Portfolio return for September 2008
It seems like nowadays the monthly reports are chasing after me. Before I know it, it is already near the end of the month and I haven’t yet updated the monthly report. Anyway, here goes the report for September … (the report for October looks to be much WORSE, but that is for the next update).
My portfolio lost 8.52% in September 2008, bringing the year-to-date (YTD) return to a loss of 14.54%. This makes it into another worst year to date (YTD) return record 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 -16.45%.
Individual Asset Classes
As we can see from the chart below, the worst performance came from VGPMX/PME (Precious Metals and Mining equity). This fund posted a loss of about 24% for the month. The rest of the equity asset classes also had substantial losses, ranging from 6% to 16%; only US REITs escaped relatively unscarthed, with a loss of less than 2%.
Portfolio Movements
Sold fixed income and bought international equities (INT EAFE LargeCap and Emerging Markets equity) as well as VGPMX / PME. I was also kept busy with tax loss harvesting.
The allocation, as of the end of September, is shown below:
Stumble it!
