Your 2014 portfolio return

[muscleman]

What's your return in 2014?

[berkshire101]

18-19% at the moment.  But who knows, it could go up or down from here.  I would prefer up!  But I also have some cash.  So maybe down would be better. 

[merkhet]

Down maybe 20% or so.

[LC]

I just realize I checked the wrong box. Strike one from the <-10% and add it to the <10% bucket. (I'm at 9% through November 31 but will probably end up around 11-12% due to selling some FCAU at 13.xx and selling some BAC today at 17.9X.

[oddballstocks]

I hate these posts because they often turn into who is the best.  Yet at the same time I like it because it's a good gut check, I don't typically check my performance until the end of the year.  So putting out publicly how I did is a nice form of accountability.

 

Not entirely sure how accurate this is but looks like I did about 10.7%.  Fidelity is claiming much higher results, but I believe that's because I have about 20% in cash or so and they do some funky performance calculation ex-cash.

 

Failed to beat the S&P, but looks like I beat the Russell Microcap Value index and KBW Regional Banking indexes by about 10%.  I beat international small caps by about 15%.  My portfolio is primarily microcaps, small banks and small international stocks, so those are much more appropriate benchmarks compared to the S&P.

 

Good, bad?  Not sure I care either way, I didn't lose money and I like what I hold.  A successful year.

 

Addendum: Spent more time looking at Fidelity, they exclude foreign positions from their performance calculation.  On my US holdings I did 17.5%, my foreign holdings were mostly flat, and Japanese holdings negative which brought my overall performance down.  I guess if I compared myself to a small cap international benchmark as well I did ok.

[Liberty]

Just eyeballing it, I'd say up around 40% so far (in CAD, part of that is currency gains in USD vs CAD).

 

I dodged a few bullets this year. I sold my CFX and ALS positions for strategic reasons, and immediately after that they tanked. I don't expect to be lucky like that very often.

[simplefocus]

I just started managing my money in the last 2 years.  I don't know my exact return from year to year because I measure everything by CAGR.  My CAGR thus far is 20.22% for the last 2 years and I hope to get my CAGR to 26%.

[Hielko]

Currently up ~25%. Pretty amazing given all the bad things that happened and the mistakes I made this year.

 

Mistakes?

* WH merger arb (down 60% before I sold, now at -100%).

* Long Clear Leisure (down 60%)

Unclassified?

* Short CYNK (up ~150% before I exited, went up a lot higher after that...)

Unlucky?

* Awilco (down 60% from peak)

 

Combine that with some smaller declines in other positions such as my biggest position (>25%) losing 30% from peak, getting screwed by Magix management in a delisting (also down ~30%) and it's a miracle I made any money at all this year. And that is kids why you want diversification. And a sizable BRK stake also didn't hurt this year.

[DanielGMask]

Up 15%. I'm amazed of some of the results of the others!

[Mephistopheles]

I'm up a little over 18% but my personal portfolio is extremely volatile - I was flat a couple of weeks ago. My parents portfolio which I also manage but is more representative of what I would do if I had a lot more money is up marginally year to date.

[cwericb]

My investments are split into two portfolios, one consists primarily of mutual funds and is partially managed by a “financial advisor” because I don’t have enough faith in my own abilities. The other is primarily stocks that I manage myself.

 

The ‘professionally’ managed stuff is up about 7% and my own stuff is up about 15%.

 

Now that would be fine if my self managed investments were particularly aggressive compared to the ‘professionally’ managed investments, but when the crap hits the fan the ‘professionally’ managed stuff always drops much farther and faster than my own investments.

 

However, the markets have been so volatile lately who knows where things will be in a few weeks.

[beerbaron]

+16% not a bad year. With 20% cash I can't complain too much.

 

I'm happy about the turnover tough, probably did 4-5 (buys) transactions this year. If that continues my broker will call me to tell me I'm it's worst customer.

 

Regards

BeerBaron

[sleepydragon]

35.65%

[finetrader]

About 14%. And pretty happy with the result.

 

i've been surfing on BAC and AIG for the past three years. I think next year will be harder than this year, considering US index are at all time high.

[Pretium]

Down 8% this year. This is my first year managing money.

 

Was down close to 25% a month ago but doubled my stake in TECU around $2.60 and it's now sitting at $3.70.

Biggest takeaway from 2014: Be Patient!

 

I hope 2015 is better to everyone!

[PatOfThePig]

86% in the margin account, thank's to Alimentation Couche Tard, and 25% in the RESP.

[Patmo]

86%in the margin account, thank's to Alimentation Couche Tard.

 

Canada has a lot of tasty GARP stuff for those who are into this kind of investing. Off the top of my head Couche-Tard, Tim Horton's (pre BK), Jean Coutu, etc.

[enoch01]

+70%

 

Sears, the gift that keeps on giving.

[innerscorecard]

(Checked and edited.)

 

My XIRR (dollar-weighted returns) calculation for all my accounts combined this year as of before the market open today is 55.01%.

 

This is my personal portfolio representing the majority of my spouse's and my financial assets.

 

(This is significant lower than was the figure I posted earlier when I was away from my home computer, which I had calculated earlier this month. The difference is largely due to some of the idiosyncratic quirks described below):

 

- Almost always fully invested. Cash is in checking accounts that aren't invested.

- The total portfolio value is quite small, compared to the seven or eight figure portfolios of many others on here. So the monthly wage contributions or contributions of savings especially were a significant fraction of the total portfolio value. So a lot of the money was only invested later in the year. XIRR accounts for this, but it makes it so that my dollar-weighted-returns may be very different from my time-weighted returns. The problem is I can't calculate my time-weighted returns, as I didn't record my account value at the end of every day (or at least every day I made a contribution or withdrawal).

- The AUM was even smaller at the beginning of the year, several times smaller, in fact.

- The money is spread over several accounts, and I made a lot of transfers between them. So the returns may be very, very slightly understated due to all the transfer time.

- I did not attribute investment gains from churning stocks for credit card rewards points on LOYAL3, or the small amount of investment "float" I got through churning credit cards for investment cash, as investment gains. I just treated them as any other types of cash input. In reality, this activity was somewhere in between work and investment, but to be conservative, I don't count it as part of my investment results for the year. You can also see from this being an issue how small my AUM is.

- I did not attribute bonuses for moving money around (i.e. opening new credit card, bank or investment accounts) as part of my investment results, although I got a decent amount of money this way.

- The above figures count all accounts together - whether active (individual stocks or options), completely passive (manual or robotized asset allocation) or semi-active (completely mechanical application of the Magic Formula). So this isn't really a measurement of my stock-picking abilities (well, I really have none) directly.

- Takes a significant amount of time to formally transfer money from China to one US account and then to another. I count this deposit and withdrawal time from US bank account to bank account, to incentivize me to keep the process as efficient as possible,

 

So what happened is I got quickly lucky with the timing of some of my big deposits to my accounts which were immediately invested in my best ideas at the time, and that had a material effect on my results. Also, my main concentrated investment, AAPL, did quite well, and my gains in the beginning of the year were benefited by leverage through options. My timing in my YHOO investment was also quite excellent and led to an extremely high IRR. All by accident, of course.

 

P.S.: This also only includes US-domiciled-account investing, not investing that my spouse and I do in China. That's mostly fixed income, but also some A-shares. My spouse manages those, but that's a real part of our asset allocation, so for full disclosure's sake I should at least mention those.

 

Also, my XIRR-calculated returns for 2013 were 38.55%. But I was only investing for part of the year, so that figure may not be extremely meaningful.

[oddballstocks]

As expected a few 30%+ returns and the obligatory 70-80%+ returns.  I know it's great to be on top but just watch, someone is going to roll in here with a 100%+ return.  It never fails, this thread always makes me envious, I'd love to compound at 40-70% a year, but I also realize it's unlikely to be sustainable (for me at least).  I'm not even sure what I'd have to do to double my portfolio in a year, maybe trade options or something.

 

For those of you at 70% or 80% did you use leverage?  If not was your portfolio completely concentrated in one lucky stock, or two lucky stocks for the year?  How repeatable do you think the results are?

 

Some people talk on here as if they know the outcome of their investments.  I don't know if this is some weird overconfidence, hubris, or if people really can tell that something will do well.  I know from experience that buying very cheap things works, but I never have any idea when or how, that's the mystery and part of the excitement.  I guess to get to 50% plus a year you'd somehow have to 'know' that a stock was going to work in a year.

 

Anyways great returns, congrats.  A few more years like that and there'll be a "Ask whomever" thread with new posters worshiping at your feet.

[racemize]

I am underperforming the market in my primary account this year, and at ~22% in my concentrated IRA account.  Still positive, but second year of underperformance.

 

Just thought I'd add some lower returns to the thread.

[berkshire101]

As expected a few 30%+ returns and the obligatory 70-80%+ returns.  I know it's great to be on top but just watch, someone is going to roll in here with a 100%+ return. 

 

I did achieve 90% return this year in my fake virtual account that's 100% margin and highly concentrate.  I don't have the balls in real life to attempt such a thing.  But it's fun making all the mistakes with paper money than with the real thing.

[frommi]

Around 15% after costs, but a lot of that has come from currency effects. I could have done a lot better, my mistakes sum up to around 8% and my summer hedges made me lose around 2%. 2% were transaction costs. So i could  have made around 23-25% without valuation mistakes and stupid gambles. (like buying 2 week call options on BP or valuing NWH.AX on earnings when it was clear that there was no competitive advantage.)

 

My goals for next year are lower turnover and no more stupid short term bets. I had turnover of 200% which is stupid, but comes from the fact that i just started value investing 1.5 years ago. I owned more than 50 stocks this year but the stocks i sold have performed on average by -1.5% after the decision to sell, so that was mainly not the mistake.

My buy decisions were wrong in the first place and i have to get a lot better there, while working on my patience. I will concentrate more next year on small/mid cap stocks that are clearly mispriced (and where i have a clear reason why that is the case) and have at least 50% of my portfolio in long term compounders. (more tax-efficient and lower transaction costs.)

I already swapped more money to IB from other accounts to have lower transaction costs going forward.

 

Btw. thanks all for your contributions to this outstanding forum. It is a pleasure to learn from the best.

[cobafdek]

I'll wait for the end of the calendar year to calculate my actual 2014 return, but I'm guessing I'm down about 10%.  What, me worry?  I found it interesting to look at a 15-year perspective.  (All numbers are dollar-weighted, i.e., IRR.  I'm leaving out 1994-1998 because those years I knew less than nothing, and some of the results below are embarrassing enough.)

 

                                        (annualized thru 2013)*              *for example, 1999-2013  ME 13.1

            ME      SP500          ME      SP500                                                2000-2013        16.6

1999    4.6        21.0          13.1    26.6

2000    11.0      (9.1)          16.6      9.7

2001    13.3    (11.9)          17.8      8.0

2002    (3.6)    (22.1)            8.6      1.6

2003    13.9      28.7            18.1    30.5

2004    16.8      10.9            19.6    21.2

2005      0.1        4.9            10.7    17.8

2006      9.3      15.8            15.7    23.8

2007  (19.6)      5.5            (0.7)    18.2

2008  (43.5)  (37.0)        (16.9)    (8.7)

2009  36.4      26.5            29.2    29.4

2010  22.0      15.1            22.2    23.4

2011  (4.6)      2.1              8.1    16.3

2012  17.5      16.0            19.9    23.9

2013  22.4      32.4            22.4    32.4

 

Cash levels ranged from 5% - 40%.  Earlier years, the portfolio was heavily tilted to the Defensive Investor strategy outlined by Graham in The Intelligent Investor, with investing as a hobby occupying 1-2 hours per day, since I have a more busy day job.  Later years evolved into more of an Enterprising Investor strategy, but still a hobby.

 

I've seen value investing results stereotyped as "trouncing the S&P in bear markets, and underperforming in bull markets."  If that is the definition of value investing, then I might qualify as a value investor.

 

Graham says that unless you get an excess of at least 5% returns over an index, the effort is not worth it.  In my case, it would not have been worth it if I looked at annualized returns of less than 11 years.

 

If I were starting an investment partnership or hedge fund (I'd shoot myself first), I'm sure my marketer would trumpet my 12-, 13-, and 14-year annualized returns, since those periods beat the S&P.  The rest of the record would be buried.

 

One-year results are not that interesting.

 

(Edit:  down 0.4% at year-end.)

 

 

 

[alwaysinvert]

As expected a few 30%+ returns and the obligatory 70-80%+ returns.  I know it's great to be on top but just watch, someone is going to roll in here with a 100%+ return.  It never fails, this thread always makes me envious, I'd love to compound at 40-70% a year, but I also realize it's unlikely to be sustainable (for me at least).  I'm not even sure what I'd have to do to double my portfolio in a year, maybe trade options or something.

 

For those of you at 70% or 80% did you use leverage?  If not was your portfolio completely concentrated in one lucky stock, or two lucky stocks for the year?  How repeatable do you think the results are?

 

Some people talk on here as if they know the outcome of their investments.  I don't know if this is some weird overconfidence, hubris, or if people really can tell that something will do well.  I know from experience that buying very cheap things works, but I never have any idea when or how, that's the mystery and part of the excitement.  I guess to get to 50% plus a year you'd somehow have to 'know' that a stock was going to work in a year.

 

Anyways great returns, congrats.  A few more years like that and there'll be a "Ask whomever" thread with new posters worshiping at your feet.

 

You always seem to make the most sense in these kinds of threads. Someone (moorecapital?) suggested one year that people should put the size of their portfolio in their posts too and he got heckled for it, but while 70% is always 70% it is significantly less impressive if you manage $20k than $20m.

 

Well, anyway. I'm looking at my primary account and it is +24% for the year. I have another account with approximately 10% of the total portfolio, which has not done as well. It's been a rollercoaster after the summer and I'm down since back then.

 

Mostly, it's been a year of very few ideas and the biggest one (in oil) has netted me a loss of -35% thus far.

 

CAGR since '08 when I started with some stock picks but mostly indexing is 20%. Counting from '09 (yeah I know) when I took full control it is 30%.