January 06 Tally

[FundSurfer]

Thanks to Milkman for entering all the data, I just massage the numbers. We now have 80!! people being tracked. Since the list is so long, I'm only posting an abreviated list with an attached text file with the whole list.

            Jan   Last 3    Last 6    Last 12  2005 Total
                   Months    Months    Months
G-fund     0.36%   1.17%     2.26%      4.39%     4.49%
F-fund     0.09%   1.42%     0.87%      1.93%     2.40%
C-fund     2.66%   6.49%     4.76%     10.18%     4.96%
S-fund     6.70%  11.79%     9.27%     20.73%    10.45%
I-fund     6.14%  13.22%    17.23%     21.32%    13.63%
20% Each   3.19%   6.82%     6.88%     11.71%     7.29%

Long Term GURU's - Last 12 months better than C-fund

Dakota     4.03%  10.55%    13.20%     19.88%    14.01%
Showme     0.81%   5.42%    10.80%     17.04%    13.43%
Neirbod    2.53%   9.20%    11.74%     14.84%     8.91%
Pyriel     2.75%   7.97%    10.21%     14.09%     7.89%
Rokid      4.14%   8.41%     7.80%     14.07%     8.07%
mlk_man    2.82%   9.87%    12.96%     13.86%     8.68%
Cowboy     1.81%   6.56%    10.90%     12.57%   #N/A
Rod        2.10%   8.30%    10.12%     11.88%     7.56%
Tekno      1.48%   3.49%     4.44%     11.78%   #N/A
Safetygu   3.88%   6.19%     6.63%     11.43%     3.94%
Systemtr   2.53%   9.17%     9.78%     11.19%     7.62%
Mike       2.63%   7.68%     8.95%     10.95%     5.21%
Skip       2.82%   7.30%     6.69%     10.80%     7.69%

Top 5 January Returns

Brak       5.38%  #N/A     #N/A      #N/A       #N/A
Aslan      5.26%  10.77%     6.50%   #N/A       #N/A
Terptrad   5.21%  #N/A     #N/A      #N/A       #N/A
andy       5.04%   5.85%     6.94%   #N/A       #N/A
GGal       4.90%  10.17%    11.55%   #N/A       #N/A

Note that to have data for a month you must have started posting before the last day of the previous month.

Milk_man e-mails out a spreadsheet with all the data. Please check that sheet for correct data entry BEFORE PM'ing Milk_man or myself that your number is wrong. We do the best job we can, but we don't catch everything.

These data have had compounding taken out of these numbers so that we are comparing apples to apples. It makes a difference by the time you get to the end of the year. If you want to see compounding then download Tom's spreadsheet and enter your data in that. This Tally is for comparitive purposes. We don't want someone to have an advantage in their monthly totals because they have been posting longer than someone else.

If you have a comment about what columns are shown, let us know. We had a discussion before but I don't think many people saw the discussion. In the future I will add a YTD column (year to date) but it would be a repeat of January this month.

 

[mlk_man]

Nice job FS, you quick!!

 

[pyriel]

Nice job FS, you quick!!

2nd day of the month... That is quick...;-)

 

[FundSurfer]

I bit the bullet.

I bit the bullet and figured out a better way of setting up the formulas this year. I also set up the spreadsheet at the beginning of the year so it would be easier. It is pretty easy to copy some formulas around and cut n paste results but it takes a lot of time to enter all those transfers. Like I said, milk_man did all the work.

 

[Fivetears]

Where's mine?

Where's mine, FS? My personal Excel tracker has me at a 3.43% for January. I'm not sure what the MM tracker has me at.

 

[mlk_man]

Where's mine, FS? My personal Excel tracker has me at a 3.43% for January. I'm not sure what the MM tracker has me at.

This is a quote from fundsurfers orginal post

"Note that to have data for a month you must have started posting before the last day of the previous month."

If you need more explanation, let me know.

 

[rokid]

FYI. The attached is based on the Jan 2006 tally. I wanted to see what correlation there was, if any, between YTD returns, investment style, and number of moves.

Oops. Can't upload the file. It's too large. Too bad.

 

[rokid]

Here is the file described in the previous post. Conversion of the file to .pdf made it small enough to load. Note, the term "decile" just means 10% of the total - in this case groups of eight.

 

[mlk_man]

I believe you're doing us an injustice here rokid. One month during a major uptrend is not a very good indicator that one should set it and hold it.

I understand that you're just trying to prove your own opinion though. I do however question your motives. Guess it might take going through another 3 year bear market to change your mind. According to Tech and Wiz, that time could be now..............

Best of luck to you!

M_M

 

[oldschool]

Thanks Rokid, MLK, interesting! I do wonder how things would look after even one down month. I'd hazard a guess that overall folks would under/out perform C (for example) in roughly the same proportions, but the names (i.e. investing styles) that outperformed would change quite a bit.

oldschool

 

[pyriel]

My friend and I stumbled on this site over a year ago. When we learned about what people are doing we decided to try it. I started jumping around while he kept his at 20c40s40i. Well, as everyone can see, he got more than 10% return while I got a paltry 7.49% for the year. He is still 20c40s40i and kicking my butt for this year. I've changed my timing tactics and not moving as much. However, if he still kick my butt for the next six months, I will probably will switch to hold and steady investing. The only thing I would keep is to send my new investment to the G fund so that I can buy on the downtrend later. P

 

[mlk_man]

If we all buy and held, we wouldn't need this site. It's a conspiracy Tom!!!!

 

[Rod]

If we all buy and held, we wouldn't need this site. It's a conspiracy Tom!!!!

This isn't my target nest egg for retirement. That said, buying and holding for me would be too boring. Also, perhaps 1 year I may hold a certain allocation for a period of time just to see how it performs. But for right now, I'm just having fun.

God Bless

 

[oldschool]

Suppose the housing market hits the skids, Fed keeps going to 5% or more, oil demand around the world stays high or supplies (Iran?) shrink... no retail spending here, no growth in eps - all would equal no fun for the buy and holders... regardless of CSI allocations... and from my posted allocations one can tell what direction I think things likely to go....

 

[rokid]

MM,

I agree that one month - or even one year - doesn't prove a thing. However, I thought it would be interesting to incorporate the raw tracker returns with an indication of individual investing styles. I intend to update the info on a monthly basis.

Obviously, I'm pro passive allocation. I believe in the academic experts, efficient markets, diversification, statistics, and probability. Furthermore, I think the L Funds are a good idea. However, if someone, e.g. Dakota, keeps on piling up the out sized returns with a market timing approach, I would have to reevaluate.

Finally, I understand the "too boring" complaint. Fortunately for me, I'm boring by nature, i.e. I'm into boring.

 

[oldschool]

Not sure how this might be calculated, but quantifying risk undertaken by an account over a given period would be a great addition to rate of return and investment style. I have a fuzzy recollection that someone did some calculations along those lines and posted 'em late last year somewhere on tsptalk....

I guess I'm thinking that an investment strategy can't really be viewed as successful unless returns are proportionate to risk - so the mere fact that one strategy is ahead or behind the C fund, or any other benchmark, may not really tell us much until we look at the results through a "risk" colored lens...

 

[rokid]

Oldschool,

Excellent point. I can calculate risk vs return, e.g. Sharpe Ratio, for the passive, diversified and concentrated portfolios based on historical returns. Unfortunately, I need a series of returns to calculate similar stats for the swing traded portfolios. I'll take a stab at it next month - even if at that point it's only a series of two.

 

[bkrownd]

Suppose the housing market hits the skids, Fed keeps going to 5% or more, oil demand around the world stays high or supplies (Iran?) shrink... no retail spending here, no growth in eps - all would equal no fun for the buy and holders...

No fun? Nonsense. Falling prices are VERY fun when you're early in your accumulation phase. Rising fund prices suck. I'm a big fan of the proactive fed this year. 5% or bust!

 

[oldschool]

Well, I'm a bit like Rokid in that I believe in [mostly] efficient markets - so if the Fed goes to 5% and stocks go down, I'm thinking those darned efficient markets are in fact pricing stocks correctly for a 5% interest rate world. And the stocks purchased earlier in the 4.5% interest rate world have lost real value (assuming you held 'em.) Seems you get what you pay for. If shares are cheaper in the future, isn't that because the [mostly] efficient market is correctly saying the shares have less potential then they did previously? Yes, with time, the shares will likely gain potential, and thus price - but doesn't one usually pay the correct amount at the time of purchase for the potential at that moment?

Now as to dollar cost averaging during the accumulation phase... how long does that phase run, anyway? Now if I had, say, 400k in my TSP, and was adding, say, 24k per year (2k/month), wouldn't it take me many years of contributions to make any meaningful dollar cost averaging inroads into a yearlong down market's effect on my 400k nugget? I'm just thinking, the bigger the nugget is compared to the annual contribs, the less power there is in dollar cost averaging....

'course maybe I'm not drinking the same kool-aid as everyone else

oldschool

 

[tsptalk]

If we all buy and held, we wouldn't need this site. It's a conspiracy Tom!!!!

I think we need a 20% loss in the S&P one year in order to win this argument. That could take a few years.