Comments on: Flexo’s Investment Portfolio, 4Q 2009

By: Austin

Austin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:02:42 +0000

Like some of the commenters above, I was lucky this year as well investing in the Vanguard Total Stock Market index fund in February, May, and July with my Roth.

I’m kind of stuck with my next move though. I want to do taxable investing, but nothing looks really appealing right now while everything is sky rocketing.

I guess I’ll have to test the patience for a while and see if anything drastic happens.

By: Dubary Brea

Dubary Brea — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:04:30 +0000

I am going to do almost the exact same thing with my Roth IRA with Vanguard. I have about 1100 in the Star Fund and am waiting to accumulate to move it over to the Target 2050 retirement fund.

By: Financial Samurai

Financial Samurai — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:42:30 +0000

Flexo – Love how you divided the spreadsheet into non-retirement, and retirement. It’s the right way to go… you can almost categorize it as “play money” “serious money.”

Nice spreadsheet!

By: JT

JT — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:10:23 +0000

“…lower than their actual worth”

Boy is that comment going to come back to bite you in the butt this year.

Congrats Flexo on your market timing! However, I do have a question for you — were you smart enough to get out in 2008 before the big drop? For you and anyone else who missed that sign I’d argue you should all be pretty nervous right about now. The rally has all but come to an end, and if you couldn’t see the big drop the first time, what makes you think you’ll see it this time?

Food for thought.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:54:34 +0000

I have a similar story to yours, except mine is more luck than skill. I opened my Roth IRA this year at Vanguard, with $1000 in the STAR fund. I put $1000 more in February, and at the beginning of March, my $2000 had fallen to $1800. I decided, since I eventually wanted to get into the Total Stock Fund, to put $1200 in, to boost the total to $3000 and move it over. I ended up with an XIRR of over 60%, with a gross return of 43%.

By: Flexo

Flexo — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:28:41 +0000

The Average Annual Rate of Return is Quicken’s version of Excel’s XIRR function in that they take the timing of cash flows into account. So the AARR is *not* simply the increase in value of the account expressed as a percentage of last year’s value. And for this chart I used the full year AARR not just the 4Q for a fairer comparison with the S&P benchmark (not that that really matters).

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:07:16 +0000

Newbie here, please help me out. I get that your YTD AARR is just your (4th qtr ’09 – 4th qtr ’08)/(4th qtr ’08). But, how does that handle monthly contributions to your 401k? I’m assuming you are still contributing to some of these accounts? I haven’t found a good way to account for that, which forces me to keep excel spreadsheets and calculate xirr. How are you handling this in your spreadsheet above?

By: Evan

Evan — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:00:53 +0000

Flexo,

Have you ever used morningstar to take a free xray of your holdings?

http://www.myjourneytomillions.com/articles/using-morningstars-free-instant-x-ray-tool-to-evaluate-your-portfolio/

It may provide for an interesting insight before you start to reallocate.

By: KC

KC — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:55:11 +0000

It looks like I wasn’t the only one in March who thought “Can things get much worse in the stock market?” I invested pretty heavily in March through June cause healthy companies were just way to low – lower than their actual worth.