Cory Diary : Astronomical Returns

I have been seeing astronomical returns from some forum recently. It easily get people attention. That's what it does. But what's matter at the end of the day is how much you truly made at specific time frame. Why I say that is because market goes up and down. And relative performance measures need to account for time frame with reasonable period length to allow for stability.

STI Index

STI with Dividends from 2009-2016 = 9% annual returns after cost.

Let's take a peak of some period after global financial crisis (GFC) based on STI. Since is reasonable not to choose the bottom. At a height of STI 1900 on May 2009 will be something i am comfortable with. The current STI Index is at 2800. The XIRR ( Annualised returns ) excluding dividends are 5.3%. If we are to include dividends that will be like 8~9%. That's like 7 years after GFC.

Percentage can be quite misleading as it is open to abuse with time, value weight-age and cost structure. There is also price spread which can cause a large dent and trustworthiness. So to ball park a figure, if we are to put $100,000 into a fund 7 years ago just using 5.3% annual return figure, your value should be around $147,000 excluding "dividends", and we are taking the lowered STI price of today. Meaning 47% profit is the Minimum Expectation.

Hello ! you have to have 47% profit at that specific time frame because that is what all investors should have as a baseline. And I have even excludes dividends. So are you getting this amount in total else is time you question your judgement.

Cory

20161016

Cory Diary : XIRR Performance - Q3 2016

The Market comes down a little on the last day of Sept. For the past few quarters I have been enjoying the bliss of cutting loss quicker and holding bull stocks longer. This is a rather fundamental change in my mental decision which takes a long time to overcome but necessary. So far, overall I have been right.

Some of my actions I took is to clear LKH to focus on my portfolio better. I bought it this year in the hope there maybe some run up on property. It didn't. A little gain from a small speculative position. Applied for SGS Bond last month due to significant excess cash in the bank and to build up additional buffer on my loan.

The drop in DOW on days before Fed announcement on rates help to push for no rate increase this time.The decision would have been otherwise has the market hit new highs. Is becoming clearer and clearer that they work on market sentiments to avoid crash as is all about market confidence.

Enough said. This time i have compiled previous quarter for comparison. Do note I do not close exactly my performance result for each quarter on the last day except this quarter which happens to be so.

Not much has change except for YTD on Equity. Is not a surprise this measure will decrease with longer time in the year. This is why using performance based on 30 Dec'16 comes into play. I have a slight up in Q3'16. Both XIRR performance will converge on 30 Dec'16. Personally I am quite happy to hit 10% on my enlarged equity portfolio which beats many funds outright.

Outlook to watch

1. Oil Price
2. SG Property Measures
3. China and Indonesia Debts
4. SG Telco Markets
5. Trump Presidential Campaign
6. RMB Weakening

I have also started taking some TA learning and Charting practise to time my entry and exit better on stocks I hope to invest or divest.


Cory
20161002

Cory Diary : Calculating Return in Equity - Part 2

In this continuation of calculating equity return, let's simulate a scenario that on certain years we have very good returns. And we feel rich that during that periods, mentally we think we can afford to lose. This can be at portfolio level or Individual Stock that we have grown to love.

As the table above, I picked year 2009 and 2012 where Cory has strong gains and have them tweaked about 50% lower returns as we are less careful with money and that we have fallen into a tunnel vision of justifying more risk on just one or two stocks which have been been a key lifter of the entire portfolio.

This is not unrealistic. Is quite common we see at portfolio level we are doing well just because of a few of them or maybe even just one counter. And if that one is soured later on, we like to know the impact.

From the table we can see Annualised returns reduced to 4.2%. And for the above example is a $61, 000 hits on return of $100, 000 investment. Do remember return on such over 10 years compounded is quite significant even for just 1% point.

The next time you feel a particular stock has gained 100% return for you that you can afford to lose them back since at counter level you will not lose, better think again.


Have a nice day.

Cory
20160918