How many negative positions do you hold today?

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chufinora
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How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by chufinora »

I was just looking at my combined accounts and see that in my 30 position portfolio I now only hold one negative position. I track both the share price change and the total return (share price change + dividend income). For total ROI my only negative position is Cominar REIT CUF.UN purchased in 2012 when I divested a REIT ETF (XRE) and bought a basket of REITs and included CUF.UN.

For negative stock/capital positions I have four CUF.UN, CHB (ST bond ETF), D.UN, AX.UN (Both REITs same as CUF.UN but not quite so bad dogs that the dividends have offset the capital loss presently). FWIW my average holding period is 6.2 years (Range 0.56-13.5 years).

After ~8 years of a bull market I guess this is not unusual, but am interested to see how many negative positions others hold in their portfolios today.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by 2 yen »

chufinora wrote: 24 Jun 2017 22:31 I was just looking at my combined accounts and see that in my 30 position portfolio I now only hold one negative position. I track both the share price change and the total return (share price change + dividend income). For total ROI my only negative position is Cominar REIT CUF.UN purchased in 2012 when I divested a REIT ETF (XRE) and bought a basket of REITs and included CUF.UN.

For negative stock/capital positions I have four CUF.UN, CHB (ST bond ETF), D.UN, AX.UN (Both REITs same as CUF.UN but not quite so bad dogs that the dividends have offset the capital loss presently). FWIW my average holding period is 6.2 years (Range 0.56-13.5 years).

After ~8 years of a bull market I guess this is not unusual, but am interested to see how many negative positions others hold in their portfolios today.
1 out of 32. ALA.

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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by Spidey »

3 out of 26. The only real negative is WCP down 13% but it is a very small holding. The other 2 are down 4.5% and 0.99% but would be positive after dividends were considered.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by Lazy Ninja »

Two out of 14. Nike and CVS health. I've owned them for 13 and 19 months respectively. Down about 6% on the former and 15% on the latter. Slightly less with dividends included.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by scomac »

One of twenty-five. VFC-N -- sold and then repurchased to crystallize a tax loss earlier in the year. Backing out the trading move, have held it for about a year and a half.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by AltaRed »

A few fixed reset prefs I have not swapped out for the tax losses and Boardwalk REIT underwater circa 8-10% at the current time. None of these are of any concern. ALA is marginally above or below water depending on any given week and is a target for opportunistic sale pending closing of the new acquisition. All calculations done before dividend considerations.

Anyone can have underwater positions at any given time, especially those holding relatively new positions.
Last edited by AltaRed on 25 Jun 2017 10:41, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by rhenderson »

6 of over 40. ENF, ALA, BIR, BAM.PR.C, POW.PR.A and ENB.PR.N

My largest holding of the losers would be BIR and it's down 12% but I'm a natural gas bull so I expect it to do well.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by brad911 »

3 out of 28

HRL, ALA & CARA

ALA (is a likely candidate for tax loss harvesting later this year and I expect the other two to appreciate over time as they are intended as long-term holds.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by Taggart »

I don't calculate total return.

Only 1 down out of 28.

Gluskin Scheff & Associates Inc. (TSX:GS)

Bought November 2011.

Down -5.17%

Represents just 0.50% of the taxable portfolio. All Canadian common equities. Nothing else.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by deaddog »

The beauty of being a market timer/trader is that you don't hold losing positions.

It is not surprising that there are only a few losers in most portfolios as we have been in an 8 year bull market.

Most hold stocks because they don't want to take a loss. There is also the fear factor that as soon as they sell, the stock will go up. Yet there is the lost opportunity in holding on to a non performing stock. That capital could be better employed.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by kcowan »

BMO Prefs
Capital Power
Atom Energy
out of 50 holdings, not counting dividends.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by slim »

6 negative out of 61.
The negatives are not large and when you factor in the dividends received, they are all positive.
Lots of unrealized capital gains as a result. It makes me a little nervous about the Liberal search for more spending money.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by DenisD »

Most of the positions in my stock screens are short term. So, normally, I'll have more losers than buy and hold investors. This year, my screens aren't doing too well relative to the market. I have more losers than normal.

Looking at price only, as of Friday's close, I have 3+6+5+10 = 24 losers out of 70 stocks in my 4 screens. In addition, I have 1 loser out of 8 REITs and 7 losers (6 oil and gas producers and 1 gold miner) out of 10 resource stocks. All my ETFs are winners.

That's 32 losers in all. I guess I win the prize for most losers. 8) :wink:
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by AltaRed »

It simply demonstrates that different investing strategies will have different characterization and number of losers is not much of a measure.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by DenisD »

Yup. The most important thing is long term total returns. For a history of winners and losers, gluttons for punishment can review my Screen Trades in Excel online.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by rharvey199 »

down 99% on CXR. I keep it to remind me what happens when I try and be too cute and chase "hot" stocks rather than stick to the boring slow and steady stuff. :)

i'm also down 10% on OTEX but it's a new position and I'm pretty sure things will work out over time.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Three out of 33 equity positions are currently negative, Agrium (AGU), Teck (TCK.b) and Cenovus (CVE). Over the past month Teck has been positive and negative. And yes I'm aware that all the negative positions come from the Energy and Materials sector, but I've got other holdings in those sectors that are positive. Cenovus is under review as a probably tax loss harvest opportunity.

My investment policy statement dictates holdings across all sectors, although not along similar weightings as the TSX indices. Across our Canadian and US stock holdings our policy is roughly weighted by multiplying the TSX and S&P 500 sector weights our Canada/US allocation split.

No negative positions in our small preferred share allocation (5% allocation) because we tax loss harvested last year.
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Arby
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by Arby »

I suspect any list of current negative positions will suffer from survivorship bias. I don't have many negative positions because I have culled most of my negative positions over the past 8 years of a bull market.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by Wallace »

0 out of 11
But I am generally "buy and hold". Pretty boring portfolio. Some (the REITS) were bought after the 2008 crash. Most of the rest are blue chip dividend stocks that have been in my portfolio for ever. The closest to a negative is Chartwell which I bought about six months ago. Up about 2% now. OTOH it is bringing in cash every month, so I'm happy.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by ockham »

Two (IMO and AGU) out of 25.

I'm having difficulty appreciating what makes this metric meaningful. Perhaps the OP (or anyone else) could explain?? A cautionary word to the unseasoned investor that not all buys go up and stay up??
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by westcoastfella »

6 out of 32. 3 of those 6 were purchased within the past 6 months as longer term holds (GE, WFC, TD), but have had short term problems. The other 3 (CHE, SPD, AX.UN) are all longer term holds that are underwater. CHE has been perpetually under my ACB, about 3% today, but as long as it continues to yield I'm OK with it. AX.UN has been underwater for a while since oil started its decline, but the dividend appears to be stable and its a good one (over 8%). Superior Plus has been jumping around lately, it was above water as little as 3 weeks ago, but down nearly 9% today. Ask me the same question in a few weeks it might only be 5 out of 32.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by Koogie »

0 out of 16. Currently sitting on to much accumulated cash however, so that has contributed to being able to bat 1000

The only things on my watch list that are getting close to buying levels are: BCE (which I don't really need since we have T), a couple preferred ETFs (I keep reminding myself I don't need preferreds) and a dividend ETF (which I don't really want either). The "troubles" of a bull market, I guess.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by kcowan »

Arby wrote: 26 Jun 2017 09:38 I suspect any list of current negative positions will suffer from survivorship bias. I don't have many negative positions because I have culled most of my negative positions over the past 8 years of a bull market.
Yes I agree. Culling the crap serves to leave the remainder looking pretty good. Especially lately. Doing it during a correction might leave an entirely different impression.

Also any fund will have some minuses to offset the pluses but it the the fund value that we quote.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by chufinora »

ockham wrote: 26 Jun 2017 10:36 I'm having difficulty appreciating what makes this metric meaningful. Perhaps the OP (or anyone else) could explain?? A cautionary word to the unseasoned investor that not all buys go up and stay up??
I'm not sure it is meaningful. I did find it interesting, as over the past years I have probably held on average 4-5 negative positions, and probably for the wrong reasons (Pyschological don't want to see and crystallize the loss, not sure what to buy that is better.) Being buy and hold type with the bull market I reached the point where the negative positions are all income generating so can justify holding them. Looks like most here are in similar situation with just a few dogs that have good upside potential or are income generating.
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Re: How many negative positions do you hold today?

Post by kcowan »

Plus pay attention to some like me who are quoting pure equity and others are including cumulative dividends in their calculations.
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