Comments on: Did your portfolio break even?

By: john

john — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 01:56:04 +0000

I too am up from the previous peak, although I sold off all my bonds, infused every last dime I could and thought of getting a line of credit on the value of the house to throw in the market ( didn’t b/c if I lost our house my wife would kill me). I’d say I acted like a desperate gambler trying to win his losings back. It help me realize now the importance of bonds/fixed income.

By: Nice Weather Edition Of LinkStuff

Nice Weather Edition Of LinkStuff — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:03:51 +0000

[...] Capitalist asks if your portfolio has broken even? The media often focuses on how far off the stock indexes are from their highs which isn’t a [...]

By: LL

LL — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:31:57 +0000

I’m 6.5% over July 2008 value. After the crash I just continuted my regular contributions to my sleepy portfolio and shifted my fixed income allocation down as the market declined. Easy as 123.

By: Phil S

Phil S — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:00:04 +0000

It depends upon how you measure return. If you only look at the share price and ignore distributions, then I’m still down by double-digits, almost 20%. If you include the distributions I’ve collected over the years, then I’m around breakeven.

By: Russell

Russell — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:08:26 +0000

I am still down about 12% since I started investing in Jan 2007. Unfortunately I was unemployed this year until last week, so I wasn’t able to put any new savings into the market lows. Now I need to build back up my savings reserve before I can start saving again for my investments. (So much for dollar cost averaging.)

One good thing I did was to move my investments into my RRSP this summer. It has allowed me to squeeze more stocks into less contribution room, so at least I was able to get some advantage from the recent lows in stock prices.

By: Basil2

Basil2 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:25:25 +0000

Mine recovered a few days ago. This is truly amazing given the severity of the crisis but not unexpected. History tells us that markets recovered after every crisis in NA so back in October I new that there will be a recovery. What is trylu amazing is to what extent recovery happened. This is once in a recent history market bounce back.

By: Smac20

Smac20 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:01:48 +0000

I am still rather sceptical of the current V shaped recovery. It truly seems to be based on expectations alone. Analysts last quarter predicted abysmal results so it’s no wonder that most stocks beat projections. Now that forecasts have been raised it is much more likely that you will see companies missing targets. Further, many of the companies only beat forecasts last quarter because they laid-off a huge amount of their workforces. With less people making the products or selling the products sales will be lower. Current valuations have P/Es that suggest we are back to business as usual. Please think before you consider the implications. With less workers to produce the production is not what it was a year ago.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:48:08 +0000

@CC: thanks for clearing that up!

By: Pete

Pete — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:11:59 +0000

Overall, I’m still down 10-15% from August 08. I didn’t rebalance at all over the last 12 months. I’ve just been keeping steady with my monthly RRSP contributions (which have barely averaged me down). I’ve only been investing for 4 years so I still have a long ways to go.

By: Canadian Capitalist

Canadian Capitalist — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:47:58 +0000

@DAvid, Sampson: Fair enough. If I had $100 in stock in Aug. 2008 and I added $70 over the year, it won’t be surprising at all that I’m ahead today even if the market is 50% off the peak. That’s why I think netting out the book value of the additions over the year provides a more useful picture. It shows how a sharp rally during the year has boosted the value of the additions and helped the portfolio recover quicker. It would be an interesting exercise to start out with XIU and XSB, rebalance during the year according to some formula (say when allocations are 5% off target) and check to see which portfolios have recovered. I’ll do that in a future post.