July 30, 2014

Updown performance so far in 2014

Practice invest


I totally forgot about my Updown portfolio.   I haven't written about it since September 2013.   I don't recall the last time I even logged into the account.   I clearly haven't been actively managing the account.

Here's how my portfolio has compared to the S&P 500 so far in 2014 :



Freeby50 S&P 500 diff.
Jan-14 -1.9% -3.6% 1.7%
Feb-14 1.3% 4.3% -3.0%
Mar-14 2.7% 0.7% 2.0%
Apr-14 0.5% 0.6% -0.1%
May-14 0.3% 2.1% -1.8%
Jun-14 0.6% 1.9% -1.3%
Jul-14 2.1% 1.0% 1.1%
SUM 5.6% 7.0% -1.4%

The S&P500 index is beating me by 1.4% thus far for the year.

I'm still ahead of the S&P500 for the entire portfolio history.      I'm up 77% total and the S&P500 is up 49%.   However most of the difference there was in the first couple years when I was really actively playing the portfolio and managing it.   For 2011 to 2014 I've underperformed the S&P500 by about 10% total.

I also have 16% of my portfolio in cash.   That will cause me to lag the performance of the index by a ways since only 84% of my money is actually in the market.     So for example if I had 7% gains in the year on my stocks like the S&P500 then my portfolio would only be up 84% of that or 5.88%.   SO the asset distribution I've got of 16/84 cash vs stocks does explain some of why I lag the index.   The cash was mostly thrown off by dividend payments as I've had a high dividend yield investment strategy in general.  Updown doesn't seem to have anyway to do dividend reinvestment which is a pity.

About 60% of my stock holdings are in just 5 stocks T, WDC, BA, MSFT, MRK.   I can't for the life of me remember why I bought those stocks, but thats most of what I own in the portfolio.   I am sure I had some logical reason to buy those at the time, but who knows that those reasons are now.  I haven't looked at them lately so I don't know if they're stocks I'd own right now.   T & BA each did worse than the S&P500 so far in 2014 but WDC, MSFT & MRK have outperformed the index.    The other 40% of my holdings are a mixed bag of 14 other stocks.   Again I now don't remember why I bought any of them.

So this is what happens if you neglect your investments.  I end up with a pile of stocks I bought which I may or may not feel are worth owning today, I have too much money sitting idle in cash and I get beat by the S&P500 index.

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