One Year Performance 25.68%

So this is what we have been waiting for this past year.   I created the portfolio back in May 2014 and this is how it looks today.   Over 25% return!

I wasn't sure how the portfolio components would look like for the one year review because the markets were selling off quite significantly at the end of April and the first week of May.  

If we dissect the individual stocks, we find that every one of them is in positive territory, even the laggards EQB and STN.  They seemed to have revived these last 2 weeks.  The remaining stocks have done really well, all with double-digit gains.   We had two stock splits in the portfolio during the course of the year - GIL and STN.

The top stock for the year has been Great Canadian Gaming with an impressive return of just over 57%.  I must admit I was a bit wary of this stock which is why I didn't put a significant amount of capital into it.  But the Google Finance stock filter clearly identified this stock as having some potential.  I think that the GC stock has performed consistently well for most of last year.

CGI Consulting (GIB.A) was also a star performer over the past year.  It lost a bit of ground in the last couple of weeks though, but delivering a handsome return of 44%.

The last 3 stocks LNR, GIL and WFT have finished this past year all with 30% gains.  I never imagined that these stocks would be as volatile as they have been.

Here's the one year performance graph of the May 2014 portfolio.  It made just over $9000 with the initial investment of about $35,000.  A small part of the 9K gain was from dividends of $217.  From this we can see that these were not great dividend paying stocks.  This portfolio was more about growth.

A look at our performance graph in comparison to the performance of the Toronto Stock exchange over the same one year period.  The TSX only gained 4%.  We managed to average a gain of over 2% per month.

I've downloaded the transaction data from this portfolio into an OFX file, which you can upload back into google finance if you want to play with it yourself.  Here's the link to the file on my Google Drive:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwUUNjScf336bVZMRjNWbE11TWs/view?usp=sharing

You need to download the OFX file from my google drive to your downloads folder. Then, login into Google Finance and create a new portfolio, and upload the contents of the OFX file.

If you want to review the criteria I used to choose the stocks in the May 2014 portfolio, here's the link to original post:   http://cdnstocks2watch.blogspot.ca/2014/05/a-selection-of-seven-stocks.html

So I'm thinking to myself, should I create a new portfolio for the upcoming year?  Do you think we can repeat the success of the 2014 portfolio if we follow the same rules and use Google Finance to filter the stocks for us?   I'm hoping it will yield some new stocks for us to track and analyse.

Time for me to check Google Finance and see what gems  we can uncover for 2015.  Stay tuned as I intend to put together a new portfolio next week sometime.  Any input would be welcome!

Month Eleven Performance - 20.17%

It is now mid April and markets have been on a tear.  There has been a lot of fear about a looming stock market correction.  Oil is still down, around the $50 per barrel range, but I have noticed an uptick lately with respect to oil and energy stocks.

The model portfolio has recouped it's losses of last month. So now it is showing a 20% return as it did mid February.  My opinion is that the market is buoyed by the performance of the energy sector.

It also seems to me that there is a rotation away from consumer stocks back into oil.

Over the course of two months, WFT has lost almost 20% of it's stock value. Recall it was up 45% in mid-February.  This loss was offset by Great Canadian Gaming (GC) gains, now at 54% return.  Most other stocks gained ground other than the two laggards EQB and STN.

Late March, Gildan (GIL) split their stock so that the original number of stocks doubled from 100 to 200.  The stock price was halved to about $38.  Unfortunately, Google Finance doesn't handle stock splits, although their FAQ and blog says that they do.  I had to manually adjust my number of shares and purchase price in order for it to be properly reflected in the portfolio.  Even having done that, the percentage return graph, I've been using is broken, and I haven't figure out a way of hacking it to show the proper percentage.

Case in point, here's how google finance is showing the default performance graph, as reflected by the split in Gildan's stock price from mid 70s to mid 30s.

Here's how the graph would normally look, except that I had to remove GIL from the portfolio otherwise it would look like the graph below.

Anyways, below is how the YTD vs TSX performance graph looks (without GIL). 

Note that the YTD return of eleven months for the Toronto Stock exchange is only about 5%. The model portfolio average monthly return is about 1.8% per month.

There seems to be a delay or flaw in google finance with respect to dividend reporting as well.  Google finance did not update the March dividend information for the majority of stocks that paid dividends.

Above is the latest dividend info, so it should be showing the March dividends for EQB, STN, WFT and GIL. 

Next month, will be the one year anniversary of this blog and the model portfolio.  I'll review the portfolio for one last time.

Took this  from Centre Island.

Month Ten Performance - 15% approximately

I got lazy mid March and didn't update the blog, sorry.  I did remember checking the portfolio returns and it appeared that February through March, markets pulled back around 5%.  I don't have the holdings chart for that period but I did manage to chart it roughly.    Below is the YTD performance graph and the TSX comparison graph.

With a 15% gain, our average monthly gain is about 1.5%.