Investing megathread extravaganza

[DaFace]

A place to talk about investing stuff.

[Infidel Goat]

Originally Posted by lewdog

Anyone brave enough to share their YTD gains in their investing accounts (brokerage, 401k, IRA)? Any traders beat the index?

I beat the total market in 2021 but I'm hardly an active trader.

For the last thirty years, I've primarily held 100% of my Roth IRA and (for the last fifteen years) 403b in a total market index (FSKAX most recently). I'm the guy who ties the index most years.

I beat the market because I moved about half of my Roth IRA portfolio into FSRBX (Fidelity Select Banking Portfolio) in the middle of August 2020.

It was definitely a market timing move that I wouldn't usually engage in but the overall market had already snapped back from the pandemic and the banking sector hadn't yet. FSRBX did bounce back shortly after I bought it and so it was a little bit like getting the market bounce back X2 in 2020. Huzzah for me. FSRBX also had a better year than FSKAX in 2021, so I'm up against the total market index again this year.

I know that I'm overexposed in the banking sector right now, so I'd like to get back close to 100% FSKAX by the end of 2022. Short term, though, I'm still a little bullish on FSRBX because it's one of the industries most likely to benefit from higher interest rates.

Long term, I also have to decide when I want to move away from 100% equities in my retirement accounts. I passed 50 recently and will likely work at least another 10-15 years, so I'd have time to invest further and recover if the market tanked in the short term. I'm obviously still pretty aggressive with my retirement accounts right now, though.

[DRU]

Are you guys pulling that info off a statement? Is it excluding the contributions you made from the return you're seeing, or is it just giving you the return based on the starting and ending balance of the account in general?

If it excludes the contributions, does it then adjust the returns shown accordingly? If you remove the contributions but leave the gain, and then calculate that against the starting balance, that would look like a higher return.

Any of you using TD Ameritrade and can point me to a statement that includes this detail? All I'm seeing are monthly's. Until they start issuing tax forms I'm not sure how I'd calculate this precisely..??

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by DRU

Are you guys pulling that info off a statement? Is it excluding the contributions you made from the return you're seeing, or is it just giving you the return based on the starting and ending balance of the account in general?

If it excludes the contributions, does it then adjust the returns shown accordingly? If you remove the contributions but leave the gain, and then calculate that against the starting balance, that would look like a higher return.

Any of you using TD Ameritrade and can point me to a statement that includes this detail? All I'm seeing are monthly's. Until they start issuing tax forms I'm not sure how I'd calculate this precisely..??

Not sure about TD Ameritrade, but with Schwab it's under "portfolio performance." You pick your time frame, and it shows a return percent.

[Peter Gibbons]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Not sure about TD Ameritrade, but with Schwab it's under "portfolio performance." You pick your time frame, and it shows a return percent.

Similar answer for E*trade and Fidelity as well. You should be able to see your funds performance easily with any of the online tools (if you can just find the right screen/link).

[petegz28]

Originally Posted by lewdog

Trading account 12.3% gain.

ROTH IRA, which is invested in actively managed mutual funds with T Rowe Price, most in growth and healthcare funds, 16.07% gain.

401k invested in Vanguard index funds, 23.05% gain.


Seems to follow the trends that most noticed this year....the indexes were king. Trading was hard as the market was very choppy most of the year. I know a guy who has been a professional trader for a decade and he noted 2021 as his hardest year yet. He had a 16% gain and that’s his full time job.

Taxable investment account:17.09%

Roth IRA: 24.38%

Rollover IRA: 16.67%

403b investment: 15.89%

403b Employer match: 11.1%

[Zebedee DuBois]

Im sure my brokerage report would give me the same info, but I make a spreadsheet containing all of our investments (mostly tax-deferred) on one page and make a presentation to the household CEO (wife)(i'm the CFO), and that is where I calculate my overall investment performance. I also make an annual income/expense report showing cashflow.

I retired at age 60 and now realize I could have done it a few years earlier. As much as I was planning - I just had a hard time visualizing cashflow without working. It probably took the first year of retirement to realize I didn't need to worry about it anymore.

[rydogg58]

Originally Posted by DRU

Are you guys pulling that info off a statement? Is it excluding the contributions you made from the return you're seeing, or is it just giving you the return based on the starting and ending balance of the account in general?

If it excludes the contributions, does it then adjust the returns shown accordingly? If you remove the contributions but leave the gain, and then calculate that against the starting balance, that would look like a higher return.

Any of you using TD Ameritrade and can point me to a statement that includes this detail? All I'm seeing are monthly's. Until they start issuing tax forms I'm not sure how I'd calculate this precisely..??

I use TD Ameritrade. You can check under Cost Basis, and then put the date range however you want it and it will give you the gains for that time period.

[rydogg58]

I didn't beat the index on my individual trading accounts. Ended up 2.89% in the green on one, and 1.72% in the other one.

401k was nails. 28.7% gain. Granted, it's all index funds and one fund made up up of bonds. Pretty happy with it, but it seems that most people that were heavy index funds made it back pretty good in 2021 after the covid beating of 2020.

I opened a Vanguard account late spring/early summer also. Up 23% in it. Also, all index funds and one target date fund.

I started focusing more on crypto this past October, it's been a mixed bag so far. Up a few thousand, down a few thousand. Overall, I don't think I'm up any more than maybe 10%.

Overall, it was a good year. I learned a lot, and made a little.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by lewdog

That's an awesome breakdown. Pretty good return this year for an account with individual stocks. Nice job.

Do you have accounts where you just own mutual or index funds?

I don't have a lot of money in funds, so they're just in the mix. However, they tend to not be at the top or the bottom of the returns each year compared to my individual stocks, obviously.

Originally Posted by scho63

Really nice diversification and well managed portfolio.

The only small bit of advice is to never left a stock loss exceed 25-30%. Once you start hitting the 40-50% or more level, the stock has to double just to break even.

There are other strategies for hedging to protect your downside when a stock rolls over.

That's it. Overall you did very well and congratulations.

Yeah, there's a story behind each loss, though the bottom line is that they're losses. Some of the bigger losses are stocks that I like, and they just pulled back from big gains. Others have been on a slow bleed for a while and I'm divesting over time. Generally I like the stocks that I buy so I tend to buy and hold, but obviously that doesn't always work.

The main experiment I'm doing these days is chasing momentum. If I buy a new stock, I buy a very small amount of it, and then I only buy more if two things happen: it's up for me overall, and it's having a down day. Then I buy more. If I buy it and it loses money, I don't buy any more and may sell it off. For a long time I thought that if I liked a stock and it was going down, I should keep buying. That's nice for dollar-cost averaging if it goes back up, but it often didn't go back up. So I'm eschewing "value" and buying on momentum these days.

I'm kind of surprised that I seem to have done better than most this year. I figured people would ridicule me for trailing the S&P by 10 percentage points this year. I can't figure out who out there is beating the market when all of our different strategies didn't come close to it.

For that matter, I've looked to see in the past what stocks have led to the S&P results, and the math should be easier. But I can never pinpoint why I don't meet or beat the market in most years. I think it's more concentrations of stocks rather than picking winners.

One challenge in chasing momentum, though, is that a couple of my brokerages don't give me YTD returns, which annoys me. I have to look them up one by one. I also have a limit on the amount of any one stock I'll buy. If I go over that amount, that means the stock is doing well, so I just leave it alone. For reasons like that, I didn't even know that AMZN was only up 4 percent this year. It was over my limit so I was just leaving it be.

[DRU]

Originally Posted by rydogg58

I use TD Ameritrade. You can check under Cost Basis, and then put the date range however you want it and it will give you the gains for that time period.

When I'm viewing the Cost Basis the only tab that lets me set a date range is the Realized Gain/Loss tab. In the example of my Roth IRA, that only shows the realized gains from selling shares to rebalance.

The Unrealized Gain/Loss tab doesn't have a date range, and simply shows me my entire unrealized holdings, so I can't tell how much it grew in 2021 alone.

There is also a tab labeled Gain/Loss Reports, but again that only gives me the realized gain/loss.

My Roth 401k doesn't have any realized gains, so all I can do there is choose unrealized, but again, no date range available there. Just shows the entire account history.

Do you see something different in yours that I'm overlooking?

[rydogg58]

Originally Posted by DRU

When I'm viewing the Cost Basis the only tab that lets me set a date range is the Realized Gain/Loss tab. In the example of my Roth IRA, that only shows the realized gains from selling shares to rebalance.

The Unrealized Gain/Loss tab doesn't have a date range, and simply shows me my entire unrealized holdings, so I can't tell how much it grew in 2021 alone.

There is also a tab labeled Gain/Loss Reports, but again that only gives me the realized gain/loss.

My Roth 401k doesn't have any realized gains, so all I can do there is choose unrealized, but again, no date range available there. Just shows the entire account history.

Do you see something different in yours that I'm overlooking?

No, you are correct. I can't find another way that will show your gains unless they are realized. I guess maybe go through the monthly statements and figure it up from there? I'm not really sure what you would do.

[ChiliConCarnage]

I put my annual IRA contribution in yesterday morning. Had half go to Target date fund, the other half into money market for now.

I'll have to figure out my prior year performance at some point. Enjoying those posts. I don't think any beat the S&P, it was a beast last year. Even the NASDAQ didn't keep pace

[lewdog]

Is AMC a buy on this Green Day?!?!?!

[BigBeauford]

Prices for used cars are soaring so high, so fast, that buyers are being increasingly priced out of the market. https://t.co/HasWMSgt9e

— ABC News (@ABC) January 4, 2022

[Tylerthigpen!1!]

Originally Posted by scho63

Really nice diversification and well managed portfolio.

The only small bit of advice is to never left a stock loss exceed 25-30%. Once you start hitting the 40-50% or more level, the stock has to double just to break even.

There are other strategies for hedging to protect your downside when a stock rolls over.

That's it. Overall you did very well and congratulations.

This would be a good opportunity to take advantage of tax loss harvesting right?