2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Asset allocation, risk, diversification and rebalancing. Pros/cons of hiring a financial advisor. Seeking advice on your portfolio?
chufinora
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by chufinora »

ooh I always like this thread, we have the financial pornography thread, and this is like the voyeurs treat ;-)

My XIRR for all accounts (RRSP, TFSA, taxable savings) 14.2%

A little bit below the nearest benchmark (FPP Growth) but I'll take it each year.

My asset allocation:
Equities 77% (dividend stocks, + REITS a few broad ETF)
FI 10% (I includes 2% preferred stock CPD ETF in this)
Cash 13% (This is higher than my target allocation - am I drifting toward market timing by hoarding cash?)

Equity allocation by region:
CAD 73%
US 15%
EU 11% (Held as ADR stocks in $US)

One thing I was pleased about is the total expense for my portfolio (Trade commissions + MER*value of ETF's) = 0.09%
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adrian2
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by adrian2 »

Total return across portfolios: 27.7% (second best year ever, after 2009, beating 2012's return of 25%).
Overall, 100%+ equities (but less aggressive than a year ago), using some options to pick up extra oomph.

FWIW, this is last year's thread.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by EmperorCoder »

My XIRR for 2013 is 55.1%, including dividends an fees, pre-tax.

Allocation is roughly 105% US equities.

Performance came mostly from financials and insurance companies, magnified by the USD/CAD differential.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by Descartes »

I had an 8.3% return on total investable assets (was 9.6% in 2012).
Assets are: 61% equity, 4% preferred, and 35% fixed income.

It was a bit of a downbeat year for me: dragged down by reits, preferreds, stocks particularly sensitive to interest rate fears, and not enough exposure to markets outside Canada.
On the plus side: it stirred me enough to become a bit more diversified ..and, despite the lackluster year, I'm still well on track for retirement in 2020.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by like_to_retire »

It's always interesting to see how others have done through the year for sure. I think sometimes it's a bit of an apples and oranges comparison depending on whether the person is perhaps a 25 year old starting out with a small portfolio that has maybe 4 or 5 stocks and posts a return of 15%, compared to someone who is retired and has a couple million in a conservative portfolio that they depend upon to live and reports a 5% return.

If the later case beats the FBX INDEX that matches their allocation, then I'm impressed, but I don't think it's comparable to the former.

Anyway, I've been finishing off my spreadsheets and have a few new long term results.

It's interesting to see the volatility of the bar chart of the annual returns each year since 1993, and then see the multi-year returns (which tend to gather around 4%).

I've attached the chart of the yearly returns and the table of the multi-year returns (using Excel XIRR).


1 Year 2013 - 2013 = 4.32%
2 Year 2012 - 2013 = 4.92%
3 Year 2011 - 2013 = 3.81%
4 Year 2010 - 2013 = 4.44%
5 Year 2009 - 2013 = 6.32%
6 Year 2008 - 2013 = 3.48%
7 Year 2007 - 2013 = 3.30%
8 Year 2006 - 2013 = 3.82%
9 Year 2005 - 2013 = 4.18%
10 Year 2004 - 2013 = 4.41%
11 Year 2003 - 2013 = 4.48%
12 Year 2002 - 2013 = 3.77%
13 Year 2001 - 2013 = 3.50%
14 Year 2000 - 2013 = 3.45%
15 Year 1999 - 2013 = 3.64%
16 Year 1998 - 2013 = 3.76%
17 Year 1997 - 2013 = 3.92%
18 Year 1996 - 2013 = 4.03%
19 Year 1995 - 2013 = 4.12%
20 Year 1994 - 2013 = 4.06%
21 Year 1993 - 2013 = 4.12%
Returns Yearly.jpg
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by Benchwarmer »

My portfolio is divided into 1/3 each equities, cash & FI, with no re-balancing. I was fortunate enough to start investing in equities in 2009 after my mortgage was paid off, so that portion is now significantly larger than the other 2.

Also, my FI portion isn't yet set up (I am still waiting to open a discount brokerage account to run a 5-year ladder), so it was just sitting in HISA.

The equities portion returned 42%. The cash & FI portions 2%. Overall, just over 17%.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by optionable68 »

Similar to some at FWF, my 3 investment accounts are managed very differently:

TFSA Account = 1.40% return - using a "ready cash for an investment opp" approach (I emptied this account during the year for other taxable investment options and the account ended the year with $0.01 in assets)

Taxable Account XIRR = 9.39% - using a derivative-based investment strategy

RSP Account XIRR = 23.26% - using a passive index pooled fund asset allocation strategy with no bonds/cash (the return could have been higher if not for some some poorly-executed AA market timing attempts on my part)

Overall return = 12.6%
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by SQRT »

23% total return. all individual equities. Heavy in the banks.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by ig17 »

EmperorCoder wrote:My XIRR for 2013 is 55.1%, including dividends an fees, pre-tax.

Allocation is roughly 105% US equities.

Performance came mostly from financials and insurance companies, magnified by the USD/CAD differential.
Congratulations! That's a nice number.

Do you mind sharing your top 5-10 holdings and their portfolio weights?
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by EmperorCoder »

ig17 wrote: Congratulations! That's a nice number.

Do you mind sharing your top 5-10 holdings and their portfolio weights?
My biggest winners this year were AIZ and NDAQ but I've completely sold out in the second half of the year. My portfolio is quite concentrated and turnaroud is high as long as I find stocks to replace the ones I believe have reached their intrinsic value. I've been so far lucky that Mr Market recognizes value quite fast.

I have only 4 positions in my portfolio right now : AIG, AIG-WT (warrant 2021 strike 45), BAC, VLKAY.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by LadyGeek »

+13% in my retirement account, which is a lazy portfolio modelled after Vanguard's Target Retirement fund (55%/45% stocks/bonds). Bear in mind that I'm US-based.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by StuBee »

13% return (XIRR) across all accounts on a 65:35 Eq. to FI portfolio. No new money this year (as since 2007). Portfolio turnover of about 4%. (ATP and RET catapulted. These sales were matched with sales of ENB and TRP to opportunistically take advantage of capital losses generated by the first two. Replaced by EMA and BDT). Dividend income grew by 5.7% (and all trades have been dividend neutral because I am currently at 125% of The TSX yield which is where I want to be). Current dividend yield is 3.8%.

My goal is to at least match market overall (which I am almost certain that I did but I cannot be sure without Norm's Periodic table update...hint, hint, hint :wink: ). I also aim to beat CPI by 3.5% for portfolio growth and beat "CPI plus 2%" for dividend growth. Clearly, I have managed to accomplish this in 2013.

Therefore, I am content and continue to be "according to plan". I am comfortable with the prospect of retiring (if I so desire) in January of 2015. However, I will not retire at that time though I will most certainly be working only part time (around 5 to 10 hours per week). My portfolio is in excess of 1 Million$.

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Last edited by StuBee on 01 Jan 2014 20:17, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by bcjmmac »

19.3% overall. Allocation at present is 66% equity, 11% fixed, 23% cash. Have trimmed some equity recently & haven't redeployed the money + have been sitting on a "war chest" since the late summer.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by DenisD »

StuBee wrote:My goal is to at least match market overall (which I am almost certain that I did but I cannot be sure without Norm's Periodic table update...hint, hint, hint :wink: ).
If you can't wait for Norm or need another benchmark, it looks like iShares has updated their benchmark index 2013 returns for each ETF. I assume these are C$ total returns. For example:
http://ca.ishares.com/product_info/fund ... ce/XIC.htm 12.99
http://ca.ishares.com/product_info/fund ... ce/XUS.htm 40.37
http://ca.ishares.com/product_info/fund ... ce/XEF.htm 31.83
http://ca.ishares.com/product_info/fund ... ce/XEC.htm 4.37
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by couponstrip »

AltaRed wrote:
Archie wrote:My return was -4%. Wouldn't have been negative if I had less gold stocks and REITs but how was I to know. How come you all managed to beat the market and I didn't? Teach me your tricks please.
As Scomac said, no tricks. If one has a diversified portfolio, especially from an asset allocation and one sticks to the plan, it will perform steadily over the years. This year gold, prefs and REITs were down. US and Int'l markets were up. One does not have to go back many years to see very much the inverse. The folks with a heavy ex-Canada allocation this year (and 2012) are just making up for the lost decade where I believe returns were negative over the full decade.

That is the good, and bad, of threads like this. One needs to understand the underlying asset allocations to know why portfolios performed as they did. The key is sticking with the asset allocation plan and NOT changing it to chase performance.
Exactly true for us. I spent much of 2007-2012 wishing I had the returns this thread showed. Especially those years where we were down double digits and folks here were squeaking out positive IRR's. A year is such a short period of time for a portfolio. If we gave 5 or 10 year returns, we would see significant narrowing of the range of numbers.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by IdOp »

StuBee wrote:My goal is to at least match market overall (which I am almost certain that I did but I cannot be sure without Norm's Periodic table update...hint, hint, hint :wink: ).
I was confident in predicting that the S&P/TSX Total Return index was up 13.0% for the year. ;) I got this by taking the change to Dec 30 and linking on the TSX index (without dividends) change for Dec 31. This has worked very well the last few years. Tomorrow we should be able to get the Total Return index value from GlobeInvestor and see how it actually turned out.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by Jungle »

+21.72% XIRR all accounts .(bencmark 18.19%)
(56%CAD, 30%US, 9.5%INT, 4.5%fixed income)

The good:
CAD stock picks outperformed TSX

The bad:
1. US stock picks underperformed the s&p500
2. A balanced or basic couch potato with equal bonds would have outperformed (due to less CAD and more INT)
3. Spent a lot on trading costs and transfer fees about 0.4% of effected accounts but will get better now all accounts consolidated and cheaper trades.

Very happy with results and looking forward a challenging 2014. Congrats to all those who reached their goals in 2013!
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by always_learning »

27% XIRR across all accounts, including dividends. A great year.

My allocation:
US stocks 40%
C stocks 34%
EAFE stocks 18%
EM stocks 6%
Bonds 5%

Helped by: a good year for the US markets, a falling C$ and a banner year for Best Buy.

Sometimes my asset allocation has lagged the median on these annual threads; in 2013 it did well. In 2014, I'll shift some money from US equities to C equities to stay closer to my desired asset allocation. Other than that, I'll just stick to the plan.

In 2014, may the markets drop for those in their early accumulation years and soar for those in withdrawal mode. :D
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by IdOp »

Here's the result for the S&P/TSX Composite Total Return Index (symbol TSXT-I at GlobeInvestor) for the past year:

31 Dec 2012: 35696.72

31 Dec 2013: 40334.38

Return: 12.99% :)

ADDED: As an investible comparable, TD Cdn Index e-series returned 12.63 %
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by northbeach »

7.7 % estimate.
My investing plan has always shifted and continues to do so. Started year at 42/58 equities to bonds. Finished year at 46/54 equities to bonds. I will be drifting to 50/50 over the next year or two as I take money out for non recurring expenses and shift a bit towards equities given fixed income's hard to like yield. In fact, bought small amount of QQQ in late December.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by Springbok »

like_to_retire wrote:It's always interesting to see how others have done through the year for sure. I think sometimes it's a bit of an apples and oranges comparison depending on whether the person is perhaps a 25 year old starting out with a small portfolio that has maybe 4 or 5 stocks and posts a return of 15%, compared to someone who is retired and has a couple million in a conservative portfolio that they depend upon to live and reports a 5% return.
It is apples and oranges for the reasons you cite.

But also because posters don't say how they calculated their returns. A single % doesn't mean much unless the method used to calculate it is included.

I haven't done my final calcs yet. Probably just over 6% gain in portfolio value on a simple year over year basis after accounting for annual withdrawal.

TSX was up 9%, so with just under 40% fixed income, 6% seems about right for retirees like us.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by Dejavu »

For those of us that are not able to report" supercharged results" , I found it intuitive in mid December to look into the 10yr results for my holdings:
Tdb efunds: 902 (US) = 4.88%
900 (Can) = 7.93%
911 (Intntl)= 5.07%
I Shares Reit XRE = 9.38%
These 10 yr results include the rewarding 2013 performance. Just saying..... Dejavu.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by ghariton »

Dejavu wrote:For those of us that are not able to report" supercharged results"
It seems that the biggest single factor explaining the results upthread is the allocation to equities, and especially non-Canadian equities, versus everything else.

It also seems that equity allocation is less, the older we are, and the smaller any DB pension (if any). This is sensible. The role of fixed income, in my view, is to absorb shocks in years when the equity markets do badly.

That's why any investment approach must be evaluated over at least one market cycle (boom and bust) and preferably several. Say 10 or 20 years. One-year results are fun to look at, but are essentially meaningless.

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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

Post by westinvest »

Quicken reports show 3.35% for 2013, pretty much what I expected and planned for. I turned 65 last year and completely retired (I retired from full time work 17 years ago but have been consulting and other part time work prior to last year) so I further rebalanced my portfolio for income and preservation of capital. My performance benchmark is the FPX Income portfolio, which was about 2.6%

Asset allocation is 31% in GIC ladders, 11% in Bonds, 28% in Prefs, 22% Cdn Equity, 5% US equity and 3% International Equity.

My portfolio yield in 2013 was about 3.5%, I had a small YOY reduction in market value due to the interest downdraft on RRB's, Prefs, Utilities, and REITS.

My historical average annual returns are 1yr: 3.35%, 3yr: 5.21%, 5yr: 8.24% 10yr: 7.7%

So my investment philosophy is that the markets have been good to me overall, I'm quite happy with the nest egg I have accumulated for retirement, and I'd like to keep it that way. The income that the portfolio throws off (along with pension income) is more than adequate to maintain a lifestyle that is equal to or better than my working years, so overall I consider myself blessed.
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Re: 2013 Investment Portfolio Results

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westinvest wrote:Quicken reports show 3.35% for 2013, pretty much what I expected and planned for. I turned 65 last year and completely retired (I retired from full time work 17 years ago but have been consulting and other part time work prior to last year) so I further rebalanced my portfolio for income and preservation of capital. My performance benchmark is the FPX Income portfolio, which was about 2.6%

Asset allocation is 31% in GIC ladders, 11% in Bonds, 28% in Prefs, 22% Cdn Equity, 5% US equity and 3% International Equity.

My portfolio yield in 2013 was about 3.5%, I had a small YOY reduction in market value due to the interest downdraft on RRB's, Prefs, Utilities, and REITS.

My historical average annual returns are 1yr: 3.35%, 3yr: 5.21%, 5yr: 8.24% 10yr: 7.7%

So my investment philosophy is that the markets have been good to me overall, I'm quite happy with the nest egg I have accumulated for retirement, and I'd like to keep it that way. The income that the portfolio throws off (along with pension income) is more than adequate to maintain a lifestyle that is equal to or better than my working years, so overall I consider myself blessed.
Using Quicken "ROI 1year" = 5.09% for me. I also am 95% retired as of last October. I use a sliding AA currently 61% gic ladder and the rest as per above post. Will continue to adjust AA every two years to become 75/25% eventually.
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