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!

Review of Model Portfolios at January 2017

Happy New Year Everyone.  It's time to open up our portfolios and examine what has happened since we last checked in.   We are tracking stocks in 3 different portfolios which I have set up during the month of May in years 2014, 2015 and 2016.  The screen shots below are taken on January 8, 2017.

Wall street and Bay street have embraced Donald Trump's victory  as the next president of the United States.  Stocks have been in a bull market since the end of October 2016.

May 2014

The good news for the May 2014 portfolio is that most of the stocks have now in positive territory.
The overall return for the past 2.5 years is now 11.5% or approximately 4.5% per year.  It could be better but it could be worse.  Total dividends returned is almost $750.

 WFT is the worst performing stock at this time and has historically been subject to a lot of volatility in it's stock price.   LNR has made significant gains in the past 6 months and is just a few points shy of breaking even again.  Our technology holding GIB.A is up 78% and GC is up 63%.

If we look at the past year's performance of this portfolio, you can see that it pretty much did nothing. The TSX on the other hand had a stellar year returning 19%, mostly due to gains in the resource and energy positions.

Here's the May 2014 graph since inception.  Again it shows us 2016 was a pretty down year.

If however we compare the May 2014 portfolio returns to the TSX for the entire lifespan of the portfolio, we are still ahead of the TSX for the same period of time.  13% vs 6% so we should be happy about that.  Our dividend yield amounts to about 2% for this portfolio.

May 2015

The May 2015 portfolio has been doing well overall, except for our technology holding DH.  This stock has been the target of short sellers and is down 45%.  Most of the other stocks are showing double digit returns with ATD.B, WPK AND NA being the star performers.  

With a modest return of 3% google finance shows us the monetary return as $521. However you can see that our dividends did really well on this portfolio giving back $675, which more than doubles our portfolio yield.

 The performance graph of 2016 shows that the May 2015 portfolio was fairly stable throughout the past year except for the sharp drop in mid November.  I think it has some correlation to our DH holding.

Without any energy or resource holdings in our portfolio, we did not experience the same growth as the TSX in the past year.  The May 2015 portfolio returned 3.6% vs the TSX 19%.

If we look at the performance graph since portfolio inception.  The May 2015 portfolio shows 7.8% which I believe includes our dividend yield vs the TSX average of 3%.

May 2016

Our newest portfolio is giving us a 5% return, not bad given that it is only about 7 months since it's inception. The worst performing stock is NWC which was the stock I subbed in at the last minute. The three best performing stocks in this portfolio are ITP, RNW and ECI each giving us double digit gains.

If you will recall, I had a second look at ET when I started my portfolio creation and decided it wasn't where I wanted it to be in terms of performance.  However NWC hasn't really given us any stellar returns either. In fact it is underperforming ET right now.  ET is only down 1% whereas NWC is down over 6%. Doh.

 The May 2016 performance graph since May of this year.

Again without any resource or energy stocks in our portfolio, we didn't have the same returns as the TSX, but we were pretty close.  The TSX returned 11% in the past 7 months, and the May 2016 portfolio did just over 8%.  The dividend yield on this portfolio is therefore around 3%.

It should be noted that the performance graph characteristics of the portfolio tracked pretty closely to the TSX except that after Donald Trump's election win, our portfolio started to underperform the TSX.

Summary

Portfolio and total overall returns (inclusive of dividend yield)

May 2014 - 13%
May 2015 - 7%
May 2016 - 8% (for 7 months)

It should be interesting to see what unfolds in 2017, which I expect will be a year of revelations and surprises, thanks to the Donald.

August 2016 - Quarterly Review

It's time to check out how the May2014, May2015 and May2016 portfolios are doing.

May 2014

The overall return of the M2014 portfolio is just under 8%, averaging about 4% per year.  Losing stocks are WFT, LNR, STN and EQB.  GIB.A two year return is 73%, nice. GC and GIL round out the other winners with 42% and 33% gains respectively.

This is the performance graph since inception.  2016 is on track to be a tepid year for this portfolio.

The M2014 portfolio performance graph above as compared to the Toronto Stock Exchange for the same period. According to Google Finance, the portfolio is doing 10% better than the TSX, which has been essentially flat for the past two years.

May 2015

DH continues to struggle with it's stock now down 28%, but thankfully ATD.B is up 40% in our M2015 portfolio.  EMA and WPK are giving decent double digit returns for the year.  T, NA and SJ are more or less even.  The return for this portfolio after 15 months is 5%, which is just OK.

M2015 portfolio performance graph will hopefully continue it's upward movement.

It's interesting to point out that the M2015 to TSX performance differential of about 10% is about the same as the M2014 vs. TSX.  Different timeframes (2 years vs 1 year) , but same relative performance.   You can see that the TSX was down close to 20% this past winter, but has now recouped it's losses.

May 2016

The newest portfolio is now showing a 7% return after 3 months.  The dividends returned is about 1% this quarter, so we are on track for a 4% overall dividend yield.  So far, no losers in this basket, but the last minute pick of NWC is just treading water right now.  The rest of the stocks are doing well, so I'm hoping it will continue it's performance into next year.

Overall the performance graph of the M2016 portfolio looks great, but it looks like it's due for a downturn in the next few months.

Since May of this year, the TSX has increased by about 5% and the M2016 portfolio is doing just a bit better at 7%.

NWC vs. ET

If you read my previous post, you'll know I originally had Evertz Technology ET in the M2016 portfolio and then I replaced it with NWC.  Comparing the performance of the both stocks reveal that they both kinda suck, although ET did move up 8% in the month of June only to give it all back later.

So I went back and reviewed the 5 year stats for ET and it's showing 45% return. Did I look at the wrong graph back in May 2016 because I thought it had a much weaker 5 year return?

Here's the 5 year return graph for NWC, also showing a return of 45% over 5 years.   Heh, these two stocks are almost identical in performance and fundamentals.

And here's a poo emoji, just because.

Well, that's it for August 2016.  See you in November 2016 for another update.  Thanks for looking.