Damien’s Portfolio performance update January 2016

I had planned to make some changes to my portfolio in December but the market volatility dissuaded me, instead I preferred to wait for the New Year to review things again.

I will review my portfolio this week and will publish full details as and when I do. In the meantime how has my £50,000 portfolio performed? Well the table below shows that my portfolio performed very well in December, a month in which equity markets and my benchmarks lost money.

Portfolio	Return % in December 2015
My portfolio	1.11
Average fund manager	-0.31
Passive fund benchmark	-0.83
FTSE 100	-2.32

 

That is a fantastic result and I was right to hold off from making any changes. So how has my portfolio performed since inception (in March 2015)?

In the chart below my portfolio is shown by the green line while the average 'Managed fund' fund manager is in red and the equivalent passive Vanguard portfolio is in blue. The FTSE 100 is the black line and is there as a gauge of market sentiment.

The chart shows the performance since I began running my portfolio in March 2015. As you can see despite the various crises we experienced in 2015, including a Greek crisis and a Chinese economic slowdown, my portfolio is heading back towards profitability.

I am very pleased with that result especially as the gap between my portfolio and the other benchmarks has widened.

How 80-20 Investor's Best of the Best Selection performed over the same period

The chart below shows how my £50k portfolio has performed versus the 80-20 Investor Selection. I have also included the explanation from last month as to why the performance figures are different.

The purpose of running my own £50,000 portfolio is to show people how they can use 80-20 Investor to run their own money easily and successfully. As such I don't religiously hold every fund in the Best of the Best Selection. I already regularly show you how the Best of the Best Selection performs so there's no point repeating the exercise with my own portfolio and just copying the Best of the Best Selection. Instead I prefer to pick around 7-8 funds from the Best of the Best Selection. I also don't always change my portfolio each month. Don't forget, the research behind the 80-20 Investor algorithm baked in the idea that the funds can be held for as long as 6 months if you wish.

The chart below shows how the 80-20 Investor Best of the Best Selection is now in profit, which is a great result given that markets are down. The divergence between my £50,000 portfolio and the 80-20 Investor portfolio is almost solely down to September when I didn't make any fund switches at all. The chart is a great reminder of the power of process.