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Put your mouth where your money is!

Stocks and Shares ISA , Choosing funds for ISA's, risk factors for funds etc
Investment strategy discussions not dealt with elsewhere.
hiriskpaul
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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#332901

Postby hiriskpaul » August 13th, 2020, 1:23 pm

If anyone wants to follow my equity investment strategy, just look at a global index as that is a reasonable benchmark. Not perfect as I overweight a few strategies, some performing well, others less so, but a global index is close enough. I think it totally reasonable to say the returns from a global index are free of hindsight bias as well. Global indexes are usually priced in dollars though and there is usually some drag involved with index trackers, so for real life TR tracking in pounds, I would suggest looking the iShares accumulating ETF SWDA (ISIN IE00B4L5Y983). It has a 10 year CAGR of about 12.2%. SWDA does not include emerging markets though, which currently makes up about 10% of the global market. Vanguard's VWRL does include emerging markets, but is not an accumulating ETF and reports performance in dollars. VWRL has only been going 8 years, but tracks its benchmark very closely. Vanguard provide a 10 year TR to the end of July for the benchmark of 133%. The pound has dropped from $1.5685 to $1.3085 during that period, giving a GBP equivalent TR of about 10.8% pa.

I cannot easily provide return figures for my other strategies as I don't track formally them. I am not prepared to go digging into old records to try and create some kind of TR figures. These figures would be unlikely to be of any value to anyone anyone as the risks I have taken to achieve them would need to be taken into consideration.

GS makes a very good point about strategies evolving. My opportunistic/derivatives trading portfolio has changed considerably over the last 10 years. For example, I used to trade FX options a great deal, but have not done that for 5 years. Fixed income investing is I think very likely to change from now on as well. I no longer invest in long duration government bonds. The coronavirus has flattened what remained of the yield curves, accelerating returns to the extent that I no longer consider the assset class worth the risk and have sold my US Treasuries ETFs. Substantial future returns are not impossible, but I consider it far more likely they will be mediocre from now on. Short duration still has its place as a portfolio stabiliser and foreign currency diversifier, but again returns are likely to be poor. For high yield I am seeing fewer and fewer worthwhile investment opportunities and question whether I should continue to hold on to some of my existing positions. Many HY bank securities have been and are increasingly being called/redeemed. Their replacements are difficult to access by retail investors and even if that was not the case, I don't like the risks associated with them (some are more risky than holding the ords IMHO). Coronavirus may throw up some more HY opportunities in the next year or so. If not, I will need a rethink. Perhaps increasing my equity allocation.

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#332905

Postby Urbandreamer » August 13th, 2020, 1:35 pm

Itsallaguess wrote:In the interests of trying to find some common ground in this really interesting and useful thread, would it be fair to suggest the following -

1. Income investors might have a better 'road-map' for their general strategies, to help investors from a standing-start, but whilst the destination of that road map might well be 'acceptable' to many income-investors, the overall returns from it might well not be 'optimal' in terms of long-term performance that might be improved using other approaches.

2. Total-return investors might generally end up with more 'optimal long-term performance' in taking such an approach to their own investment strategies, but there is generally little in the way of 'road-maps' available to help investors take such an approach from a standing-start.

I'll also take this opportunity to say that I've found all the well-intended contributions very interesting, and whilst CP might not find that his initial intentions for the thread will get completely fulfilled, I think it's still great to be able to discuss this particular area in more general terms and with a wider remit like this, rather than persistently concentrating on those dreaded three little letters...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess


Thanks Itallaguess, and can I take this moment to agree with you about the nature of most of the posts on this thread.

I haven't attempted to quantify my methodology and the thread is really makeing me think about things that I could do better.

Here are a few things that I do know about my portfolio.
I started speculating in 1991 and eventually decided to stop and start investing.
I use to follow HYP methodology until about 2010.
About 2014 I unitised and started keeping better records.

What's the data?
Well my XIRR since Jan 2014 is 5.92%. It was significantly heigher before recent events (I remember it about 9-10%).
The predicted yield is 3.45%, though in the past 12 months I have recieved 3.02%. Again this was higher before recent events.
I don't have most of my details to hand, but 2019 was a great year for me too. However I work April to April. My portfolio currently is running at about what it was in April 2019! A year and a half of no growth (or negative remembering that dividends are reinvested) will dent a 6 year record.

I'm not yet retired so buy something every month. I sell far too seldom. Recently I have sold some assets that were performing poorly and that I judged had a poor outlook.
I don't currently keep an investment diary, but need to start.
I use HYPTUSS to help when I feel a need to top up my income assets. However I'm really looking for TR, with a modicum of income.
Another spreadsheet helps calculate XIRR.

When I retire I expect that my portfolio must produce an income for 40 years. That may be an issue with any buy and hold approach. Average company lifespan of S&P companies is now 18 years.
https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/ ... companies/
This, coupled with concerns about how I might age, are the reason that I'm buying less indivdual companies and more managed collective investments.
Currently they are 54% of the portfolio.

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#332909

Postby hiriskpaul » August 13th, 2020, 1:45 pm

Itsallaguess wrote:
dealtn wrote:
I think a partial failure in the logic here is referring to it as a "TR approach". Maybe it isn't what you mean but that suggests to me a single alternative. It very much isn't. Even within my investing style there are a number of different ways I am investing. Either I have multiple strategies, or my single strategy is very broad. In fact it is my firm belief that every strategy is a TR one.


In the interests of trying to find some common ground in this really interesting and useful thread, would it be fair to suggest the following -

1. Income investors might have a better 'road-map' for their general strategies, to help investors from a standing-start, but whilst the destination of that road map might well be 'acceptable' to many income-investors, the overall returns from it might well not be 'optimal' in terms of long-term performance that might be improved using other approaches.

2. Total-return investors might generally end up with more 'optimal long-term performance' in taking such an approach to their own investment strategies, but there is generally little in the way of 'road-maps' available to help investors take such an approach from a standing-start.

I'll also take this opportunity to say that I've found all the well-intended contributions very interesting, and whilst CP might not find that his initial intentions for the thread will get completely fulfilled, I think it's still great to be able to discuss this particular area in more general terms and with a wider remit like this, rather than persistently concentrating on those dreaded three little letters...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

I would say that any worthwhile discussion/analysis needs to include risk. Something that seems oddly absent in many threads. Just one example, I could put all our investments into global equity index trackers and simply draw it down each year. That would very likely provide us with sufficient income for the rest of our days, but I am not prepared to take the risk that the portfolio will halve in value and stay that way for a decade. There are those who say this will never happen, mainly because they have never witnessed it, with many of the big drawdowns over the last 40 or so years being reversed in at worst a few years. But it has happened before and could easily happen again.

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#332922

Postby GoSeigen » August 13th, 2020, 2:16 pm

hiriskpaul wrote:GS makes a very good point about strategies evolving. My opportunistic/derivatives trading portfolio has changed considerably over the last 10 years. For example, I used to trade FX options a great deal, but have not done that for 5 years. Fixed income investing is I think very likely to change from now on as well. I no longer invest in long duration government bonds. The coronavirus has flattened what remained of the yield curves, accelerating returns to the extent that I no longer consider the assset class worth the risk and have sold my US Treasuries ETFs. Substantial future returns are not impossible, but I consider it far more likely they will be mediocre from now on. Short duration still has its place as a portfolio stabiliser and foreign currency diversifier, but again returns are likely to be poor. For high yield I am seeing fewer and fewer worthwhile investment opportunities and question whether I should continue to hold on to some of my existing positions. Many HY bank securities have been and are increasingly being called/redeemed. Their replacements are difficult to access by retail investors and even if that was not the case, I don't like the risks associated with them (some are more risky than holding the ords IMHO). Coronavirus may throw up some more HY opportunities in the next year or so. If not, I will need a rethink. Perhaps increasing my equity allocation.


And the above are all excellent examples of what I meant. Like hiriskpaul, around 11 years ago practically my entire portfolio was invested in gilts, fixed-interest corporate issues and cash. If you'd asked me then, I would have strongly defended that allocation. Today I have not a single gilt, very little cash, a practically leveraged position in shares with some very risky fixed-interest, precious metals/mining stocks, and a commercial property thrown in. How can a single coherent strategy encompass that sort of pivoting?

My underlying approach is to look at inflation trends, the yield curve, and demographic or similar secular cycles for my allocation decisions, but not everyone is interested in that sort of thing! OTOH, most investors should be able to find a focus and passion, while remaining flexible enough to evolve what they're doing, and humble enough to realise they may have it wrong (i.e. to hedge/diversify).

GS

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#332928

Postby dealtn » August 13th, 2020, 2:44 pm

Arborbridge wrote:
dealtn wrote:I think a partial failure in the logic here is referring to it as a "TR approach". Maybe it isn't what you mean but that suggests to me a single alternative.


I take the point. However, some of us have become used to people proclaiming that TR is all that counts with the sort of religious zeal which they accuse HYPers of having. So when we ask for evidence of their success, the fact that the response evaporates into words and not concrete results based on experience is not very convincing.

Well, the OP set up the opportunity, but it hasn't been taken up so far. As a general observation, in my view, investors other than HYPers seem to have difficulty showing the benefit of whatever technique they are promoting or using, except in hindsight occasionally. Maybe this is because having a theoretical idea and acting on it over a decade or so are different things. I can say from my own experience that I ran many interesting "dummy" portfolios based on various ideas, but whenever they were tried with real cash, they never quite worked as well as hindsight would suggest.


Arb.


Well I have already expressed how difficult this will be, but in the spirit of the thread I can try and provide something. Now the portfolios I manage are over a number of "labels" (for want of a better word). The smallest, and most recent, two of these are "wife's pension" (WP) and "daughter's pension" (DP). Of course I will be open to the accusation of "selection bias" if I only detail these, but so be it. Nothing I can do about that and frankly I am not going to do the work on the others. It will be better than nothing, and lesson the accusation (not necessarily directed at me) of "words but no numbers" (to paraphrase).

I don't have access to the selling dates on this PC, but can find them (if that is really important to anyone!)

WP

GSK bought April 2014 @ 1537, sold @ 1718, FTSE was 6561/7155 (12% rise vs 9% rise). Dividends received 30% of investment.
WEIR bought August 2015 @ 1264, sold @1852, FTSE was 6000/7010 (46% rise vs 17% rise). Dividends received 5% of investment.
WEIR bought August 2015 @ 1264, now @1370, FTSE was 6000/6207 (8% rise vs 3% rise). Dividends received 15% of investment.
NXR bought December 2016 @ 174, now @ 151, FTSE was 6959/6207 (14% fall vs 11% fall). Dividends received 14% of investment.
FLO bought December 2016 @ 124, now @ 70, FTSE was 6959/6207 (47% fall vs 11% fall). Dividends received 14% of investment.
IGR bought December 2016 @ 262, now @ 510, FTSE was 7020/6207 (95% rise vs 12% fall). Dividends received 8% of investment.
GATC bought December 2016 @ 283, now 55, FTSE was 7040/6207 (91% fall vs 12% fall). Dividends received 9% of investment.
IMB bought October 2019 @ 1850, sold 1329, FTSE was 7155/5002 (28% fall vs 30% fall). Dividends received 8% of investment.
WEIR bought March 2020 @ 1123, now @1370, FTSE was 6020/6207 (22% rise vs 3% rise). Dividends received 0% of investment.

Now they aren't equal weighted, nor does it account for the cash position (so how much was invested vs cash as a %) when comparing to the FTSE Index, nor does the FTSE index include dividends, so there will be legitimate criticisms of the accuracy. Generally though the portfolio has outperformed.

A few interesting points that stand out to me as I have typed and rediscovered this data are I run winners and losers. I am clearly a stubborn bugger, and can see I have sold on more than one occasion when the capital gain has only just exceeded the index. I recognise the situation where I am sure I have been offside on a share and maybe held on to something that I no longer liked, but managed to find an opportunity where it relatively outperformed enough in the short term to get onside before I pulled the trigger on the sale. I managed to sell 1 share at almost the exact market low in the pandemic!

I will have notes (somewhere?) on why I bought the shares, what I was hoping for, how long I had tracked them before purchase etc. so can possibly add flavour on any particular investment should that appeal (but again I can't prove it true, or escape from accusations of hindsight bias in what I type).

So warts and all and admissions of "failures" as well as "successes". With time and encouragement I will do the same for DP.

I won't be doing this for the full portfolio, nor expect to continue an explicit "commentary" going forward.

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#332941

Postby Lootman » August 13th, 2020, 3:37 pm

Arborbridge wrote:Many fine words and theoretical musings, but the OP's point remains: there are very few people - if any - who come forward with figures showing that their method works or does not work. Nothing equivalent to the decade long reporting or longer of HYPers that we can read.

It seems to me that the TR approach is very well supported from a convincing theoretical POV, but where is the proof of the pudding? Where are the people coming forward to say this is what success look like and I've been funding my retirment in such a way for twenty years? This is what I did and these are the results.... where are the carefully kept records?

One reason for this might simply be that the kind of people who are attracted to HYP are the kind of people who like to build spreadsheets and keep track. HYP is very much about the numbers and the method was promoted by an accountant. So it feels natural for HYP'ers to invest a lot of time in recording and analysing their numbers.

It always impresses me how detailed these records can be. TJH might be the epitome of that as he seems able to recall trades from 30 or 40 years ago with (presumably) total accuracy. Then there are large arrays of data from Gengulphus, IanHughes and several others. It seems to be what HYP'ers like to do. HYP can be seen as a left-brained method followed by left-brained people. Those of us who invest qualitatively or intuitively rely less on numbers and more on non-numeric factors.

So in my case, with six different strategies across four different dealing accounts, it would be a herculean task to document my portfolios and returns in that way. And I don't see any real benefit in doing so. The most I do is check the growth of the accounts against the growth of a global index to ensure that my numbers are in the right ballpark. The process of preparing my annual tax return is also useful in seeing how things change from year to year, although of course that doesn't apply to ISAs and pension accounts. So my response to this would be similar to what was stated here:

hiriskpaul wrote:If anyone wants to follow my equity investment strategy, just look at a global index as that is a reasonable benchmark. Not perfect as I overweight a few strategies, some performing well, others less so, but a global index is close enough. I think it totally reasonable to say the returns from a global index are free of hindsight bias as well.

If any HYP'er wants to know if their method "works" relative to others here then compare your total return since inception with a global index, and then adjust for any value you infer from getting more of that return in dividends and less in gains.

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#332943

Postby Wuffle » August 13th, 2020, 3:41 pm

I have some idea who is ex industry on here and there seems to be a trend.
I find that interesting.

W.

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#332946

Postby Arborbridge » August 13th, 2020, 3:48 pm

dealtn wrote:A few interesting points that stand out to me as I have typed and rediscovered this data are I run winners and losers. I am clearly a stubborn bugger, and can see I have sold on more than one occasion when the capital gain has only just exceeded the index. I recognise the situation where I am sure I have been offside on a share and maybe held on to something that I no longer liked, but managed to find an opportunity where it relatively outperformed enough in the short term to get onside before I pulled the trigger on the sale. I managed to sell 1 share at almost the exact market low in the pandemic!



Well, we all know those feelings! Thanks for the effort you put in for that post. I can see the problem of pulling it all together, which is why quite early on I decided to unitise my HYP and incIT portfolios separately. I did at one time do the same with a "growth" portfolio, but that became next to redundant as I gradually moved to income investment for the most part.

With unitisation I can easily compare my efforts with indexes, or other another person's portfolio. That would make answering the OPs question so much easier (if one wanted to, rather than needing extra "compensation" for joining in ;) )

Arb.

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#332948

Postby Arborbridge » August 13th, 2020, 3:57 pm

Lootman wrote:One reason for this might simply be that the kind of people who are attracted to HYP are the kind of people who like to build spreadsheets and keep track. HYP is very much about the numbers and the method was promoted by an accountant. So it feels natural for HYP'ers to invest a lot of time in recording and analysing their numbers.


I wasn't aware that I was particularly left brained, but maybe I am. From my POV, HYP was always an experiment, and in order to measure the success or otherwise, I needed to have numbers. It was as simple as that. You and I know several HYPers who do not bother, however, so it isn't universal. Some seem happy to remain convinced that it's all working OK without needing the bolster of comparison. I wish I had such confidence.

hiriskpaul wrote:If anyone wants to follow my equity investment strategy, just look at a global index as that is a reasonable benchmark. Not perfect as I overweight a few strategies, some performing well, others less so, but a global index is close enough. I think it totally reasonable to say the returns from a global index are free of hindsight bias as well.

If any HYP'er wants to know if their method "works" relative to others here then compare your total return since inception with a global index, and then adjust for any value you infer from getting more of that return in dividends and less in gains.


That would be answering a different question. The thrust for HYP is income, not TR. I was looking for an annuity substitute in effect, so capital is just the seed corn which buys my income. So the comparison is not with an index so much as with alternative investments producing a similar income over a long time. Well, no need to go down that discussion - we both know it by heart :)

Arb.

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#332951

Postby G3lc » August 13th, 2020, 4:12 pm

For me I don’t find a strategy particularly helpful as day by day a lot can change, and historical stuff is great if this is your thing, I tend to buy and hold with an emphasis on dividends, as these are real money in, not valuations that have to be crystallised to make them real - a couple of examples that may interest I sold CLLN in 2017 with a thumping loss, and still hold WEIR that I bought in 2000 @ 2.51 - you win some and loose some but overall it has worked out OK or I would be out of it by now - but I am well aware that not all my decisions have been particularly well timed - but they seemed to make sense at the time.

Going forward I don’t invest in single companies very much now, my last being FRES @ 6.01, but now tend to concentrate on a spread of ITs, accepting that luck can be as important (for me anyway) as analysis going forward in this uncertain world.

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#332996

Postby 1nvest » August 13th, 2020, 7:31 pm

Arborbridge wrote: The thrust for HYP is income, not TR. I was looking for an annuity substitute in effect, so capital is just the seed corn which buys my income. So the comparison is not with an index so much as with alternative investments producing a similar income over a long time.

The 1980 - 1999 two decades prior to the HYP1 were exceptionally good decades for both stocks and bonds. However, unlike how some claim, dividends haven't always been more reliable/consistent than stock price changes.
Image
There's a degree of correlation between stock price and dividends, such that if the income provided is relatively poor over the particular period in which you are invested/drawing-income then so also might capital values have declined. HYP'ers mentally writing off capital is probably a good approach as if the income provided does fall short of expectations/requirements then it might be as good as all-lost.

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#333053

Postby tjh290633 » August 13th, 2020, 11:26 pm

Arborbridge wrote: The thrust for HYP is income, not TR. I was looking for an annuity substitute in effect, so capital is just the seed corn which buys my income. So the comparison is not with an index so much as with alternative investments producing a similar income over a long time. Well, no need to go down that discussion - we both know it by heart :)

Arb.

I have said it before and will say it again. TR is not a strategy, it is a means of measuring performance. You can compare different strategies using TR, or accumulation unitisation, or XIRR, but you cannot define TR as a strategy.

TJH

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#333061

Postby CryptoPlankton » August 14th, 2020, 1:16 am

tjh290633 wrote:
Arborbridge wrote: The thrust for HYP is income, not TR. I was looking for an annuity substitute in effect, so capital is just the seed corn which buys my income. So the comparison is not with an index so much as with alternative investments producing a similar income over a long time. Well, no need to go down that discussion - we both know it by heart :)

Arb.

I have said it before and will say it again. TR is not a strategy, it is a means of measuring performance. You can compare different strategies using TR, or accumulation unitisation, or XIRR, but you cannot define TR as a strategy.

TJH

But if people claim that they invest with the express purpose of maximising total return and believe prioritising income is a flawed strategy then clearly they must have a different strategy or strategies. This thread was started in order to ask for some transparency from such people about their own investment experiences.

(Unfortunately, despite a few worthy contributions, it seems to have largely lost that focus now...)

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#333067

Postby JohnW » August 14th, 2020, 6:59 am

Itsallaguess wrote:....would it be fair to suggest the following -
2. Total-return investors might generally end up with more 'optimal long-term performance'.... but there is generally little in the way of 'road-maps' available to help investors take such an approach from a standing-start.

I think you’ll find this is a road map for investing without any concern for dividends: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Boglehe ... philosophy
It’s the work of Saint John (Bogle’s) disciples and has common ground with Saint Stephen (Bland’s) HYP approach in trying to minimise costs, limit trading to the bare necessary, avoid market timing, and diversify. But it differs by having some extra ‘pillars’ like ‘start early to benefit from compounding’, and ‘take just enough but not too much risk’. Where it really differs is in the diversification: Saint Stephen doesn’t seem to talk about bonds or cash; Saint John thinks diversification means 1000 shares, not 25; and biggest of all Saint John says ‘just invest into a broad index’.

hiriskpaul wrote:... risk. Something that seems oddly absent in many threads. Just one example, I could put all our investments into global equity index trackers and simply draw it down each year. ... but I am not prepared to take the risk that the portfolio will halve in value and stay that way for a decade.

Which is why Saint John likes bonds. A 50/50 stock/bond portfolio will drop 25% if its stocks fall 50% for a decade.
CryptoPlankton wrote:But if people claim that they invest with the express purpose of maximising total return and believe prioritising income is a flawed strategy then clearly they must have a different strategy or strategies.

Well, that different strategy could be Saint John’s, but I don’t think his relies on believing that prioritising income is flawed - it’s silent on that matter. But if investing for income means stock picking, market timing, and inadequate diversification, then his disciples won’t favour it.

Although about 20% of my equity investments could be considered "growth" orientated, the bulk of my portfolio consists of "income" shares and investment trusts. This suits me ... this works for me... and I feel absolutely no need to try to shoot the lights out.

Saint John’s approach is 'no light shooting out': you accept the market returns, less costs, but you don’t need to accept less.

All of which is not to put Saint John on a pedestal. He says nothing about using a liability matching approach to retirement funding. By which I mean: identify spending amounts (basal or otherwise) and match those with ‘guaranteed’ income sources eg inflation linked state pension; lifetime inflation linked annuity; inflation linked bond ladder. The Saint Stephen approach, am I right, talked about the HYP being a sort of annuity? That’s an endorsement of an annuity, but it’s not really the best annuity being without mortality credits from a pooled fund, and without no residual at death.

If Saint Stephen has you living on dividends (and then choosing between going back to work, eating cat food or reluctantly selling assets if needed), Saint John embraces selling assets if dividends/coupons/interest aren’t enough (and you don’t like work or cat food). And there are formulae, rules of thumb, models, ‘strategies’ even to help you avoid becoming a pauper. Saint John’s disciples describe them in great detail, and offer spreadsheets if that’s your game. The aficionados, early retirees or not, read this safe withdrawal rate series: https://earlyretirementnow.com/safe-wit ... te-series/

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#333072

Postby Arborbridge » August 14th, 2020, 7:27 am

Perhaps this is the wrong board?
After all, it is the strategies board which implies discussion about possible approaches. It isn't the "here are my results of a particular strategy" board - which would account for why there are few results here but lots of words about what one might do.

Or are most investors just too shy at exposing themselves?
I know my B-i-L claims great success with an asset harvesting scheme in retirement, but trying to pin him down as to just how successful he is is hopeless - apart from the occasional story about a particular successful moment. Despite my offering up my own results which he is happy to dismiss with opinions such as "LTBH is dead".
Yet, I know he keeps extensive records: perhaps he's waiting for "compensation" before revealing all :)

Arb.

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#333078

Postby Bagger46 » August 14th, 2020, 8:06 am

CryptoPlankton wrote:
tjh290633 wrote:
Arborbridge wrote: The thrust for HYP is income, not TR. I was looking for an annuity substitute in effect, so capital is just the seed corn which buys my income. So the comparison is not with an index so much as with alternative investments producing a similar income over a long time. Well, no need to go down that discussion - we both know it by heart :)

Arb.

I have said it before and will say it again. TR is not a strategy, it is a means of measuring performance. You can compare different strategies using TR, or accumulation unitisation, or XIRR, but you cannot define TR as a strategy.

TJH

But if people claim that they invest with the express purpose of maximising total return and believe prioritising income is a flawed strategy then clearly they must have a different strategy or strategies. This thread was started in order to ask for some transparency from such people about their own investment experiences.

(Unfortunately, despite a few worthy contributions, it seems to have largely lost that focus now...)



For us, as a close group of family and friends(36 different portfolios as of yesterday, total value in excess of £100m) who all share the same online portfolio system, and thus have read access to all the portfolios, TR is very much THE strategy. And this shared philosophy exists despite the fact that some use portfolio income to fund their retirement, some use a mixture of income and capital realisations, some mostly the latter, some don’t need any portfolio income in retirement and some are in the early stages of building the pot. Not a single investor in that group of very varied people invests in a HYP. Most of us have long held very little in the UK market anyway, and this reduces every year. Results is the only thing we are all interested in. TR is what you get as an investor, like it or not, whatever type of investor you might be.

Bagger

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#333081

Postby Arborbridge » August 14th, 2020, 8:35 am

Bagger46 wrote:TR is what you get as an investor, like it or not, whatever type of investor you might be.

Bagger


Oh yes, that's a fact no one could disagree with ;)

Arb.

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#333088

Postby Urbandreamer » August 14th, 2020, 8:47 am

Arborbridge wrote:Perhaps this is the wrong board?
After all, it is the strategies board which implies discussion about possible approaches. It isn't the "here are my results of a particular strategy" board - which would account for why there are few results here but lots of words about what one might do.

Or are most investors just too shy at exposing themselves?
Arb.


I have already posted my XIRR.

However I was messing with HYPTUSS overnight. I use it to benchmark my portfolio, but was concerned that the way that I did so lost information. My chart now shows calculations upon a pivot table. In that manner I can show performance over any time period that I have records for.

Oh my!
Picking this calandar year, the May fall in the market was 33%, my portfolio fell by 43%, Ouch.
Since then there has been a recovery. The market is down 19% and my portfolio by 9% on the year.

HOWEVER I still think that my analysis is faulty. HYPTUSS gets the FTSE100 and FTSEall index so that is what I'm benchmarking against. However my portfolio reinvests dividends so my results are flattered against those benchmarks. This is most clear if I view performance over my entire record set. I'm up 20% while the benchmark is down about 3%. Assuming that I'm Mr Average, then that would entirely be due to reinvested dividends.

I need a better benchmark!
I might see if I can't create a spreadsheet with Hiriskpaul's benchmark's over the weekend.

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#333090

Postby SalvorHardin » August 14th, 2020, 8:51 am

CryptoPlankton wrote:But if people claim that they invest with the express purpose of maximising total return and believe prioritising income is a flawed strategy then clearly they must have a different strategy or strategies. This thread was started in order to ask for some transparency from such people about their own investment experiences.

My strategy has evolved over time. Back in the early 2000s it was a mixture of Warren Buffett's strong moat companies and what I perceived to be the special situation of small oil explorers, where the market was clearly undervaluing some companies based on their reserves and the increasing demand from the newly industrialising nations. Some of those of us who were on TMF during this period made a lot of money on this sector.

This worked brilliantly until 2008 when the oil price collapsed.

2008 and early 2009 saw me revert to mostly strong moat companies and selling most of what was left of my oil explorers. This was to reduce the risk of my portfolio. Today I don't own a single oil company share, except those indirectly owned via investment trusts.

After 2008 my portfolio rebounded within a couple of years, helped greatly by the market having indiscriminately sold many strong moat companies (something which we have seen a lot less of during the current crisis). From 2014 to 2017 I did very well in Canadian Gold explorers but since then, mostly due to my declining appetite for risk, I have greatly increased the amount invested in investment trusts to the point where my portfolio is roughly split 60% operating companies and 40% investment trusts. Whilst this has reduced my returns, it has also reduced risk.

I don't ever expect to ever achieve anything like the returns I made from 2000-2019, and fortunately the portfolio is sufficently large (and my expenses sufficiently low) that I don't need to chase yield (or capital gains). Nowadays my main aim is to at least match the rate of inflation +2%, both for capital and income.

Today I have just one investment that I class as a special situation; Lions Gate Entertainment. Lions Gate is a film and television producer which owns the Starz network. Amongst its franchises are "John Wick", "The Hunger Games" and "Outlander". I view Lions Gate as a serious takeover candidate as several streaming networks need to expand their portfolio of programmes. Lions Gate is small enough so that the big players could almost pay for it out of petty cash (market value $1.66 billion)

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Re: Put your mouth where your money is!

#333127

Postby tjh290633 » August 14th, 2020, 10:41 am

Bagger46 wrote:For us, as a close group of family and friends(36 different portfolios as of yesterday, total value in excess of £100m) who all share the same online portfolio system, and thus have read access to all the portfolios, TR is very much THE strategy.

Right then, define the TR strategy.

As I said, it is a measurement, not a strategy.

TJH


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