Category: Investment returns

October was a very positive month for equity returns.  I’ve just updated my portfolio returns page, and my invested portfolio rose in value by 4.0%.  This doesn’t recover the losses of the last two months, but it certainly retrieves some of the portfolio’s poise: my 12 month return stands at +6.7%.

The coloured grid below shows the relative performance by sector for each of the last few months.  You can see the equity markets are pretty correlated, but highly volatile; by contrast Fixed Income (and cash, obviously) are much more steady-as-she-goes.

Continue reading “My investment returns in October – the market’s yo-yo spins upwards” →

I’ve just totted up my invested portfolio’s returns in September. The bad news: I’m down 1.1%.  The good news: the markets I’m in fell 1.6% on a weighted average basis.

I’ve plotted below the returns of each of my major asset types (geography vs equity/fixed income) for September.  Equities fell by 2-3% in UK/International/Australia – though not in the USA.  Half my portfolio is UK Equities, where the market fell by almost 3% this month.  Fixed Income assets were generally up – a classic case of uncorrelated behaviour between equities and bonds – which helped my overall portfolio return significantly.  If I’d had purely passive exposure I’d have had the weighted average return of about -1.6% for the month.

Continue reading “My September 2015 returns – down, respectably” →

A quick post to say Well Done to weenie (@QuietlySaving) for her Monkey Stock challenge.

The idea is simple: each competitor enters a ‘monkey’ portfolio of five randomly-chosen (ish) stocks in the FTSE-350. This starts in September 2015, and the competition runs – I think – for 12 months, with the winner being the portfolio that is worth the most at the end.  The notional starting portfolio is £500, so we are talking five £100 holdings here.

My portfolio is called ‘the B team’ and comprises:

BA. BAe
BAB Babcock Intl
BABS Bluecrest Allblue
BAG AG Barr
BARC Barclays

I am thrilled to say that I was first out of the blocks, I am currently number two in the ginormous leaderboard, and to cap it all I am currently, with two enormous weeks behind us, the leading ‘real money’ contestant.  Words fail me.

Fingers crossed for the next eleven-and-a-half months…