17.54%

12.67%

What makes you assume this? My first instinct was that people are quoting true "performance", not simple % change calcs of year over year values, which as you point out would obviously be flawed due to capital adds.

Maybe I'm wrong though...

At any rate - Happy New Year. It's rainy here today, was hoping to get the 911 out for a drive. Oh well...

I don`t understand this formula. The total value of the portfolio does increase every year, but the the total amount of $ contributed over the entire year is a constant or so. Hence the yield of the portfolio would get higher every year (due to compounding). This makes it impossible to compare portfolios of different ages. This can`t be the right formula.

Anyhow, my old Vanguard 401k did a poor 5% this year (without any contributions). But I found the culprit VWNDX and I replaced it with MGEMX that grew 43% this year.

My TIA-CREF did a lot better, but I can`t figure exactly how much because their crummy website does not provide YTD personalized returns, and the calculation is not straightforward as discussed above.

Aurel

Hot Tip 2008

Sell EVERYTHING ...stocks, mutual funds, CD's, gold/silver/platinum bullion you are hoarding, take out a second/third mortgage, sell all the collector cars, pimp out the wives/daughters...etc.

Ethanol
Corn futures
(go long);)

My average annual return (IRR) for 2007 was 10.53%.

My best performer was XRAY at 49.92% for the year. My worst performer was AWSHX at 4.22%. Have others with performance scattered in between these two.

The formula for calulating Average Annual Return (aka IRR) is:

IRR Calculation (from Quicken) *Every investment transaction in the register is essentially a loop in the summation formula.

n - 1

(SUM) cfi * (1 + r) ((ti - to)/365) -1

i =0
cfi = cash flow or dollar amount of ith item.
to = date of ith item (in days).
n = # of transactions for this security in report range.
ti = # of days in report range.
r = rate of interest (solving for r).

The IRR is calculated at the point when the net present value of cash outflows (the cost of the investment) and cash inflows (returns on the investment) equal zero.

All I have is the 401K with John Hancock, I check the last twelve months and it gives my rate of return. For mine it was 5.9% Jan 1 to Jan 1. This is just a little bit better than my wifes CDs. Like some other people here I am sure, It was doing fantastic until June. If I just load in the last six months it is -1.53%.
Whatever, it is what I have.

Motion, Porsche-O-Phile, fintstone, and especially Sammyg2:

Your reported performance for 2007 was nothing short of marvelous. Each of you more than doubled the over-all market performance/results for 2007. I am impressed.

So please do all of us obviously not-so-bright investors a huge favor and list your picks for the coming year. Nothing too detailed (it might confuse us) just maybe list your one top pick along with your next 2 or 3 picks.

Be sure to include anything for 2008 that contributied to your great 2007 performance: be they stocks, bonds, mutuals, puts, takes, indexes, REIT's, grain or commodity markets...whatever.

Thanks much.

401k did 18% this year
Other investment did 7% tax free
Other #2 did very well at 23% tax free
Other #3... well it doubled in size in the last six months, so guess you could say it did very well. Also is tax free.

My 401k is run by Riverfront. It did very well this year and I am investing in the 70% conservative and 30% mild risk catagory.

Actually I am a bit disappointed with the performance of mine. I made 26.32% in 2006, 13.63% in 2005, 20.00% in 2004, and 37.94 in 2003. Easier than falling off a log. A freaking index fund. Any idiot could do it...heck, even you could probably do it...but you are likely too old to take much risk.

Anyone not making better than the "over-all market" really is an "obviously not-so-bright investor "

I have 4 different portfolios, only one of which is an active 401k that I still contribute to.
It was not included in my estimate but your point has some value. If someone has $10,000 or even $50,000, contributions will make a big difference in the percentage. but it someone has $1.5 mil and is contributing $12k a year, it really doesn't make much difference in the big picture, does it?
It depends on how much we are talkng about. If someone had $500 and they are up 100% on the year, it isn't goint to change their life. But if they had $500k and double it, pretty soon we're talking real money ;)

I wouldn't necesarily say it reflects on their intelligence. Some folks just don't want to mess with it so they stick their money somewhere that is basically zero maintenance and very safe. No risk, no hassle.
They don't want to get into it. Maybe they are so busy running a very sucessful business and don't have time to mess with investing. Who knows?
Now if someone is playing the market seriously and averaging 10% ROCE, something is wrong. Even a good mutual fund should beat the dow jones over time and average 12% in the long run.

I've made no secret of my investments on this board over the past 5 or so years.
Mostly VLO, TSO, and SUN. I've messed a bit with apple, yahoo and qualcomm in the 90's, all with some sucesss but nothing mind-boggling.
I took everything I had and in 1998 put it in UDS at $22, which became VLO. It went off the charts doubling about 6 times and splittling twice. I took some of that money early on and got into TSO at around $9 IIRC. I rode it up to around $50, then out and back in several times. I only timed it wrong twice that I remember but didn't lose much, just missed potential.
Now onto 2007: Last December I sold half my VLO and bought back into TSO at $71. In March I sold for around $105 IIRC (it peaked at $125, i got out a little early). I got back in a few months ago at $53.80 after the split and sold after 10 days for $65 and change. Thanks Kirk Kekorian. A quick $70k profit in 10 days, that helps. My VLo was up quite a bit over 2007, I got out in late March and back in around halloween with a couple of short trades inbetween. When out I was shuffling the money between vangard mutuals, precious metals (missed the big jump but still made a little) and money market.

I tend to trade these independent oil stocks seasonally. I like to get in around December and out early to late spring, and back in off and on depending on market conditions, fuel supplies, expected demand, etc. I am almost always out of them in October and November. They tend to drop after September.

Now one thing I do religiously, is treat this as paper money only, not real. I don't pull any out, i don't spend it, ever. I simply re-invest it over and over. It is for my retirement and is not to be touched no matter what before then.

I recently bought back into TSO at around $47 (1/3 of portfolio) VLO at $66 (1/4), and the rest is currently split up between three vangard funds. We'll see how I do. I expect TSO to hit $75 by April and VLO to hit $80. It's all a big guess tho, don't take my word on it. It could go down as easily as us but so far it hasn't.

DISCLAIMER: I'm currently employed by one of these companies, but all information I use and have access to is public information, absolutely no insider information. Ever. I'm too far down the food chain for that. Mostly I use the DOE energy information website http://www.eia.doe.gov/ and previous experience and knowledge of the industry.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199215594.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1199215603.jpg

The problem with your logic is this. We each contribute to the average. Think about it... What happens to the average if everyone exceedes the average by 10%?
This is why most mutual funds do not outperform the market average over time. It's statistically very difficult to do.

10/31/06 to 10/31/07 mine was up 18.07%.
sammy, I wish I had your confidence to hold three stocks. My account is fairly widespread, heaviest weight in individual US stocks and mutual funds. I fear most of my additional investment money for '07 was gambled in oil/gas drilling ventures. Back to the market for me in '08.
Jim

I went back and found this post I made in 2004. It was in a thread about gas prices going up:
here's a link to a thread on PPOT about my investments moves with TSO and VLO.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-discussions/334646-tso-vlo-stocks-still-going-up.html?highlight=ultramar

I'm nowhere near smart enough to calculate this stuff myself. Fidelity tells me the starting bal, my contribution and the portfolio gain. I'm sure my #'s are peanuts compared to most, but I wont turn down positive returns.

That's the game we all play; asset allocation. Since the market is made up of many small markets where you are is critical to out perform, obviously. I've been dusting the crystal ball today to make the new picks for 2008.

The overall market is not managed at all. The least bit of management of a portfolio should easily improve upon that. If using a fund...any fund that does not historically make significantly more than the market should not even be considered. If buying discrete stocks, just using a little discipline, a fairly tight stop loss, a little research, and a bit of rotation should significantly increase performance over the market average.

Okay then, so exactly what index fund will all of your investment cash be in this year?

Just want to get it on the record.

Thanx much.