Month Four Performance - 6.4%

The model portfolio was almost up 8% in the past couple of weeks before shedding almost 2% in the last few days.  Here's a look at how it's doing.

The portfolio is currently showing a gain of  just over 6% with all stocks in the green except Linamar.  It definitely looks like LNR has run out of steam over the past 4 months, now down 3%.  STN  is up another 5% from last month since the announcement of a stock split coming in the next few months.  WFT has also jumped 14% in the past month, going from a loss of 6% to a nice gain of 8% this month.  CGI has gone from flat to 6% this month.  The remaining stocks have given back about 1 to 2% since August.

Another $20 of dividends were received this past month from LNR and EQB with a total portfolio gain of $2252.  If we average out the YTD return of 6.4% over 4 months we get an average of 1.6% per month.

I should point out that only 5 of the 7 stocks in this portfolio pay any kind of dividend, and none more than 1% yield, so it relies a lot more on growth than income.

Here's the portfolio returns and graph for the past 4 months:

Sep: 6.4%, $2252

Aug: 4%, $1419

Jul: 3%, $1027

Jun: 0.5%, $186

The rounded top of the graph looks like the top of a roller coaster.  Looks like markets will be heading downwards in the next weeks or months.   As a side note I sold off LNR in my wife's portfolio last month, seeing as how it hasn't done much in the last 4 months.

Incidentally, I wanted to see how the test portfolio performance compares with the broader TSX, so I charted the graph between the middle of May until now.

What a surprise that the 7 stocks in the model portfolio mirrors the TSX in performance gains of 6%  and also in the shape of the graph!   And here's the same YTD graph for the TSX ETF called XIU.

XIU is an index fund which is a mutual fund that trades like a stock.  This fund is comprised of the TSX 60 largest companies.  See the description from Google Finance for more info.
https://www.google.ca/finance?q=TSE%3AXIU&ei=Ag0YVPC5JpLV8QbsgoGIAg

If you only could buy one stock and wanted to replicate the returns of the overall TSX, this would be it.  It's 4 month return is 6.76% doing just a bit better than the model portfolio.  It even has a 2.25% dividend yield, which I'm guessing is why it's outperforming the model portfolio by a couple of percentage points (6.7% vs 6.4%).  You also would save on the transaction fees, $10 vs. $70.

I will continue to track the model portfolio vs. XIU and the TSX in the coming months to see how we are doing.