Portfolio Returns | Slack Investor

Chance would be a fine thing

One of the great things about England is the turn of phrase that the locals enjoy. “Chance would be a fine thing” is a good example of language that is perplexing to the new arrivals. It is the sort of saying that sometimes crops up in the UK that has a meaning that is not entirely obvious.

In context, someone in England would utter this phrase in response to a comment from another that sets up a desirable scenario – but the retort “Chance would be a fine thing” is said to indicate that it is not likely to happen! Further context can be found in the great tribute by David Mitchell to insecure managers in the short but very fine Peep Show “Chance” sketch at this link. Youtube Autoplay will reward the brave with another great character from the show -“Alan Johnson”, the crude and aggressive management guru in the following Youtube clip – But Language Warning with Alan – I Digress! (… but still giggling!)

I like the “chance” phrase, it reminds me of the enormous part that luck plays in the building of a share portfolio – but it is the very opposite of how I think when I buy a stock! I do not buy stocks often and a buy is usually at the end of some good research where I have convinced myself that the stock is growing and is just about to take off when the rest of the market catches up to my brilliant thinking. Bitter experience and keeping good records over 25 years has shown my abilities in picking winners at around the 55 -60 % mark.

At first glance this looks a pretty poor record of stock judgement – However, by keeping my losses relatively small (through monthly stop losses), owning a diverse range of companies (see Portfolio Page), and letting my rising shares rise, and luck, the Slack Investor has done alright – Five year compounded average growth rate (CAGR) for my audited SMSF portfolio of 16.9% p.a..

The luck of stock selection has always been acknowledged by Slack Investor, but it was brought home to me when my son asked, in December 2017, for advice on where to put $5000 in the share market. You would think that this would be an easy thing for Slack Investor who has spent almost 30 years studying the vagaries of the market. 15 months ago I went into a lather and researched very hard and came up with two growth stocks that I thought were not overpriced and had reasonable growth prospects – but I still had a bit of trepidation as, he is my son, and this was his hard earned savings from a part time job -and, I wanted him to continue with the allusion that his Dad knew what he was talking about!

With the usual combination of research and luck, the two stocks that I presented him with were stocks that I already owned – Fisher and Paykel Healthcare (FPH) and Altium (ALU). I gave him the choice after a brief overview of each company (… spread the risk … give him ownership!). The former are world leaders in surgical instrumentation and pumps. and Altium has something to do with printed circuit board design and the “internet of things”. With the wisdom of youth, he picked Altium to put his savings into. I am relieved to say that both stocks have done extremely well in the past 15 months but the weekly charts tell a story – with my son’s choice, ALU, the clear winner (+177%).

Fisher and Paykel Healthcare (FPH) Weekly Chart – From Incredible Charts

Altium (ALU) Weekly Chart – From Incredible Charts

Do you think Slack Investor could come up with another Altium as a choice for share investment the next time my son asks me for advice?

Chance would be a fine thing!

Do not be afraid of failure

Based upon fear of what he might discover, Slack Investor keeps most personal introspection to a minimum. However, for a number of reasons, I am particularly fond of reviewing investment performance. … and always looking to tie in a quote from a great scientist and Time Magazine’s 1999 Person of the century – Albert Einstein.

Image from laserfiche.com, quote from brainyquotes.com

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new – Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Slack Investor has made plenty of mistakes and regularly racks up the failures. The 2017 Financial Year, (1 July 2016 – 30 June 2017) annual review of his portfolio has revealed a few “shockers” in the Slack Investor Self Managed Super Fund (SMSF ) portfolio – which I not so proudly list (with their percentage losses) as my financial year investment “fails”

Sirtex (SRX) -34%
TPG Telecom (TPM) -23%
McMillan Shakespeare (MMS) -16%
G8 Education (GEM) -15%
APN Outdoor (APO) -14%
Amaysim (AYS) -11%

These companies have usually dropped in price during reporting season where a bit of bad news, or a failure to reach projected profit forecasts, triggered dramatic price falls. In all cases, these stocks were eventually sold because they breached the end of month stop losses that I had set.

Slack Investor just accepts these setbacks as part of the investment process. The type of companies that I invest in are usually

Growth companies
Have an above average “return on equity” ROE
Have an above average “price to earnings” P/E ratio – Where P/E =Current price/Historical earnings.

The reason that Slack Investor is interested in these stocks is that they usually have higher projected earnings in the years ahead and should perform better than the general market. When I am looking at a stock, the forecast P/E ratios are given much more importance than the actual P/E ratios. However, it is the nature of these stocks to be particularly sensitive to any change in the forecast earnings. If profit forecasts are not met during a reporting season (sometimes referred to as the “confession season”), then there is a mad rush for the exits and the price plummets. Slack Investor is not a day trader and prefers not to watch his stocks continuously. As a result, he is never able to pick the precise right time to bail out.

I am sure there is a cost to this monthly decision making technique – but it is a price a pay gladly. The “peace of mind” in knowing that I only have to make stock decisions once a month – and that I can ignore the daily fluctuations of share prices is priceless to me.

The upside of dealing with these type of companies is that they have excellent growth potential. Thankfully, there was some good news in the portfolio this last financial year due to some heavy lifting from the following stocks.

Corporate Travel (CTD) +66%
from thinklikeatrader.co.uk
Challenger (CGF) +57%
Altium (ALU) +37%
Macquarie Group(MQG) +36%
Commonwealth Serum Laboratory (CSL) +25%
Nick Scali (NCK) +22%

So far, the Slack Investor approach has been very fruitful. I usually own about 20 different stocks and this diversity allows my portfolio to have some individual failures and still do well.

The point of this post is that you can fail in the stock market … but also succeed. I certainly do not dwell on these failures – they are just part of investing.

For the 2017 financial year my SMSF portfolio achieved an overall return (IRR) of 19.5%.

Measurement … The Sweet Science Part 3

Paul Keating, the father of dividend imputation (franking credits) in 1987 – when he was the Treasurer for the Australian Government. He was Prime Minister 1991-96 and is shown here ready to nail to the wall any “24 carat pissants” and “mangy maggots” that cross his path. Source

Previous posts One and Two in this series show a few simple ways to calculate your portfolio performance. Slack Investor has a complicated set of portfolios with inflows and outflows during the year and, for an accurate performance figure, it is necessary to account for the time that your money is available for investment. For example, an additional $10000 invested at the start of the year should add more value to your portfolio compared to an addition in the last week of the year.

I usually calculate returns before taxes, this is sometimes referred to as “gross of tax”. An important reason to do these calculations is to compare your investments with other investments, such as a managed fund, super fund, ETF or another benchmark. With very few exceptions, performance figures are always reported pre-tax. In Australia, we are lucky enough to have our dividends mostly “franked” or tax paid at the rate of 30%. Thanks Paul Keating … you are a legend!

So I include these franking credits in my return calculations as they represent tax already paid on my Australian Dividends.

The Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and Time-Weighted Return (TWR) are two different ways of calculating portfolio performance. The IRR measures the actual return achieved by an investor’s money in a portfolio. There are also good arguments for using the TWR, Both IRR and TWR take into account the time value of money … The arguments for each are presented here –

Slack Investor likes to do things accurately … but easily! The TWR requires a portfolio valuation after every inflow/outflow and this adds an extra step to the calculation. With a spreadsheet, the IRR calculation is a simpler process. So Internal rate of Return (IRR) is what I use.

3. Portfolio with inflows and outflows – Internal Rate of Return (IRR)

The IRR is also known as the “money weighted rate of return” and the calculation is complex as it involves trial and error mathematics – for the enthusiasts further details can be found here.

The good news is that with an Excel spreadsheet, all this is taken care of by the XIRR function and you only have to enter the start value of your portfolio, dates of inflow/outflows and finish value. I have included the rather complex set of inflows and outflows based upon my SMSF portfolio and hope that your portfolio is simpler. Just use the lines that you need, but it is important that you have an initial date and balance, and a finish date and balance – (scroll down to the bottom of the spreadsheet). Inflows are entered as positive numbers and outflows as negative.

To download the Excel spreadsheet that that performs these calculations go to the Resources Page.

Of course, if this is too difficult, you can always get a bit of software to do your portfolio management and return calculations. Slack Investor likes to keep the costs of investing on the down low and Sharesight in Australia is an excellent choice for the starting investor. They offer free monitoring of investments, capital gains and performance reports if you have 10 or less investments to track. Slack Investor monitors his shares with the retired but excellent (and free) “Sunset” international version of Microsoft Money Australian Version, UK Version, US Version linked into share prices with MSMoneyQuotes. The latter is not freeware but it is $10 US well spent.

In the USA, Personal Capital is recommended.

Measurement … The Sweet Science Part 2

Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) – based on image from Wikimedia

Measuring your portfolio performance can do your head in … but Slack Investor thinks that it is important that you set aside a time to evaluate your investment performance at least once a year. I choose the end of the financial year in Australia (June 30) as a good time for these calculations … but you can chose your own date … and, if whatever you do, you do it consistently … you are going to be OK.

First of all … why measure? Lord Kelvin was a smart bloke – as discussed previously, measurement adds to our knowledge – By measuring your own portfolio performance you get an idea of how you are doing compared to other portfolios, share indicies, or managed funds. If you consistently underperform against other bench marks … then it might be time to become the ultimate Slack Investor and outsource your portfolio to Index funds.

Outsourcing into passive investment is not so bad … if the fees are kept low … “The Buff” , (aka Warren Buffet, the worlds greatest investor!) has promised to give away 99% of his $65 billion fortune when he dies – the remainder of his fortune will be invested in bonds and index funds to support his wife and family.

My advice to the trustee could not be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund. (I suggest Vanguard’s.) I believe the trust’s long-term results from this policy will be superior to those attained by most investors – whether pension funds, institutions or individuals – who employ high-fee managers. from source

Portfolio with no inflows or outflows

Lets start simply … supposing your have the most basic portfolio that reinvests its earnings with no external inflows (“cash in”, contributions, or transfer) and no external outflows (“cash out”, pension payment, or transfer) from your investment portfolio during the year and you want to do a performance calculation to benchmark yourself with other funds and investments. Most people can come up with a starting value and an ending value of their portfolios at the year (financial year) end – this includes the value of your stocks and any portfolio cash. Slack Investor prefers to calculate his returns before tax. So, tax credits such as franked dividends are included in his portfolio return.

Whatever happens inside this portfolio – buys and sells, dividends, interest, expenses, brokerage and fees – are just part of the portfolio business and will be reflected in its finishing value.

An Excel spreadsheet that will make this job easier is available on the Resources Page.

2. Portfolio with inflows and outflows – Approximation

However, for most real portfolios, there is money transferred into, or out of, your portfolio account during the year. Unlike the Beardstown Ladies, if you want to accurately portray how you are doing, it is imperative that you account for cash flows either in or out of your portfolio. If you want the least amount of work and you are willing to calculate your portfolio return approximately – the way below will work a treat. A net contributions figure is obtained (inflows – outflows) to give an ‘average’ amount of capital invested during the year and by subtracting 50% of net additions from the ending value and adding 50% to the beginning value – we get an approximate percentage return.

An Excel spreadsheet that that performs these calculations is available on the Resources Page.

Of course, in real life, rather than using averages, portfolio returns depend greatly in the timing of when you had capital available. The above is an approximation. Slack Investor chooses to go into more detail to reflect the time value of money for his portfolio. These intricate ways will be revealed in the last of this measurement series next month.

Measurement … the Sweet Science

“….when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind…”

Lord Kelvin, a Science “Hall of Fame” member was right … Particularly so when it comes to your investments. As well as some notable scientific discoveries, including the invention of the absolute temperature scale which defines the lowest possible temperature – at which atoms stop moving (-273.15C) – The wise Lord Kelvin showed a respect for measurement … and the nerd in me remembers the graffiti homage from Physics Lab toilet doors …

Absolute Zero is Cool!

Slack Investor takes the measurement of investment performance very seriously and puts some effort into doing it right. Slack Investor is old enough to recall the famous case of the Beardstown Ladies Investment Club – a club that published a book in 1994 that claimed a market-beating investment performance from a group of talented, but amateur, investors from a small town in Illinois, USA.

The Beardstown Ladies are a group that are still going, a 14-woman investment club that hit the financial headlines with their “The Beardstown Ladies’ Common-Sense Investment Guide” which included a seemingly astounding financial performance that beat the best of Wall Street with their investment returns of 23.4% pa between 1984 and 1993.

This gave other amateur investors a real kick and did wonders for their book sales. It was far better than the 14.9% gained by the index S & P 500 and almost twice the 12.6% return of the average US stock mutual fund.

However, after an independent audit, according to the LA Times, in 1998, their was a recalculation of their the performance figures amid questions about accuracy. The ladies, sadly, have an audited revised portfolio return of a 9.1% a year – a great effort … but lagging the index!

The problem was, the lovely ladies from Beardstown had innocently forgotten to account for their cash flows into the fund (Contributions) and these had been added into their portfolio performance to give an inflated figure. Their book is still for sale … and they have published four others … The US loves winners(?)!

The Slack Investor message is to not always believe what you read … wait for the independent audits … and, like Lord Kelvin, to avoid “meagre and unsatisfactory knowledge”, take some time in your measurement of portfolio performance. More of this next month …