Comments on: Asset Class Returns for 2008

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 09 May 2009 01:37:23 +0000

Being at my very beginnings in the stock market in 2008, I was quite lucky to have been spared by all that happened. Thank God I had about 70% of my assets in cash and bonds; I able to scoop up quality stocks for cheap.

Diversification pays!

By: Diversification worked (to a degree) in 2008

Diversification worked (to a degree) in 2008 — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:44:51 +0000

[...] the year. Second, even within stocks, diversification offered a measure of protection. Recall that U.S. equities lost 23.5% compared to the 33.8% loss in Canadian [...]

By: theking

theking — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:27:03 +0000

sell in may and go away works..works for me………

By: Total Return Indices’ Calendar Returns for 15 Years : WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:16:50 +0000

[...] that Canadian Capitalist had a post outlining some asset class returns for 2008 as well, and in that post he links to a spreadsheet with calendar returns with more history (back [...]

By: Dale Rathgeber

Dale Rathgeber — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:36:39 +0000

Econ Student: you might be right about the reversal of seasonality in the S hemishere, unless they have also had a # of Black Octobers as well. I just don’t know the answer.

By: EconStudent

EconStudent — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:40:19 +0000

Dale: The September/October abstinence might not work with stock markets listed in the Southern Hemisphere, since their seasonality is opposite of the Northern Hemisphere. Of course the financial centers of the world is still in the Northern Hemisphere right now, but that might change in the future. Just my 2 cent.

By: Sampson

Sampson — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:12:31 +0000

@ Anjo
+1
we’re now up to 4 cents…
if only we could bank those types of returns

By: Dale Rathgeber

Dale Rathgeber — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:51:33 +0000

The Autumn abstinence should “work” with any index; we switch out on Set 4 or 5, and back in on Oct27 or 28 based on Brooke Thackray’s research in “TIME IN : TIME OUT”.

We will have to disagree on whether I am a “market timer” in the worst connotation of that nearly meaningless label.

By: Jordan

Jordan — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:59:03 +0000

@Dale

I think your strategy is market timing, from what I gather of your posts & website you suggest the next hot mutual fund to jump into 3-4 times a year based on its momentum.

If you didn’t then you wouldn’t have a newsletter, and as CC pointed out anyone could just use the sell in October strategy themselves.

I’ve created a portfolio to test the abstain in September/October strategy on the Canadian market by using the iShares ETC XIC. I started in Jan 2002, sold everything at the end of August and rebought XIC at the start of November. Of course this won’t show any of the “momentum” of your market timing calls, I just wanted to see what portion of your over performance is attributed to abstinence .

Amazingly your September strategy worked! by avoid the sharp drop from the last 5 months of this year it managed to outperform the buy and hold index up to now. Of course if you look back at the previous ~5.5 years of results up until July 08 (just before cash became the best asset class ever) the September Strategy portfolio was under performing buy and hold by 20% (not including the capital gains and additional transactional costs the strategy would incur).

Should I test the strategy out on other indexes or does it only work with the funds you suggest in your newsletter?

By: Anjo

Anjo — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:50:24 +0000

Is it possible to remove the advertising showing up in the comments (i.e. Dale Rathgeber’s newsletter subscription offers). Freedom in posting comments is great, but the shilling of services and products should be removed. I think a discussion on September/October underperformance is of interest, but not in the form of someone who wants to demonstrate this underperformance while advertising their service to address it.

Just my two cents…