Year-to-Date Portfolio Performance
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Since we are at about the half-way point through 2007, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on how my overall portfolio is doing. As a reminder, and a bit of an update, my portfolio consists of the following “accounts”. I look at my entire portfolio as a whole but in Microsoft Money, it is broken down into separate accounts for easier bookkeeping:
* Primary RRSP Account (Dividend Stocks)
* Non-RRSP Brokerage Account (Company Sponsored Plan with my Employer)
* RRSP Brokerage Account (Company Sponsored Plan with my Employer)
* Pension Plan Account (Company Sponsored Plan with my Employer)
* Non-RRSP Brokerage Account
* Small-Cap Account
As of today, July 20, 2007, the annualized return on my portfolio as a whole is 13% – not bad. However, it gets a bit ugly when I look at my year-to-date results – 3.2% which compared to the S&P 500′s return YTD at 11% I would say that I am getting slaughtered.
The culprit in my portfolio is the small-cap positions that I have taken this year. The companies I have chosen are down and out deep-contrarian plays that I believe will play out in the future but are giving me some short-term pain right now. I am down about 14% in this portfolio right now and that hurts – take this out and my year-to-date return jumps to around 6% which is better, but still not great. I beleive strongly in these companies and will be vindicated!!
The other thing hurting me is the rise of the Canadian dollar to close to par with the US dollar. As the Canadian dollar has been rising, my US holdings have declined in value because of the exchange rate. This I have no control over and can’t worry about it too much – only to anticipate that we will revert to the mean at one point and the Canadian dollar with decline in value, increasing the value of my US holdings. Time will tell.
I am not going to change my course of action at this time – I am still putting money away in my pension plan and investing regularly through my company sponsored plans, which I plan to funnel into more dividend stocks in the months to come. This is the way it goes sometimes – an investor needs to be patient and let the portfolio he / she has designed do its work. I beleive that mine will.
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Deborah said:
My portfolio did that in 2006 from January until I took over controlling it from a financial adviser a year ago this month, I guess down about 1.2% in the six months. I have no idea what the market did during that period because until I took over, I didn’t follow the market.
I got completely out of the US market last fall because I thought the US debt, both federal and sub prime, would hurt the dollar and I don’t think the hurting is over by long shot. I think the Canadian debt held our economy back for 15-20 years and kept our dollar weak and I think the US in going to be in for a rough time because of the debt. I even having a running debt clock for the US at the side of my blog.
July 20th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
