Category: Investment returns

I’ve just posted by monthly returns for November.

The market, weighted according to my allocation, was up about 1.2% in the month.  I was up a bit more than that, which I don’t attribute to anything except luck. My 12 month returns are around 6%.  This is no Warren Buffet performance, but is not too shabby either considering the pummelling equities got in the summer.

Points I find noteworthy for November:

• The Australian market fall, unlike its international peers.  Equities were down about 1%, and fixed income about 0.5%.
• Bond bears can weep.  Again. Uk corporate bonds rose 2.7%.  In a month.
• UK/US equities were up ~1%.  This leaves US equities recovered from the summer dips, UK equities slightly behind, and other markets slightly down too.

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” →