold but do we think this remains a stock pickers market for the next few years and hence worth paying active managers for? I think i do, at least for me based on personal experience! And thoughts about bond fund welcome too - Kames looks like a fallen star...

[jeff m2]

I'm a Dollar investor, so the strength of the Dollar has hurt my global stuff. Yes a disappointing year, but going forward I happy with my distribution, although I am dependant on an oil and gas getting back some of the recent losses. With a warmer winter forecast chances that'll be later rather than sooner, but I'm patient.
I hope to take advantage of any M & A action which is heating up.

I am currently considering inreasing my Emerg Marks in the new year as they have less debt and look cheap to a Dollar investor, as does Australia.
My Bonds are mostly Variable Bank loans with a bit of High Yield and emerg market dollar denom. That'll change soon.

That 3rd quarter killed me.

Only two highlights for me were a US allocation fund with a hedge fund component and a US small caps, as they are 29% and 9% of my inv assets I managed to stay a few points up.

[GT03ROB]

Interesting. I'd say I am very much a passive investor simply sticking in cash every month to a range of funds. This year has been very solid so far with a total return of 7.2%.

I only lost money on an emerging markets fund (down 7%), with best performer being a UK small companies fund (up 18%). Overall quite a tight band of performance, considering I have a spread of funds specializing in property, biotech, China, India, in addition to the more traditional markets. Surprisingly despite the carnage in China, the fund I had in China returned 5.8%.

I'm happy if I beat the FTSE all share index for the year, & this year will have done that quite comfortably and for the 7th time in 9 years.

[jeff m2]

GT03ROB said:

. Surprisingly despite the carnage in China, the fund I had in China returned 5.8%.

Your fund will invest through Hong Kong using "Red Chips" for its Mainland exposure. The A shares that are only purchaseable by Chinese residents sold at a much greater earnings ratio than their Red Chips equiv, because the Chinese will bet on anything. So the Honk Kong R Cs were not over bought like the As. They were not hurt by the correction
A more rational market in Hong Kong
You can if you wish get direct exposure to Shaghai using ETFs like FXP if it gets bloated again. I used it earlier this year with some success.

[RichS]

How do you work out your annual return if you drip-feed investments monthly please?

Obviously if I start the year with £10,000 and don't add anything it's easy to work out an annual % gain, but I put aside a bit each month. Even if I subtract the total new money added in the year that doesn't give an accurate picture does it? If I have £10,000 in Jan and add £1,000 per month and end the year on £25,000, my annual % return isn't £3,000/£10,000 X 100 is it?

I can't find anything online.

Thanks all!

[GT03ROB]

RichS said:

How do you work out your annual return if you drip-feed investments monthly please?

Obviously if I start the year with £10,000 and don't add anything it's easy to work out an annual % gain, but I put aside a bit each month. Even if I subtract the total new money added in the year that doesn't give an accurate picture does it? If I have £10,000 in Jan and add £1,000 per month and end the year on £25,000, my annual % return isn't £3,000/£10,000 X 100 is it?

I can't find anything online.

Thanks all!

Try morningstar.co.uk

[jeff m2]

RichS said:

How do you work out your annual return if you drip-feed investments monthly please?

Obviously if I start the year with £10,000 and don't add anything it's easy to work out an annual % gain, but I put aside a bit each month. Even if I subtract the total new money added in the year that doesn't give an accurate picture does it? If I have £10,000 in Jan and add £1,000 per month and end the year on £25,000, my annual % return isn't £3,000/£10,000 X 100 is it?

I can't find anything online.

Thanks all!

For a non tax figure, your 12 contributions of 1K can be considered to be 6K for purpose of annualised gain.
So 3000/16000 x 100
16k being your average cost basis for the year.

[RichS]

GT03ROB said:

Try morningstar.co.uk

Thanks- do you mean just replicate my portfolio in theirs? I'm actually doing this with my Salty Dog portfolio! Thanks.

[GT03ROB]

RichS said:

GT03ROB said:

Try morningstar.co.uk

Thanks- do you mean just replicate my portfolio in theirs? I'm actually doing this with my Salty Dog portfolio! Thanks.

Yes, I can set it up to do the monthly purchases automatically, then all the returns reflect it

[Countdown]

I think I'm down 20% for the year my biggest holdings have been HSBC (bought at £6.70) and Shell (bought at north of £20). On the plus side MAN and Segro have done well, and Nat Grid is back up.

[RichS]

GT03ROB said:

Yes, I can set it up to do the monthly purchases automatically, then all the returns reflect it

Thank you very much. My purchases are a bit more ad hoc but I think you can manually input them so obviously it will also calculate accordingly. Just wondering, how DOES it actually calculate it? If you keep buying into say just one fund each month does it artificially slice the annual return for each tranche you invest and then compound it somehow? So my last month's investment gets a lower weighting when working out the annual gain (or loss)?

[PositronicRay]

I'm quite envious only 2% up here. Still could have been worse at least I haven't lost.