In 2013 my Roth IRA had investment return of 28.0%. The S&P500 returned 32.39% with dividends reinvested. So I saw great growth but not as good as simply betting on 'average'. And from that perspective I did poorly. Its easy to feel happy about getting 28% but I could have gotten 4.39% more by simply buying a generic index fund.
Apparently I didn't figure my return for 2012 so I'm not sure how I did that year. I don't have good records for that period but I've got one data point captured in Dec. 2011 and then I know how much I had in Dec 2012 so I can at least estimate based on that period. At least from Dec to Dec I was up about 10%. The S&P500 was up 16% for the year total. Thats not perfect but close enough. So it looks like I underperformed the S&P that year by 6%.
In 2011 I beat the S&P by1-2% so that wasn't bad.
Back in 2010 I doubled the performance of the S&P500 by getting 30.1% versus 15.06%
So for 4 years I'm at +15%, +1%, -6% and -4%. That puts be about 10% above the S&P500 in total for the 4 years. Not bad I guess. But the latest trend in the past 2 years isn't good and I'm really just riding the success of 2010.
| Me | S&P500 | |
| 2010 | 30.10% | 15.06% |
| 2011 | 3.70% | 2.11% |
| 2012 | 10% | 16% |
| 2013 | 28% | 32.39% |
| net | 90% | 80% |
I've gotten away from my old dividend stock investing strategy due to lack of time and attention and I've now mostly switched over to investing in general index ETFs. However I do have a preference for dividend focused ETFs. Over 85% of my Roth account is now split between DVY, VTI and VYM. DVY and VYM are dividend focused and VTI is just the total stock market.
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