2023: the year of cash and t-bills

[TwoCitiesCapital]

20 minutes ago, Eng12345 said:

I wish there was a good way to track performance/allocation across the various brokerages I have. 

 

I have made a few attempts at spreadsheets, but the manual process is cumbersome and tedious. 

 

All I do is have a column for each account. When I add/remove cash, I just grab the balances from each account, adjust for the cash flow, and then calculate the performance from the last entry. 

 

The aggregation of all the performance periods is your time weighted return for the year. 

 

I might have 15-20 entries a year from 401k/HSA contributions and I time my IRA contributions to coincide with these to limit the number of entries. But ultimately takes maybe 5-10 minutes per month to get it accurate across my 6+ accounts. 

Edited January 3 by TwoCitiesCapital

[cwericb]

Stock portfolio: Not including dividends which probably add a couple of percentage points to the numbers.
2021:    + 33.9%
2022:    + 15.0%
2023:    + 27.1%

Biggest loser:
ALS.TO Altius Mineral Resurces, Down 17% & I am holding way too much.

 

Biggest contributors:
FFH.TO - Fairfax Financial +52%
ARTL.TO - SNC Lavalin +79%
TVK.TO - Terravest Industries + 60%

 

Biggest surprise:
The number of board members who have not been invested in Fairfax given the coverage on this board.

 

 

 

Edited January 4 by cwericb

[Jaygo]

2 hours ago, cwericb said:

Biggest contributors:
FFH.TO - Fairfax Financial +52%
ARTL.TO - SNC Lavalin +79%
TVK.TO - Terravest Industries + 60%

Hey finally some else who likes terravest! 

[cwericb]

YES! Great little company and stellar results. Acquired this in 2020 @ $11-12 and today sitting around $44. Up nearly 50% in the last 5-6 months.

[RiskAdjReturn]

On 12/29/2023 at 10:40 AM, Jaygo said:

 

Financial wealth is derived from owning assets, true wealth comes from having enough financial wealth to live the life that gives you purpose. Dealraker this is some inspirational stuff. Thank you.

curious how much you invested / saved into the taxable account, vs the starting point balance you reference. curious the compounding effect vs contributions. this is great lesson for my kids

[Jaygo]

3 minutes ago, RiskAdjReturn said:

curious how much you invested / saved into the taxable account, vs the starting point balance you reference. curious the compounding effect vs contributions. this is great lesson for my kids

It was dealraker with the inspirational account of his accounts. 

[villainx]

+48% taxable

+31% non taxable

 

+41 combined.  ~40% position in Apple ... so nothing I did really mattered?

 

[John Hjorth]

34 minutes ago, villainx said:

+48% taxable

+31% non taxable

 

+41 combined.  ~40% position in Apple ... so nothing I did really mattered?

 

 

Take it easy, - no sweat, @villainx,

 

Just make AAPL your benchmark, drop all your laggards [relative to AAPL], and your nest would be a ... cuckoo's nest! - Naturally what you did in the past mattered : You bought AAPL to the extent, so it went to get 40 percent of your portfolio. [I would argue there are worse problems to be the owner of  ]

[villainx]

I've been working on reducing Apple % of portfolio.  It was upper 40s% two years ago.  Obviously, it's great when Apple has a strong year, but 2022 was complete disaster.

 

 

[changegonnacome]

As always could have been better but could have been worse..big positions of consequence...GLV up 40%, HSW up 20%...BOI down a bit..all with room to run in 2024....the last couple of years have worked out reasonably well in aggregate:

 

2023 - +22%

2022 - +15%

 

Some non-taxable accounts where I do some levered bets adds a couple of hundred 100bps....which overall is up~40% over the last 24 months.

 

If you like drama - I guess a more eye catching year would be +50% in 2023 but invariably, in the vast majority of cases, that would have meant who knows down 40% in 22 or something..........which for lots of funds out there is basically the case.....the compounding / LP math on the above - down 40, up 50, for those wondering.....means your just simply DOWN in absolute terms over two years...Buffett's first rule is dont lose money for a reason, the return uplift required to make up losses is tough math.....then heap on fund fees and the inflation adjusted math that nobody likes doing (~10% cumulative diminution of purchasing power of a dollar over the 22-23 period) and you can see how the vast majority of LP's in funds that 'killed' performance wise in 2023 will be no better off in real terms at the start of 2024 than they were at the end of 2021 market peak.

 

My first 2024 prediction I'm fairly confident in.........is that 2022 'amnesia' will be the most common unwritten theme of end of year fund letters soon to come out......where the fund manager will pretend that with an avg. 2% cash holding over the period....he had enough dry powder of consequence in 2023 to take advantage and 'buy the dip' or my personal favourite is the game where the manager pretends he somehow magically rotated into higher quality names (without realizing losses on previous holdings that were down a bunch into the mouth of 'the bear'). The reality is the manager rode the market down and rode the market back up with some position window dressing. It's the nature of the beast but it's always amusing the games that need to be played in the fund mgmt business to hold on to OPM.

[CorpRaider]

Just did my 2024 end of year FF update blog post.  Looks like ~22% for 2023 and a 12.85% 5 year CAGR/XIRR.  Losing to the evil SPY on both counts, but doing pretty ok against other highly relevant and not at all cherry picked benchmarks.   

 

I was interested to observe the dispersion in returns among the banks in my portfolio.

Edited January 9 by CorpRaider

[John Hjorth]

Question likely especially for @ICUMD and @CorpRaider,

 

Which Canadian and / or North American banks are you invested in?

 

I hope that you wouldn't mind to share. - Thank you in advance. - And as already written : All replies from everyone welcome!

[ICUMD]

26 minutes ago, John Hjorth said:

Question likely especially for @ICUMD and @CorpRaider,

 

Which Canadian and / or North American banks are you invested in?

 

I hope that you wouldn't mind to share. - Thank you in advance. - And as already written : All replies from everyone welcome!

@John Hjorth My bank holdings are only Canadian. BNS is my largest, followed by BMO.  Also have some TD and RY.

 

I bought heavily BNS at recent lows.

I think it represents the best valuation of the big 5 and a tremendous dividend at over 7% when I bought.

 

BMO I hold from the COVID lows in 2020.

These holdings will be never sells for me.

[John Hjorth]

Thank you very much, @ICUMD,

 

To me, they all [the largest Canadian banks [5 or 6]] appear really impressive.

 

Those 10-years surveys in the annual reports for several of them really makes one stare at them [as were they some super curvy eye candy]! -All while pretty much nobody here on CoBF talks about them, while it's not even talking dirty talking about them here on CoBF!

 

- Just absolutely outstanding return metrics for them as whole compared to similar clusters / groups of large banks in other countries.

Edited January 10 by John Hjorth

[ICUMD]

@John Hjorth

Canada has one of the strongest banking systems in the world and a 200 yr history of surviving depressions and wars.  Also, they are an oligopoly.

 

Definitely attractive if you like dividend income.

A cornerstone of all Canadian pension plans.

 

I think non Canadians don't understand Cdn banking very well. Also, Canadian dividends for Americans are subject to extra taxation, so perhaps not as attractive.

 

[KJP]

10 hours ago, John Hjorth said:

Which Canadian and / or North American banks are you invested in?

 

I hope that you wouldn't mind to share. - Thank you in advance. - And as already written : All replies from everyone welcome!

 

Truxton Trust (TRUX)

FFB Bancorp (FFBB)

United Bancorporation of Alabama (UBAB)

Citizens Bancshares Corporation (CZBS)

OP Bancorp (OPBK)

Exchange Bank of Santa Rosa (EXSR)

M&F Bancorp, Inc. (MFBP)

 

These are all very small US banks.

[John Hjorth]

Thank you for sharing, @ICUMD & @KJP,

 

For starters - related to large Canadian banks -, I'll try to find if there already exist separate topics for and about them individually in the Investment Ideas forum here on CoBF.

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

Just a personal comment here about taxes on dividends from North American banks - both Canadian and US banks : I get credit releif for withheld dividend taxes on dividends in both Canada and in US by the calculation of my local Danish taxes on dividend income in both taxable and tax deferred accounts, so I do not personally have any issues [tax leak] with withheld canadian dividend taxes.

[gary17]

I had a really , really wonderful year in 2023 - no point posting how well I did, i mean i don't really even believe it myself -- it's really just luck and being able to tag along all the great ideas that were shared on this board;  i have been madly focused on running a small business that I am a part of, and the portfolio made of FFH and the usual tech companies simply out performed .  I was a skeptic of FFH in earlier years; but slowly I was convinced of Prem changing direction - especially when he acknowledged  some of the poor decisions he made few years ago.   I am not sure how to express my thanks to people, but I made meaningful donations to local charities at the end of 2023 --   the community here definitely helped made it possible for me to do so.

Thank you to Sanjeev for having this forum and having me here to tag along.

Edited January 10 by gary17

[John Hjorth]

Now I'll stop derailing this topic from its purpose by intent of the topic starter [Greg [ @Gregmal ]], and start brewing on a new topic about the major Canadian banks, for separate discussion of them there.

[Dynamic]

Cal Year	USD gain	outperf vs SP500 TR	pre tax GBP gain	Lowball value USD gain
2016	24.2%	12.2%	54.2%	19.1%
2017	24.8%	3.0%	14.1%	12.7%
2018	25.3%	29.7%	33.0%	49.4%
2019	18.0%	-13.5%	13.6%	2.3%
2020	-3.4%	-21.8%	-6.0%	32.4%
2021	79.6%	50.9%	81.4%	34.2%
2022	24.1%	42.2%	39.8%	38.3%
2023	9.8%	-16.5%	3.9%	22.0%
cagr	23.5%	10.3%	26.6%	25.5%

 

Regarding calculations, each year I calculate two quite simple returns and take the average of them:

 

Return1 = (YearEndValue / (PreviousYearEndValue + CashAdded)) - 1

Return2 = (YearEndValue - CashAdded)/PreviousYearEndValue) - 1

 

Average Return = (Return1 + Return2)/2

 

I report the average of those two in the table above as I've tracked it that way for years. In the last 3 years or so, I've been withdrawing funds to pay living expenses and taxes, so CashAdded is negative, but it still works.

 

More recently I've also started using a unitised approach as outlined here, to account for money in or out

https://monevator.com/how-to-unitize-your-portfolio/

which for 2023 calendar year gave a USD return of 9.9% and a GBP return of 4.4%, pretty close to the other method.

 

[CorpRaider]

On 1/9/2024 at 9:47 PM, John Hjorth said:

Question likely especially for @ICUMD and @CorpRaider,

 

Which Canadian and / or North American banks are you invested in?

 

I hope that you wouldn't mind to share. - Thank you in advance. - And as already written : All replies from everyone welcome!

 

During 2023 the below ones. Only couple of shares of First Citizens because it exploded and left me behind.  I currently hold 0 shares of BAC.  I also own a few shares of TD in an account that I have established for my son and a few WFC and BAC preferred shares in accounts for older relatives.

 

Edited January 11 by CorpRaider

[Whensthepaintdry?]

@Dynamic that’s an awesome record! I would be really interested in hearing about any moves you may of made and why. You have written some great posts on selling. I wish I had gone back to them before making certain sells last year that I’ll probably regret. 

[maplevalue]

Yearly IRR's (calculated via Quicken) in CAD

 

2020 12.5%

2021 12.9%

2022 -12.6%

2023 20.9%

 

Fairfax big winner this year. Large EM allocation ~25%, and limited exposure to MAG7 has dragged me down since 2021.

 

Edited January 14 by maplevalue
edit

[Fitz]

Up 52% in 2023 in equities, brokerage as a whole is up 32% but moved a large amount of cash from bank to VUSB short-term treasuries that would not have been a drag in the prior years. 

 

The names that brought me down last year (-31% 2022) lifted me up with META a large position, BRK and GOOG doing well. China still gets me holding BYD but cut my losses at the tail end of this year in BABA and TECHY, and reduced my BYD by the same amount of gains. I still really love the core business of Tencent specifically and the BABA marketplace but the TAM of Chinese companies looking more and more like it will be limited in the rich Western countries.