Model Portfolio Review at Feb 24, 2017

Hi and welcome back to my portfolio blog.  It's time to look at how my stock picks are doing.

M2014 Portfolio

We see considerable improvement on the May 2014 portfolio.  If it wasn't for the market downturn this past week, this portfolio's gain would all be in the green.  As it stands, it's not looking too shabby.
EQB had a big jump in it's share price this month.  The only stock that's losing money is LNR, but not by much.  The portfolio is now returning 15% as we approach May 2017, so we can say, for now,  that the average return is about 5% per year more or less.  Biggest winners in our portfolio are GIB.A (tech) with over 67% and GC at 58% return at this review.

Here's the May 2014 portfolio performance graph.  After a dismal 2016, things are starting to look up again.  The total return of the portfolio, inclusive of dividends is over 17%, so that gives us a dividend yield of about 2.5%.  Our performance graph also compares our returns to the TSX over the same period of time and we did a whole lot better than it's 5% return.  The actual return of the TSX therefore was only about 1.7% each year for about three years.  That's pretty close to current GIC rates.   So you definitely don't want to just buy the index or mutual funds that just mirror the TSX composite returns. 

M2015 Portfolio

What can I say about the May 2015 portfolio that I haven't already talked about in past posts.  DH continues to be the loser stock in our holdings.  With the exception of DH and SJ, the remainder of the stocks have held up well, with three of our holdings yielding double digit returns.  I have Telus (T) in my RRSP and this stock hasn't seen any uptick in share price.  Luckily it provides a 4% dividend, so it's worth holding on to it for that.

In fact, if you look at the total returns of the May 2015 portfolio, and include the dividend yield of 5%, it doubles the return at over 10%.  It would be even more if DH wasn't doing so poorly.   Whereas the TSX only returned 3.4% in the last year and a half. 

M2016 Portfolio

My most recent portfolio is as of May 2016.  It hasn't been an entire year yet, and it is up over 8% before dividends.  Already there are three stocks in our seven stock portfolio with double digit gains. The only laggard is FCR right now at just under minus 1%.

With dividends, this portfolio is returning over 10% and is pretty much on par with the TSX return for the same time frame, except that we don't have any exposure to resource or gold stocks.  It's interesting that this portfolio was outperforming the TSX until November 2016, which is the time that Donald Trump got elected as president of the USA.  I guess we will have to see what the portfolio consequences are in the next couple of years.

Summary

Portfolio and total overall returns (inclusive of dividend yield)

May 2014 - 17.89%
May 2015 - 10.16%
May 2016 - 10.57% (for 9 months)

A New Portfolio

Instead of waiting for May 2017, some of you may know that I have already created a new portfolio for 2017.  I decided to throw caution to the wind and instead of diversifying, I created a new portfolio in the first week of February 2017 that holds only food and grocery stocks.  I wouldn't do this in any of my own portfolios, but I was thinking about what Donald Trump's presidency would mean to my actual portfolios.  Right now, the markets are extremely bullish and I think there should be some kind of reversal.

I created the new food portfolio because despite any major catastrophe, people still have to eat, hence the food and grocery portfolio.  So, what I'm saying now is that I'm a bit contrarian to what's happening in the markets.  I have sold off some stocks that have reached new highs in my real portfolios.

Anyways, in the next few days, I will reveal the seven stocks in the Feb 2017 portfolio or F2017 for short.   See you then!