Current market carnage - anyone selling or buying?

Voyager2002

Linton wrote: »

mmm - looks like it wasnt really an equity fund as it focussed on Basic Materials and hedged away a significant amount of correlation with the wider S&P500. See here. It doesnt sound like a mainstream choice for any investor.

Yikes: and at the time of buying I chose to avoid Basic Materials! It was described as emphasising US Manufacturing Industry. I did note that many of its investments were in companies whose products assisted investors holding gold, but thought that was simply the section of US industry that was being held at that particular time. If I had known about the hedging I would certainly not have bought it.

masonic

Rollinghome wrote: »

If comparing yourself with a professional fund manager then achieving a return of 60% despite being 30% overweight in EMs where the sector has lost 22% in 5 years, doesn't suggest too much wrong with your timing. If a diversified portfolio then certainly not in comparison to the average return for UTs in any of the IMA Mixed Investment sectors either - the best being the 40-85% sector with an average total return before platform fees of 22% over 5 years (4.05% annualised). So 91% is rather good.

Sure, I shouldn't be complaining about my result overall, but most of the active decisions I've made in the past year or so have had a negative effect on performance. Decisions like rotating into TEM, and buying CYN as discussed above.

Linton wrote: »

Can you divulge where the 60% in 5 years come from? Not from EM and Natural Resources.

Most of my gains have come from Europe (JEO), my S&P 500 ETF (iShares Core, was Vanguard), Marlborough UK Micro and Franklin UK mid cap (which I sold along with Invesco Perpetual Income and combined into Woodford Equity Income last year). In other words, pretty much all of my developed markets holdings

Linton

masonic wrote: »

......
Most of my gains have come from Europe (JEO), my S&P 500 ETF (iShares Core, was Vanguard), Marlborough UK Micro and Franklin UK mid cap (which I sold along with Invesco Perpetual Income and combined into Woodford Equity Income last year). In other words, pretty much all of my developed markets holdings

Good choices - I also hold JEO and Marlborough Micro (both small company funds), but have only done so for the past 2 years or so missing out on the large gains earlier.

But dont you know you are doing it all wrong investing in those expensive managed funds? You cant possibly beat the market.

racing_blue

But anyone can beat the market, if they just set the retrospectoscope to a favourable bearing. Between January and May 2015, for example, my portfolio rocked. After that- not so much.

tg99

racing_blue wrote: »

But anyone can beat the market, if they just set the retrospectoscope to a favourable bearing. Between January and May 2015, for example, my portfolio rocked. After that- not so much.

Yes but I assume he/she is referring to a material longer term timeframe rather than just five months.

Linton

tg99 wrote: »

Yes but I assume he/she is referring to a material longer term timeframe rather than just five months.

The sub-thread was talking abut 5 years -see post 343.

Sapphire

eskbanker wrote: »

There are always wars going on somewhere - markets will inevitably get short term jitters from time to time depending on how serious or significant these are perceived to be but ultimately demand for commodities, pharmaceuticals, banks and the myriad of other goods and services continues so there's no reason to believe that wars equal negative market sentiment if that's what you were implying?

Thank you for the response – and I wasn't implying anything. The question was what it was, i.e. I was curious.

gadgetmind

Linton wrote: »

Hardly - which sector would you have put it in to compare against the equivalent index fund?

It's a generic technique and not something specific to this fund.

gadgetmind

Linton wrote: »

You cant possibly beat the market.

It's technically possible yet statistically unlikely.

racing_blue

I stop to watch some guys throwing dice.

Al has this complicated active rolling technique which involves adjusting for barometric pressure, wind speed, and friction co-efficient of the tabletop.

Bud just drops his dice on the floor.

While I am watching, Al throws a 6 and Bud scores a 3. How impressed should I be by Al's method?