indexfundfan @ indextown

My portfolio lost 2.06% in July 2008, bringing the year-to-date (YTD) return to a loss of 4.92%. This makes it the worst year to date (YTD) return my portfolio has ever experienced since I started tracking monthly performances in Jan 2004.

The YTD return of the benchmark, a 50:50 split between the Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth fund and the Vanguard LifeStrategy Gowth fund, is -9.65%.

Individual Asset Classes

As we can see from the chart below, the worst performance came from PME. Vanguard’s Precious Metals and Mining fund post a loss of 18% in July. Foreign equity (VEA, VWO and VINEX) also did poorly, losing between 3% to 6%. What worked in July are US SmallCaps and US REITs. These did relatively well in an otherwise dismal month. They gained between 2% to 4%.

Portfolio Movements

Sold US REITs. Added to PME, and foreign equity, including VEA, VWO and GWX.

The allocation, as of the end of July, is shown below:

Reference: Madsinger’s monthly report.

Random list of previous posts:

• October 26, 2006 -- A closer look at Powershare’s Listed Private Equity ETF (1)
• March 17, 2008 -- The Risk of Individual Stocks (3)
• August 16, 2007 -- Rebalancing in market turmoil (0)
• April 23, 2006 -- Resource for withdrawal strategies (0)
• August 17, 2006 -- For the American Pessimists (1)

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Investing, My Portfolio, Portfolio Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.