What a miserable month. Or so you’d think from all the media commentary post the Brexit referendum. But was it so bad, for those of us measuring results in pounds, actually?
Clearly the big event was the UK deciding to leave the EU. Or rather, deciding that it doesn’t want to stay in the EU under the current arrangements. Politically the UK has descended into ultrashambles. But FTSE is approaching its all-time peak, closing June above 6500, and S&P was almost exactly flat.
What else happened in June? Who cares… or that’s what I feel like as the Brexit vote ramifications sink in. We won’t forget June 2016 in a hurry, football fans or not.
Against this backdrop, my portfolio returned a tasty 5.1%. In pounds sterling, of course. A private banker said to me this week that ‘if you’re up post referendum you’re doing better than almost all my clients’. Which isn’t a shiny advertisement for that private banker. In fact, and as The Escape Artist has reminded us, if you have a globally diversified portfolio, and the currency you are measuring it in drops by almost 10%, then you’re going to look pretty good – in that currency at least.
Bizarrely the key equity and bond markets were all up in June, except Australian equities (where a nail-biting general election takes place today). In such a market having my modest level of gearing should juice my returns – as indeed it has.
Such a strong performance in one month has noticeably improved my ‘since inception figure, which is now back well above 10%. The metric that I regard as the most important of the lot however, the Sharpe ratio, is also up – which is something I’d be proud of if I wasn’t attributing this performance to good fortune.
FIRE v London 
Updated – to correct an omission from my book-keeping update – my June number was now just over 5%. A silver lining on Brexit’s cloud.
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Hello FIREVLONDON,
could you share your excel sheet you use to track your porfolio performance ?
Thanks in advance
Lean
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I use my own one to keep track of my holdings. I copy/paste from my broking/banking/etc online systems to update them. I manually apply any deposits/withdrawals, and then calculate the ‘unit return’ (which basically strips out any deposits/withdrawals). This is then plugged in to one of the BogleHeads excel sheets here. Check out: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Calculating_personal_returns . Which sheet are you interested in?
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Thanks for answering.
I`m trying to track my performance in a simple manner.
I would like to send you my excel sheet so that you can check if iI’m doing ok, but I can’t attach the file in this message.
Lean
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Lean
I’d be happy to have a look.
Can you email it to mail at firevlondon.com?
FvL
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Helllo FvL,
this is my “invention”. I’ll agree your feedback.
Good week.
Lean
2016-11-06 11:56 GMT+01:00 FIRE v London :
> FIRE v London commented: “Lean I’d be happy to have a look. Can you email > it to mail at firevlondon.com? FvL” >
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Leandro : you will need to email it. I can’t put an actual email address here but it is mai, then @, then firevlondon.com
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