Do you look back at your investment past performance ?

[moorfield]

How important to you is looking back at your investment performance or do you consider retrospection to be futile and the only way is to look forward.

Very. Hindsight is a great teacher, you learn a lot about your investor self through retrospection I believe. Some of the investment choices I made 5-10 years ago were bonkers, looking back now - what was I thinking?

[Kantwebefriends]

What I have learnt is that timing the sale of equities has been easy for me. Timing buying is not. Consequently I have deferred too long.

I suspect I'd have done well to adopt the rule of selling when I thought everyone else was bonkers and, once the crash had happened, buy automatically two years later. Or one year or three, but above all automatically. Even an idiosyncratic apparently daft rule might have worked - buy 14 months after the crash, that sort of thing. Dripping with spurious accuracy but at least get buying!

[OhNoNotimAgain]

Most of the discussion on this site relates to forward planning for your financial future, for example, like the recent post on retirement time horizon.

My main retirement income is from DB pensions and some dividend income. Since retiring early I have kept a record of my various sources of income on a cumulative basis. This provides me with a measure of how successful, or otherwise, my decision to retire early has been and to a greater extent removes peer envy.

How important to you is looking back at your investment performance or do you consider retrospection to be futile and the only way is to look forward.

I hope my question is sensible and that you understand the point I'm trying to get across.

Yes.
I guess your question is really about distinguishing noise from signal.
Unfortunately, the last 17 years has mostly been noise created by the GFC in 2007/8.
Only now are US Treasuries back to the 5% yield they were in 2007 as ZIRP and QE fade away and politicians and central bankers try and sort out the horrendous mess they have made of running economies.
The only signals that matter are time and income.

[tjh290633]

I do a valuation of my portfolio at the close of each day that the market is open. The reason is that I wish to make sure that no share gets overweight. This can happen quite rapidly on occasions. I also wish to decide where accumulated dividends are reinvested, my method being incorporated in the HYPTUSS.

My opinion is that, while weekly might be a reasonable interval, monthly or annual appraisals are far too wide apart.

TJH

Having said that, I only record my unit value and trailing 12-monthly dividends/unit at the end of each month. I have just looked at the figures, and had a convenient table dating back to the start of 2019:

Month to     Unit Value £   Div/unit/yr   Div/unit/mth
31-Dec-18            5.47         28.82           1.20
31-Jan-19            5.75         29.58           2.68
28-Feb-19            5.87         29.80           1.78
29-Mar-19            5.98         29.75           2.71
30-Apr-19            6.02         30.70           2.26
31-May-19            5.70         31.65           4.24
28-Jun-19            5.89         31.11           2.97
31-Jul-19            6.01         31.33           3.04
30-Aug-19            5.84         30.75           2.01
30-Sep-19            5.95         31.35           6.04
31-Oct-19            5.92         31.23           1.31
29-Nov-19            5.99         31.34           1.87
31-Dec-19            6.20         31.63           1.50
31-Jan-20            6.02         30.86           1.87
28-Feb-20            5.43         30.80           1.72
31-Mar-20            4.60         30.78           2.74
30-Apr-20            4.82         29.84           1.28
29-May-20            4.88         26.92           1.19
30-Jun-20            5.05         26.18           2.20
31-Jul-20            4.84         24.16           0.94
28-Aug-20            4.97         24.11           1.96
30-Sep-20            4.98         21.98           3.85
30-Oct-20            4.75         21.79           1.11
30-Nov-20            5.37         21.04           1.09
31-Dec-20            5.57         20.28           0.71
29-Jan-21            5.56         19.56           1.12
26-Feb-21            5.61         23.07           5.34
01-Apr-21            5.91         22.54           2.17
30-Apr-21            6.11         22.77           1.51
28-May-21            6.15         25.12           3.62
30-Jun-21            6.14         24.79           1.85
30-Jul-21            6.19         24.94           1.09
31-Aug-21            6.33         25.81           2.86
30-Sep-21            6.09         27.08           5.17
30-Oct-21            6.08         28.81           2.91
30-Nov-21            6.08         29.65           1.96
31-Dec-21            6.40         29.90           0.97
31-Jan-22            6.49         29.90           1.11
28-Feb-22            6.53         26.07           1.35
31-Mar-22            6.50         26.76           2.88
29-Apr-22            6.65         27.55           2.33
31-May-22            6.56         34.79          10.87
30-Jun-22            6.10         36.78           3.98
29-Jul-22            6.28         36.63           0.94
31-Aug-22            6.36         36.26           2.50
30-Sep-22            5.67         37.19           6.24
31-Oct-22            5.71         37.44           3.23
30-Nov-22            6.19         37.82           2.38
30-Dec-22            6.12         37.81           0.97
31-Jan-23            6.40         39.11           1.47
03-Mar-23            6.54         39.46           1.78
05-Apr-23            6.22         40.34           3.92
28-Apr-23            6.41         39.32           1.34
31-Mar-23            5.96         32.33           3.82
30-Jun-23            5.84         31.30           3.02
31-Jul-23            6.00         31.55           1.23
31-Aug-23            5.82         32.91           4.00
29-Sep-23            5.87         30.41           3.79
23-Oct-23            5.84         33.91           3.26 (latest)

The maximum unit value was in April 2022, dividends/unit rose to a peak in the year to 05-Apr-2023 because of special dividends and the Aviva B-share issue, which I count in as part of the dividend cash flow. Elsewhere I count them separately. This of course refers to income units. Over the same period accumulation units rose from £24.06 to £32.76, with a maximum in March 2023 of £35.68.

My yardstick is the FTSE100, which I have lagged in the current year:

This year    Inc Units   FTSE       Acc Units
30-Dec-22         6.12   7,451.74       33.22
23-Oct-23         5.84   7,402.14       32.76
                -4.62%     -0.67%      -1.39%

TJH