Top 13 Accounts in 2005

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tsptalk

tsptalk

Moderator
Staff member
2005 Top Performers:

Dakota +14.01%
Show-me +13.43%
mlk_man +11.57%
Rolo +11.28%
Neirbod +10.16%
Pyriel +7.89%
Skip +7.69%
Systemtrade +7.62%
Rod +7.56%
DrD +6.95%
TSPgo +6.22%
Mike +5.21%
Safetyguy +3.94%

* Other members may have had returns high enough to be on this list but did not qualify for one reason or other. To qualify, make sure you get your transfers documented here before the deadlines and if you are idle for several weeks, you may want to pop into your account so the Tallyman knows you are still with us.

Thanks and good luck!
 
Tom, I know that the tracker only has my account postings from the end of March, but if you go back to Fundsurfers monthly tallys early in the year when I was e-mailing my moves to him during my "vacation" and add them to what the tracker has, my return for last year was 11.57%.

This is all documented or I wouldn't bring it up. :)
 
Top 25 Allocations for 2005

Top 25 Allocations for 2005

1. Dakota +14.01%
2. I Fund +13.63%
3. Show-me +13.43%
4. Rolo +11.28%
5. S Fund +10.45%
6. Neirbod +10.16%
7. Total Market* + 9.93%
8. Rokid + 8.12%
9. L2040 + 7.91%
10. Pyriel + 7.89%
11. Skip + 7.69%
12.Systemtrader + 7.62%
13. Rod + 7.56%
14. L2030 + 7.42%
15. 20% each fund + 7.30%
16. L2020 + 7.02%
17. DrD + 6.95%
18. L2010 + 6.41%
19. TSPgo + 6.22%
20. Mike + 5.21%
21. L Income + 5.10%
22. C Fund + 4.96%
23. G Fund + 4.49%
24. Safetyguy + 3.94%
25. F Fund + 2.40%

* Total Market (39% C Fund, 11% S Fund, and 50% I Fund)
 
Very nice. Folks looking at this though maybe should reflect on "survivor bias" - that is, how many folks who fall behind these numbers don't continue to post after a few days/months - or never start posting at all. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see that long term hold allocations along the lines suggested by any asset allocation tool beat 90 percent of the folks engaging in self directed frequent adjustments to their TSP accounts. When the State of Washington looked at day trading accounts there a few years back they found 80% of the accounts lost money, and some of the rest were doomed to failure if they continued their high frequency trading. That's all in a roughly 5 year old North American Securities Administrators Association public report that indirectly led to changes in how day trading accounts were handled by brokerage firms.
 
I have nothing to back this but I'm not so sure the reason for those losses was due to excessive trading as much as excessive use of margin, shorting, and misuse of options.
 
Fair enough Tom. I typed to quickly -it wasn't specifically "frequency of trading". I think a more accurate summary of the report is that of the 20% of the day trading accounts that had not lost money, most were trading in a manner that would loose money eventually if they continued to employ the same trading strategies.

There's a recent book out by the guy who managed Yale University's money with much success - he discusses survivorship bias in the context of mutual funds available to the general public. I'm just thinking it's an interesting construct to include in one's analysis of what is, isn't, successful over time. The Washington Post, other newspapers, participate in a program for school classes to compete in a simulated investment contest. They publish the returns of the top schools - all positive figures, but don't bother publishing the returns of the poorest performing schools. Gives a skewed view of what's happening, on average, for these would be investors.

I learn much from looking at the allocation changes posted for the top performing accounts here on TSPtalk. It's also interesting to think about how many accounts start posting but disappear. Humans being competitive and all, I'm thinking the accounts that disappear probably leave with their tails tucked between their legs. But hey, I'm oldschool, fear losses the most. Various levels of experience on this board, some far superior to me, but others brand new.

For the less experienced investors I share what someone told me once trying to get me to appreciate the first order need for capital preservation. You have $100. You lose 50%. You now have $50. You need to make %100 on that $50 to get back to zero.

So maybe consider running a practice account for a year or two before you start playing with your real retirement dollars if you don't have extensive investing experience.

I post my moves, I takes my risks. But real losses are hard to recoup - so I try to understand the odds against outperforming a soundly allocated buy and hold approach.
 
oldschool said:
For the less experienced investors I share what someone told me once trying to get me to appreciate the first order need for capital preservation. You have $100. You lose 50%. You now have $50. You need to make %100 on that $50 to get back to zero.

So maybe consider running a practice account for a year or two before you start playing with your real retirement dollars if you don't have extensive investing experience.

I post my moves, I takes my risks. But real losses are hard to recoup - so I try to understand the odds against outperforming a soundly allocated buy and hold approach.
Click to expand...

I have certainly become more conservative since our membership has grown, particularly when my indicators wave a yellow flag. I take a lot of flack for missing the recent rallies but how could I sleep at night recommending an aggressive allocation when my indicators tell me to be patient? There will be times to get a ggressive but I'm with you, preserving capital is the main chore, making money will come eventually.

We are coming off of two relatively flat years. If that's the only damage my indicators were warning about, so be it. I can't wait for the light to turn green myself. I'm tired of being cautious but I've been around long enough to see some serious damage done to the funds. We've been lucky the past couple of years. If anyone had a chunk of money in the TSP during 2000 to 2002 you know what I'm talking about.

Good luck,
Tom
 
tsptalk said:
I have certainly become more conservative since our membership has grown, particularly when my indicators wave a yellow flag.

We've been lucky the past couple of years. If anyone had a chunk of money in the TSP during 2000 to 2002 you know what I'm talking about.

Good luck,
Tom
Click to expand...

Tom,
I agree with you with your statements. I am not trying to give you advice (I'm not qualified to do that) but I felt that you became conservative by sitting on the side line. You should not feel that this is your responsibility to lead the growing membership here (may be you do). We all make our own final decision by studying every indicator when possible. Sometimes we do it with our gut feeling too. In your last few daily commentaries, you were tempted to jump back in stocks but did not.

The market indicators are just indicators. If the market goes opposite what it shows, then you may want to do it with your gut feeling. When there is a doubt, do it with half of your holding and half of it in G or F. Risk only half should not be entirely a bad decision. Remeber this, we can change it the very next day if you think the decision is wrong. That's why this TSP transfer system is almost perfect for us as a day/swing/position/long term trader. Almost perfect which I mean if it can be IFT after 4:00 EST then I will give it a perfect 10.

I agree with your 2000 - 2002 period with pain. I let all my TSP holding in C without touching it. At that time we could only transfer fund once a month and I didn't want to jump out of stocks because I was afraid that should stocks go up the following month and I couldn't be there. By leaving in there all these years including 2003 and 2004, I got back all my lost plus some healthy gains. So I believe the market should be fine as a long term investment.

As for short or near term, trust yourself and "Just do it"

Good luck
Ocean
 
ocean said:
When there is a doubt, do it with half of your holding and half of it in G or F. Risk only half should not be entirely a bad decision.
Click to expand...

That's some good advice ocean. Thanks.
 
Who is Neirbod?

2005 Top Performers:

Neirbod +10.16%

OK Tom... curiosity has finally got the best of me. Who is this guy or gal Neirbod +10.16%? I can't find his or her account, or account talk anywhere in the board.
 
How well _could_ people have done last year?

Hi Folks -

This conversation tickled my interest in seeing just how well could people have done if they were "perfect knowers". Using daily historical data for the various funds over the last year (NOTE major cavet: I used data from 24 FEB 06 through 25 FEB 05 - NOT the calendar year associated with the discussion thus far) and found that if every day you traded 100% into the correct fund you could have amassed a return of...... 127.9%.

What is also interesting is that over the last 365 days the best fund to be in was

I fund for 255 days
F fund for 98 days
C fund for 7 days
S fund for 5 days

Also note that the G fund was _not_ included in the analysis. The five days of S fund investment were all in 2006.

Of course none of us are perfect knowers....
 
How to earn over 25% return from July 05 to July 06

I presume we have all noticed that S & I Funds have earned over 22% each during the last 200 days - probably since about July 2005. If you've been in those funds during the last 200 days, then simply moving everything to the G fund now would probably lock you in for 25+% return by July 2006 - much better than anyone did in 2005.

Perhaps that means 2006 is going to be a banner year of sorts if you manage to make the right allocations. But if you play the game wrong then you could do much worse. If you pitched a perfect game in 2005 you could have made over 127% return. But in this thread the big returns for 2005 were 14% or so.

So for some - those who've been in S & I since July 2005 - the simple strategy of going to the "safe harbor" of G (and at times F) would give you 25+% return through July 2006. (Yes, I am assuming that the G fund is going to be stable and chugging upward ever slowly through July 2006.)

And if you managed that sort of return for 10 years in a row, you would be a superstar and so would your TSP account.

By the way, I don't know anything about investing, technical analysis etc. I am a computer geek however.
 
No guarantees

HappyQuant,

In this game you will soon realize that the past is no prologue to the future - although you can sometimes hedge to some extent if you know enough past history. Good luck in your education of investing.

Dennis
 
HappyQuant said:
And if you managed that sort of return for 10 years in a row, you would be a superstar and so would your TSP account.
Click to expand...

Yes, you'd be a world renowned investment superstar. 25% a year for 10 years! Warren Buffett would be impressed.

P.S. During the past 10 years the best performing TSP Fund, the S Fund, returned an average of 11.68% a year (compounded). This occurred during the best bull market in U.S. history. :cool:
 
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