Our Funds Boat, week + .003%, YTD + 4.78% Mega & Fickle 4.7.12

catch22

Howdy,

Again, a thank you to all who post the links and also start and participate in the many fine commentaries woven into the message threads.
For those who don't know; I ramble away about this and that, at least once each week.

NOTE: For those who visit MFO, this portfolio is designed for retirement, capital preservation and to stay ahead of inflation creep. This is not a buy and hold portfolio, and is subject to change on any given day; based upon perceptions of market directions. All assets in this portfolio are in tax-sheltered accounts; and any fund distributions are reinvested in the funds. Gains or losses are computed from actual account values.

While looking around..... Mega, as in the recent lottery; and the word fickle indicates: is erratic, undecided, or unpredictable.

A few personal notes for reminders, or for those reading this for the first time. Surely there are those who view this portfolio mix as a possible clunker, not containing enough forward growth and/or value. In the current investment environment as this house views this area; the first and primary aspect is to retain capital. We will surely miss opportunities and turns in this sector or that, which will cause losses in some areas and gains in others. With this we must ride and adjust to the best of our ability. Also to this, with our misses and hits we find our portfolio in company with bright minds over the past few years; hedge funds, J.P. Morgan (in 2010, spring; the 10 year Treasury will move to 5%) and Pimco Total Return (PTTRX) missing the Treasury run and other bright minds on a global scale attempting to do the same thing. Horn blowing; no ! We all get lucky and find our monies in the right place at the right time, eh?

To the Mega: Would this portfolio look different if we were a Mega Million lottery winner? Without a doubt. Would we feel sad about a 20% loss to the downside, if we were farily wealthy? But, if we still had $8 million remaining of a $10 million portfolio; we would surely not be stretched into a poor lifestyle. Some many things are from one's perspective, eh?

The fickle side will be an addendum, as the write ran into the text limiter.............................

As usual, the markets and the sectors within the markets were scattered every which way this past week. I will note a few areas:

--- U.S. equity funds = +.45 through - 1.77 % (week avg= -.79/YTD +13.2%)
--- Int'l equity funds = +.32 through - 3.1 % (week avg= - 1.63/YTD +12.6%)
--- Sector equity funds = + .94 through - 6.6 % (week avg= - 1.09/YTD +12.8%)
--- Investment grade bond funds = +.74 through - .0% (week avg= +.15/YTD +.3%)
--- HY/HI bond funds = + .0 through - .41 % (week avg= -.23/YTD +4.9%)
--- Multi sector bond funds = >>>to be revised
--- Emerging markets bond funds = >>>to be revised

Average of 200 combined funds across all sectors above (week avg= -.73/YTD +9.4%)

The above numbers provide some value as to how one chooses to arrange their portfolio, not only relative to weighting of sectors; but also how confident one feels with using very narrow sector investments or broad based funds, be they active managed funds, indexes or etf's. The above list and the variances of gains or losses, of course; are nothing new. But as this house moves along with our portfolio, we continue to reshape and attempt to understand methods of how to best provide for positive returns going forward.

I have added a few blips related to our portfolio and market observations at the below SELLs/BUYs and Portfolio Thoughts.

SELLs/BUYs THIS PAST WEEK:

--- NONE ---

Portfolio Thoughts:

Our holdings had a + .003 % move this past week. Yes, that is 3/1000's. Well.......we'll sit with our current mix to find what this Monday brings. Our 50% reduction in FSAGX several weeks ago still finds the remaining holding to get whacked (-6.6% last week). Most of our equity holdings were down a bit last week; as well as the high yield bond sectors; while the mixed bag of other bonds were flat to slightly positive. To those holding 50% or more in equity postions, I salute you; as you should be at a most favorable YTD return, far surpassing our performance.

The old Funds Boat is at anchor, riding in the small waves and watching the weather. To the high praise of MFO and the members, it is very difficult to find a topic to note here that has not been placed into the discussion boards. Excellence, as usual.

I have retained the following links for those who may choose to do their own holdings comparison against the fund types noted.

This 1st link to Bloomberg is for their list of balanced funds; although I don't always agree with the placement of fund styles in their categories.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/data?Sector=888&pid=invest_mutualfunds&ListBy=YTD&Term=1

These next two links are for conservative and moderate fund leaders YTD, per MSN.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/partsub/funds/topfundresults.asp?Symbol=$HF&Category=CA

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/partsub/funds/topfundresults.asp?Category=MA&Type=&symbol=$HF

A reflection upon the links above; we attempt to establish a "benchmark" for our portfolio to help us "see" how our funds are performing. Aside from viewing many funds within the balanced/flexible funds rankings (the above links), a quick and dirty group of 4 funds we watch for benchmarking are the following:
***Note: these YTD's per M*

VWINX ....YTD = + 3.39% - .30 week
PRPFX ....YTD = + 4.40% - .82 week
SIRRX .....YTD = + 2.07% + .09 week
HSTRX ....YTD = - .34% - .26 week

None of these 4 are twins to our holdings, but we do watch these as a type of rough guage.

Such are the numerous battles with investments attempting to capture a decent return and minimize the risk.

We live and invest in interesting times, eh?

Hey, I probably forgot something; and hopefully the words make some sense.

Comments and questions always welcomed.

Good fortune to you, yours and the investments.

Take care,

Catch

---Below is what M* x-ray has attempted to sort for our portfolio, as of March 9, 2012---

U.S.Stocks 10.5%
Foreign Stocks 6.8%
Bonds 78.5% ***
Other 4.2%
Not Classified 0.00%

***about 35% of the bond total are high yield category (equity related cousins)

---This % listing is kinda generic, by fund "name"

-Investment grade bond funds 26.8%
-Diversified bond funds 19.8%
-HY/HI bond funds 23.2%
-Total bond funds 17.8%
-Foreign EM/debt bond funds 4.3%
-U.S./Int'l equity/speciality funds 8.1%

This is our current list: (NOTE: I have added a speciality grouping below for a few of fund types)

---High Yield/High Income Bond funds

FAGIX Fid Capital & Income
SPHIX Fid High Income
FHIIX Fed High Income
DIHYX TransAmerica HY

---Total Bond funds

FTBFX Fid Total
PTTRX Pimco Total

---Investment Grade Bonds

APOIX Amer. Cent. TIPS Bond
DGCIX Delaware Corp. Bd
FBNDX Fid Invest Grade
FINPX Fidelity TIPS Bond
OPBYX Oppenheimer Core Bond

---Global/Diversified Bonds

FSICX Fid Strategic Income
FNMIX Fid New Markets
DPFFX Delaware Diversified
TEGBX Templeton Global (load waived)
LSBDX Loomis Sayles

---Speciality Funds (sectors or mixed allocation)

FRIFX Fidelity Real Estate Income (bond/equity mix)
FDLSX Fidelity Select Leisure
FSAGX Fidelity Select Precious Metals
RNCOX RiverNorth Core Opportunity (bond/equity)

---Equity-Domestic/Foreign

FDVLX Fidelity Value
FSLVX Fidelity Lg. Cap Value
FLPSX Fidelity Low Price Stock
MACSX Matthews Asia Growth-Income

Ted

Required reading for a fund collector, rather than a fund investor.
http://www.marketwatch.com/Story/story/print?guid=8FBD86D4-7919-11E1-8E2F-002128049AD6

Sven

I invest in 12 funds including a stable value, and that is too many to keep up with. Every time I buy a new fund, I will sell one.

catch22

Hi Ted,

I will agree about collecting funds without motive for an investor.

Regarding our mix, and the related sectors we currently favor; that the choices in the given sectors are from 8 retirement accts; 4 of which are not yet in place for a rollover.

I.E., the 4 HY/HI bond funds are from a similar sector, active managed and don't always follow the same paths. Tracking the 4 is no more difficult than just 1; and if one finds the general HY/HI bond sector moving too much in one direction or the other, a quick check of the 4 funds will indentify their movement relationship to this sector.

In summary, we do choose to have exposure to the HY/HI bond sector and must choose from a minimum of 5 different vendors. A multi fund mix in a given sector is a method we find to be a suitable "smoother" for a given sector.

Regards,
Catch

hank

I don't accept that there's one good answer to this. Am spread among 5-6 fund houses & typically hold around 15 funds including a couple money market. Reasons? (1) Like spreading risk around - not having all the eggs in 1 basket no matter how good the fund house (2) When increasing or decreasing equity allocation less likely to run afoul of frequent trading regs - essentially greater flexibility to manage allocations.