Portfolio return for April 2006
April 2006 has been another good month. My portfolio of 70% equity / 30% fixed income returned 1.92%. Overall, the portfolio YTD return is 8.81%. What’s particularly strong this month included EAFE large-cap, EAFE small-cap, emerging markets and precious metals / resources equity.
Stumble it!
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:31 pm
Hi, I would like to benchmark my portfolio…
What benchmark do you use? How to construct the benchmark? Any online resource?
Thanks.
May 4th, 2006 at 10:08 am
choozm,
My portfolio allocation is 70/30 (70% equity, 30% fixed income). I wanted a benchmark whose performance can be computed easily and also has a broad diversification over the whole market. I think Vanguard’s LifeStrategy funds would be appropriate.
However, there is no LifeStrategy fund that has a target of 70/30. So I used a 50:50 spliced version of the following two funds:
Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund (target 60/40, currently 70/30)
Vanguard LifeStrategy Growth Fund (target 80/20, currently 90/10)
A combination of these two funds have a target of 70/30 (although their allocation is currently closer to 80/20). I also mentioned these two funds in the “Portfolio return for March 2006″ post.
May 7th, 2006 at 4:16 am
good work
July 3rd, 2006 at 8:12 am
indexfundfan,
Just a thought… You can use the benchmark of the LifeStrategy Funds as your benchmark. Their stock-bond ratio is fixed and not variable as the Fund itself. But only Year-End Average return is available, e.g. The benchmark return for LifeStrategy Growth Fund (80/20) is http://tinyurl.com/zmx2v . Its benchmark is 65% MSCI US Broad Market Index, 20% Lehman Aggregate Bond Index, and 15% MSCI EAFE Index. Very heavy in US.
I may just use both the fund and its benchmark as my benchmark.
July 4th, 2006 at 9:23 am
choozm,
Does the benchmark include re-invested dividends? I chose the fund version because it is very easy for me to look up the total returns (CG + Dividends) from the Vanguard website. In addition, I can check the returns monthly.
July 4th, 2006 at 7:45 pm
indexfundfan,
oh, yes, I didn’t take notice of the dividends.
From the bottom of the page where you get the monthly data, there is a chart for comparing the LS fund with several benchmarks. Below the chart says : “Figures include reinvestment of dividends and capital gains… ” I wonder if it means the benchmarks also reinvest the dividends.
May be folks at Diehards.org or Vanguard can help to answer this? I have emailed Vanguard this question. By the way, I think a quarterly results is enough for me.. lazy to track monthly
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