2015 portfolio performance

[investor-man]

Ok, I'm not quite done :)

 

Another reason why XIRR is important to keep track of: when I login to Fidelity it tells me that my 1 year performance number is 34%. While I'd love to brag to you all that my return for the year is 34%, I know it's completely wrong. My XIRR was slightly negative, and I was only able to increase the balance by 15% through deposits. I have no idea what that 34% number is measuring, and I'll never trust it. It's better to keep track of your performance yourself. It's pretty easy to do, even if you have multiple accounts.

 

Ok, now I'm done.

[Hielko]

Ok, I'm not quite done :)

 

Another reason why XIRR is important to keep track of: when I login to Fidelity it tells me that my 1 year performance number is 34%. While I'd love to brag to you all that my return for the year is 34%, I know it's completely wrong. My XIRR was slightly negative, and I was only able to increase the balance by 15% through deposits. I have no idea what that 34% number is measuring, and I'll never trust it. It's better to keep track of your performance yourself. It's pretty easy to do, even if you have multiple accounts.

 

Ok, now I'm done.

You don't exactly understand what the IRR calculates compared to a TWRR and your broker has crap performance reporting and apparently doesn't use either method. Your IRR return and your TWRR return are both flawed to some degree, and both don't tell the single truth what your real performance was or is. Fun fact: if you have irregular cash flows the IRR formula has multiple solutions, so you could have a positive and a negative return at the same time! does that make sense? Your TWRR answers the question what kind of return would you have had if you had invested $1000 at the start of the year and not added or removed any money. That seems to me the purest definition of investment result if you don't control cash flows. If you do control cashflows, you should use a measure that accounts for them.

[Jurgis]

Are people making 100s/1000s of transactions in and out of their trading accounts?

 

2 401(k)s biweekly = 52 transactions

1 ESPP biweekly = 26 transactions

Misc ins/outs in taxable account(s).

 

Almost gets to 100.

 

But you have a point. ;) Especially if I want to look at performance without 401(k)s and ESPP.

[aws]

I haven't worked it out exactly but it was around 30-35% in USD, mostly because of lucky timing on some oil/gas stocks, partially offset by pretty losses in Valeant.

[gokou3]

BMO says the return in my main account is 13.3% but it certainly felt a lot less.  Got a huge tailwind from the weakening of CAD vs USD.  Some winners in BAC leap, AIG leap, FIATY, and GM-WTB.  Offset by a practically wipeout loss in KMI-WT. ???  Some big losses (e.g. CHK) in my smaller accounts as well, so I would say I am at about flat for 2015.

 

Thanks for the board for another year of good research.

[krazeenyc]

10%. I spent much of 2015 selling. I've spent most of 2015 in >60% cash -- I'm actually closer to 65% cash atm. Managed for the most part to avoid losers, but no big winners either.  Worried about similar things going into 2016 as I was going into 2015, but the prices on a bunch of names are much much cheaper today vs Jan 2015. Macys... for example.

[beerbaron]

4.8% I'm about 50/50 Canadian and US equities so I kinda got a tailwind there. Overall I'm ok with the results when I factor in that I did about on transaction in the year excluding some arbitrage plays.

 

BeerBaron

[LC]

-8%

 

I'm grateful it's not worse due to big losses on zinc, aiq, lukoy, fhco. I think I just suck at doing cursory valuation on small(er) caps. Didn't fully know the risks I was taking, pretty much, and how fragile the businesses of most small-caps are.

 

Fiat carried the portfolio. well, prevented something like 40% losses haha. Thx again Sergio.

[jeffmori7]

I'm at 15.7% for the year, but this include a good tailwind from the canadian dollar drop. Considering I am at 80% invested in US dollar, I am about flat for the year in real performance from my stock. Winners for me were Markel, Google and Alimentation Couche-Tard. Losers were Berkshire, Sears-related and Home Capital Group. AIG, GM, BAC, Apple, etc. were mostly flat in final.

[TorontoRaptorsFan]

I'm at 25%

 

Big gainers for me were: Nike, Starbucks, Solarcity (loaded up when Chanos was shorting the stock - nice year end recovery with legislation) and 2 short term earnings trades on Amazon

5% gains on Brookfield Asset Management & Disney

Only losing positions were Chipotle & Bank of America.

 

Currently buying Chipotle. My thesis: Excellent management, short term e coli crisis has allowed them to greatly improve food standards (probably now best in the food business), share buybacks, and continued expansion of Chipotle, Shophouse (recently added Chicago locations to their existing locations in Washington D.C, Maryland, and California) and Pizzeria Locale (looks like expansion is first taking place in the U.S. Midwest).

 

[John Hjorth]

10%. I spent much of 2015 selling. I've spent most of 2015 in >60% cash -- I'm actually closer to 65% cash atm. Managed for the most part to avoid losers, but no big winners either.  Worried about similar things going into 2016 as I was going into 2015, but the prices on a bunch of names are much much cheaper today vs Jan 2015. Macys... for example.

krazeenyc,

 

That's an outstanding result for 2015 with so much cash held during the year, perhaps the best risk adjusted return for 2015 described in this topic so far.

 

Personally, I would very much appreciate - if possible for you - to read a bit more from you in this topic about your worries going forward at the moment.

 

Thank you in advance.

[twacowfca]

Portfolio roughly flat in USD at year end.

Measured in home currency, IRR of approximately 15% for the period.

 

As regards IRR, Howard Marks wrote a good memo on the subject in 2006: https://www.oaktreecapital.com/docs/default-source/memos/2006-07-12-you-cant-eat-irr.pdf?sfvrsn=2

 

That's a great memo. And I think IRR is the correct metric by which to judge the performance of someone like an individual investor, who is completely in control of his/her own capital. IRR, or something that's abstractly similar (ROIC, ROE, etc.), is what we all use to judge all of these companies we're investing in. Why wouldn't we use it on ourselves? The time weighted metric just seems like a way to avoid the truth.

Most individual investors are absolutely not fully control of their own capital. You can't change when you receive your salary, or when you get an inheritance or a gift etc. If you got a big gift in 2009 you just got lucky, while if you got it in 2007 you got unlucky. If you don't try to time the market does it make sense to try to measure that?

 

Agree with this, that is unless people are literally hoarding money, storing it away without ever intending to use it that timing is really out of our control.

 

I have no idea how I did in 2015, calculating it will be a mess because money was moving in and out throughout the year.  We purchased a house halfway through the year and I sold some stocks to facilitate the purchase.  Would I have done better if I hadn't sold them? Maybe, but then again I wouldn't be living where I want to.  In my view the purpose of money is to work for you, and in this case investing enabled us to buy a place we wanted.

 

I'd like to think I can control the timing of my account, but I can't.  When we found a house I couldn't wait until the year end to make performance nice and tidy.

 

We bought a cottage.  My total losses could have been even worse.  I probably would have lost the value of what we spent using the same percentages.  Not whining about my first world problems, thats for sure.  Stocks will come back.

 

About + 25% while holding 50 % of the portfolio in cash most of the year.  That's an amazing risk adjusted return, but it's totally misleading taken out of context.  Most of that return was from the recovery of  a large, leveraged position that had gone south the year before.

[Packer16]

+0.6% in USD.  Gains form telecom (GNCMA & NTLS), GP Investments, Fiat and Korean preferreds offset by losses in O&G (too early), AIQ, Glacier Media, GM warrants and a SPAC warrant that I was warned against & did it anyway.

 

Packer

[intothebreach]

4.7% in CAD overall. Would have been negative if not for currency tail winds (although I give myself some credit for deciding to invest most of my funds in USD stocks back when we were essentially at par anticipating an eventual currency benefit when the exchange rate would return to more normal conditions; some of that gain may well reverse in 2016, will need to do better).

[kirkomi]

-20% compared to the Swiss Benchmark (SLI) of +0.7%  8)

 

 

[wachtwoord]

-20% worst year yet for me.

[BG2008]

For my Roth IRA

 

4% for the year +/- 2% in either direction.  Too lazy to calculate the actual result.  Have a 10+% position in a workout that no longer trades.  Will find out in a few years if I have a multi-bagger on my hand.  But there's no liquidity to get out.  I have a very concentrated portfolio in my Roth IRA as it's long term capital, small relative to my future earnings and current overall networth.

 

 

 

 

 

[DanielGMask]

-8.53%

 

Losers according to its size within the portfolio were BRK, MAT, WFM, BBBY, IBM and DE.

Winners according to its size within the portfolio were GOOG (sold), WTW (sold), WMK (sold) and FAST.

Non movers WMT and IILG.

 

Bad year!

[Mephistopheles]

I need to look into TWRR.

 

I do IRR and also compare with an index IRR adjusted for my deposits. I assume I am buying or selling units in the S&P500 total return index based on the value of my deposits and withdrawals. Then I add up the net number of units bought and price them at the current index value to calculate the IRR. I think this is a good way to compare against the index.

 

 

[Ballinvarosig Investors]

Up mid-single digits, 80% of that was Dollar appreciation.

 

Had to write a letter to clients just a week ago explaining that in the entire year of 2015, I didn't make a single investment. Intellectually speaking, it's been a testing year. You have central banks still doing everything they can to increase asset prices and force bond yields negative - the temptation to buckle and buy something is immense. The market still looks moderately overvalued, so I won't be buying anything unless prices decline by 10%.

[ourkid8]

+33.81% however I had a large deposit which is seriously skewing my results.  Without the large deposit, -1.6% for 2015 (Thank god for Forex)

[Hielko]

+33.81% however I had a large deposit which is seriously skewing my results.  Without the large deposit, -1.6% for 2015 (Thank god for Forex)

You need to learn how to calculate returns...

[writser]

He's just using the Giofranchi method. Who, by the way, hasn't chimed in on this thread despite being among the first to post results in previous years. Kind of illustrates the point that threads such as this one are dangerous because they are always biased towards outperformance.

[John Hjorth]

He's just using the Giofranchi method. ...

What's the purpose of posting something like this? Gio is not even an active part in that particular discussion in this topic.

[giofranchi]

Did about 20% 2015, but I'm not that happy because FX helped a lot and without it, results would be a fair bit worse.

 

I feel like 2015 was a particularly exhausting year for most market participant. That's good. I prefer everyone to be mistrustful and worn out than happy and contented.

 

This is very impressive! With a large position in VRX, AAPL that has gone nowhere, the Malone’s family of businesses that have appreciated very little, a 20% return in a year the market is flat means really a great job from the rest of your portfolio! Would you share with us which were your best performers?

 

Thank you,

 

Gio