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'No-look November'.....

A helpful place to also put any annual reports etc, of your own portfolios
CaptainFlack
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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#97424

Postby CaptainFlack » November 21st, 2017, 8:32 am

Very confident I'll get through to December now. Managed to totally ignore the noise of one regular investment, and two (assuming they've happened already this month) dividend payments that would have been reinvested.

What I am quite pleased about is that I've had time to make a decision about rebalancing an aspect of the portfolio. I generally invest in shares, but I do have a couple of funds that I've held for around 20 years. I also have a fund that I currently add to periodically with the feed in tariff payments I receiver quarterly. It's this fund I've decided to move. It's currently invested in UK assets, and I've decided that as I have a 15 year time frame on this, I can make a move into an ETF talked about here on these boards recently about robotics, automation and AI. Slightly missed the boat over the past couple of years, but this area is clearly going to advance over the coming years. I'm annoyed that the global focussed ETF I've decided to go with barely includes any UK assets, and I hope the budget tomorrow will start to see investments made in this country as well.

My problem is that having made the decision to do it, performed the research to support the decision, I now can't do anything for another ten days. Still, ten days isn't going to make much difference and in fact could well go in my favour.

Cheers.

Capt. Flack

Itsallaguess
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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#97610

Postby Itsallaguess » November 21st, 2017, 6:03 pm

CaptainFlack wrote:
Very confident I'll get through to December now. Managed to totally ignore the noise of one regular investment, and two (assuming they've happened already this month) dividend payments that would have been reinvested.


Me too now, I think.

I'll just have 'Daren't-look December' to work through then!

:D

Itsallaguess

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#97739

Postby CaptainFlack » November 22nd, 2017, 9:16 am

Itsallaguess wrote:I'll just have 'Daren't-look December' to work through then!

:D

Itsallaguess


I rather think it will be my default mode. This experiment has shown me that micro monitoring my long term buy and hold portfolio is a waste of my time. We all know this anyway, but simply can't help ourselves.

Probably an opportunity to hold an internal bet with myself each month. Has the portfolio risen or dropped, and did I guess correctly? Pint if it get it right, and a pint to celebrate a rising portfolio, and a pint to soften the blow of a falling portfolio. I hold Marstons, so it won't do any harm.

Cheers.

Capt. Flack

Itsallaguess
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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#98527

Postby Itsallaguess » November 24th, 2017, 2:51 pm

Given that we've nearly only got four more trading days left in 'No-Look November' to navigate, my thoughts have naturally turned to wondering what my portfolio will look like when I eventually turn the lights back on during early December.

I expect there to have been a relatively dramatic shift in value, but I only say 'relatively dramatic' based against the more usual portfolio-value changes I was used to seeing when I previously monitored the portfolio every day.

Obviously during a daily view, the normal fluctuations are usually relatively small, but I expect missing a month of daily views might display a more dramatic movement in value...

So, with the above in mind, and to steel myself against my expectations, I am going to carry out a 'per-month-valuation-movement' calculation, to see what the previous year's month-to-month valuation movement was, so that I can then compare the 'view-less' November movement against those previous valuation changes.

So I'm hoping to come up with some example figures that might look something like this -

Oct 1 - Nov 1 = +1.3%
Sep 1 - Oct 1 = -0.9%
Aug 1 - Sep 1 = +0.8%
Jul 1 - Aug 1 = -1.4%


(all the above figures are examples, and are not yet my calculated figures)

Something for later on tonight, I think, when I've poured something nice into a glass. I'll post my findings here, of course, but I'd be interested to see any other stats based on the above, from anyone else's portfolios if they can easily muster the data?

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#98661

Postby Itsallaguess » November 24th, 2017, 9:22 pm

Well, that was an interesting exercise....

Here's the monthly capital-value changes of my portfolio over the past year or so -

Aug 2016 - Sep 2016	0.58%
Sep 2016 - Oct 2016 0.37%
Oct 2016 - Nov 2016 -1.42%
Nov 2016 - Dec 2016 2.11%
Dec 2016 - Jan 2017 -1.41%
Jan 2017 - Feb 2017 1.05%
Feb 2017 - Mar 2017 1.83%
Mar 2017 - Apr 2017 0.84%
Apr 2017 - May 2017 1.44%
May 2017 - Jun 2017 -1.74%
Jun 2017 - Jul 2017 0.07%
Jul 2017 - Aug 2017 -0.98%
Aug 2017 - Sep 2017 -0.40%
Sep 2017 - Oct 2017 1.38%

It's a bit rough-and-ready in places, as there's been a number of capital movements and trades between my various accounts that complicate things somewhat in terms of capturing a 100% complete picture, but I think overall it's caught the general feel for the types of month-to-month movements in capital value that I should expect to see when I take a look at my portfolio in a week's time.

It's interesting that the biggest drop was nearly 1.8% in a month, with the largest rise seen to be around 2.1%.

I think before I'd done the above exercise, if I'd turned on the lights next Friday and seen a 2% or 3% drop in value then I'd have been bitterly disappointed, but at least now I know that there's a lot of existing similar noise in there already, but still a general overall trend of general sturdiness over a 12 month period in total.

Not sure if this is interesting to others, but it's certainly given me a good taste of some capital-fluctuation figures that I don't tend to see normally, even with what's been a fairly high level of monitoring in the past.

Looking a little deeper, it's clear that some of my income-related Investment Trusts have been holding the fort in capital value terms, and had I not had a good level of IT-related 'ballast' in my HYP, I do think I'd have seen much worse figures than the ones presented above. It's not been a good year for HYP equity shares on their own overall, I don't think.

Anyhow, the above certainly means that I'll be continuing with my overall graph-representation of portfolio capital-value in my portfolio spreadsheet, rather than concentrating on the actual types of figures above, as the chart looks much better than those figures suggest at first glance!

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#98675

Postby tjh290633 » November 24th, 2017, 11:04 pm

I've looked at the monthly change in my income unit values:

Month End   Unit Value   Change
31-Oct-16 6.37
30-Nov-16 6.19 -2.89%
30-Dec-16 6.44 4.12%
31-Jan-17 6.31 -2.08%
28-Feb-17 6.55 3.89%
31-Mar-17 6.66 1.57%
28-Apr-17 6.62 -0.59%
31-May-17 6.84 3.39%
30-Jun-17 6.50 -4.97%
31-Jul-17 6.45 -0.80%
31-Aug-17 6.49 0.55%
29-Sep-17 6.44 -0.78%
31-Oct-17 6.46 0.41%

A bit more volatile than your changes. But then, I have only equities in my portfolio.

TJH

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#98676

Postby tjh290633 » November 24th, 2017, 11:09 pm

I suppose I ought to do it for my accumulation units as well:

Month Ending   Unit Value   Change
31-Oct-16 24.06
30-Nov-16 23.43 -2.63%
30-Dec-16 24.37 4.04%
31-Jan-17 24.00 -1.54%
28-Feb-17 24.98 4.11%
31-Mar-17 25.47 1.94%
28-Apr-17 25.37 -0.40%
31-May-17 26.39 4.03%
30-Jun-17 25.30 -4.13%
31-Jul-17 25.22 -0.31%
31-Aug-17 25.46 0.93%
29-Sep-17 25.38 -0.31%
31-Oct-17 25.66 1.11%

A little bit different.

TJH

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#98683

Postby Itsallaguess » November 25th, 2017, 6:25 am

tjh290633 wrote:I've looked at the monthly change in my income unit values:

Month End   Unit Value   Change
31-Oct-16 6.37
30-Nov-16 6.19 -2.89%
30-Dec-16 6.44 4.12%
31-Jan-17 6.31 -2.08%
28-Feb-17 6.55 3.89%
31-Mar-17 6.66 1.57%
28-Apr-17 6.62 -0.59%
31-May-17 6.84 3.39%
30-Jun-17 6.50 -4.97%
31-Jul-17 6.45 -0.80%
31-Aug-17 6.49 0.55%
29-Sep-17 6.44 -0.78%
31-Oct-17 6.46 0.41%


Thanks Terry, for both the above figures and also for the later accumulation figures as well.

I hope we're able to get a few more sets of sample data to go on if anyone else is also able to easily dig their monthly portfolio value-change figures out and post them here.

tjh290633 wrote:
A bit more volatile than your changes. But then, I have only equities in my portfolio.


Now be careful there, you're almost beginning to sound like there might be a recognised positive element to holding a percentage of income-related Investment Trusts as part of my HYP!!*

:D

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

* A little tongue-in-cheek, of course, as the time-scales and sample size clearly do no such thing at this stage.....still....it does make you wonder.....

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#98692

Postby TUK020 » November 25th, 2017, 8:40 am

Itsallaguess,
apologies in advance in this question comes across as a bit blunt...
What does tracking this market noise enable you to do differently?

tuk020

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#98699

Postby Itsallaguess » November 25th, 2017, 9:07 am

TUK020 wrote:
Itsallaguess, apologies in advance in this question comes across as a bit blunt...

What does tracking this market noise enable you to do differently?


Nothing blunt about that good question TUK, so don't worry about that side of things at all. I think some of the greatest insights I've had personally regarding the old Fool site and this one too are where I'm asked to question or justify my own motives, which will hopefully lead to a better understanding one way or another, which has got to be a good thing for me personally, so thanks for asking!

The reason I'm interested in having a broad understanding of this market-noise over the past 12-month period is simply so that I'm in a better position when I take a look in early December at my own portfolio, having not tracked either individual share-prices or the overall portfolio value for what will then be a whole month.

If I'd not looked at my previous month-to-month changes for the past year, I'd have had nothing to judge what would then be a single November-to-December portfolio value-shift, and I suppose what I'm now hoping to see is that the November-to-December overall-portfolio value-shift is within spitting distance of what I now know to be the previous year's month-to-month variations.

On top of that, and the reason for me raising this point here, is that I thought the above might be similarly worthwhile for others here that are also taking a 'No-Look-November' approach, so at the same time as I'd be genuinely curious to see what others have recorded regarding their past year's worth of month-on-month changes, I'd also be interested to see where their November-to-December variation sits within those previously noted valuation-shifts.

These things may not interest others, and to be honest a little bit of this is quite likely to be a way to keep our hands and minds busy over the final period of the month's sabbatical, but I don't think there's any harm to doing this, and given that we'd not have anything else to compare the November-to-December valuation shift to if we don't have these figures available, I thought in the spirit of this exercise that it would be a useful item of record if nothing else.

I actually propose to do this monthly sabbatical next year at the same time, as well as alter my portfolio-management activities too, so having something to look back on is always useful if these things are ever thought to be worth repeating, I hope.

Thanks for the question though. Whilst I don't really expect the above explanation to mean much to anyone not carrying out this exercise, I hope at least that it helps to explain my own motives as to why I thought it might be useful.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#98707

Postby TUK020 » November 25th, 2017, 10:04 am

Thanks for the courteous answer, Itsallaguess.

Your explanation was clear and reasoned.
However, it does lead to the question of "Have you thought of a no-look 2018?" (or whatever the appropriate period between top ups is).

I am coming at this from the other direction - while I fairly regularly at key stock price movements, I rarely take an organised look at my whole portfolio, and I am thinking of trying to discipline myself to do an organised review about once every 3 months - which coincides with having top up funds that I may want to deploy

tuk020

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#98782

Postby tjh290633 » November 25th, 2017, 2:15 pm

TUK020 wrote:Itsallaguess,
apologies in advance in this question comes across as a bit blunt...
What does tracking this market noise enable you to do differently?

tuk020

It's not really a question of tracking it, more a case of avoiding it misleading you. Everything is relative, and if the tide goes out, all boats fall with it. In the case of shares it is movement relative to the market which matters, and so by using your median holding value (or the average holding value) as your own index, you get a better idea of whether share movements are real or just reflecting overall market movement.

Most of the the time, that median or average value will track the market to a greater or lesser extent. If you are being successful, then it may well outperform the market.

TJH

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#98787

Postby Itsallaguess » November 25th, 2017, 2:33 pm

TUK020 wrote:
However, it does lead to the question of "Have you thought of a no-look 2018?" (or whatever the appropriate period between top ups is).


Well to be honest, coming at this as someone who's been used to carrying out really quite regular portfolio-monitoring processes, and by that I mean at the very least once a day, and often many times more than that, then I really did think that just setting out on a months-long quest like this was quite a stretch-target to achieve....

With four market-days left to go, I'm chuffed to bits that I really do think I'm going to get over the line, but now you're making me feel like the lass on the supermarket checkout this morning, when I proudly told her that I'd actually made a start on my Christmas shopping, only for her to tell me that she's had all hers wrapped for weeks.....

Are we really not allowed to feel good about ourselves for any length of time nowadays! :D :D

TUK020 wrote:
I am coming at this from the other direction - while I fairly regularly at key stock price movements, I rarely take an organised look at my whole portfolio, and I am thinking of trying to discipline myself to do an organised review about once every 3 months - which coincides with having top up funds that I may want to deploy


I'm in complete agreement that my previous habits were far too frequent to be useful, and I think that it was simply both a waste of time and a waste of potential emotional-energy. It's for that reason that I'm wanting to carry out this rather public exercise in self-control, and at the same time see if anyone who might think they are in a similar boat to me would like to also test themselves a little bit and perhaps start to think if we can alter our habitual behaviour in a positive way.

A couple of us earlier in this thread have posted some thoughts around what those longer terms plans might be, and certainly for me I think I'll try to aim for a good weekly-look from December onwards, which will probably happen on a Friday as that aligns with some available time I might have, and also nicely wraps up a market-week anyway.

Even if I could go from my previous habits, through a 'No-Look-November', and then just end up at a weekly monitoring situation, I'll still be over the moon when compared to my previous habits, so this really is 'baby-steps' stuff for me, but is something I do want to continually improve on, which is why I've suggested the 'No-Look-November' in the first place, as an initial step towards that goal.

Thanks for your interest, and the gentle poking that's enabled me to explain my position. I just hope you're not frowning as much as the lass this morning, when she bazookered my Christmas-present-pride in seconds! :D

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#98895

Postby TUK020 » November 26th, 2017, 8:59 am

Itsallaguess,

Itsallaguess wrote:

Thanks for your interest, and the gentle poking that's enabled me to explain my position. I just hope you're not frowning as much as the lass this morning, when she bazookered my Christmas-present-pride in seconds! :D

Cheers,

Itsallaguess


I am frowning, but because you have reminded me that I need to do something about Christmas present shopping.....
tuk020

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#99280

Postby Itsallaguess » November 27th, 2017, 4:18 pm

So - three more trading days to go until the end of 'No-Look November', and we've only gone and nearly done it!!

I'd be extremely grateful if no-one asks me what I've done constructively with all the extra time I've had due to the lack of portfolio-monitoring....

Maybe we need a 'Just Do-it December'!!!!!

:O)

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#99286

Postby Raptor » November 27th, 2017, 4:36 pm

Itsallaguess wrote:So - three more trading days to go until the end of 'No-Look November', and we've only gone and nearly done it!!

I'd be extremely grateful if no-one asks me what I've done constructively with all the extra time I've had due to the lack of portfolio-monitoring....

Maybe we need a 'Just Do-it December'!!!!!

:O)

Cheers,

Itsallaguess


I went on holiday for a week. Rebuilt my daughters portfolio with HYPTUSS 11.40 (does that count against me for No-look november), adding formulas and changing the design to get rid of most of the buttons (do not want to overwhelm her) and changed everything on my Laptop as my main PC has decided it will not allow any browser to work and had managed to delete some files, so laptop has been resurrected from its position of back-up to "MAIN". Oh and currently have a "consctructive" e-mail exchange with FITBIT as they dropped support on their connect software with Vista and none of my Samsung devices have the correct Android software available on them, so are not -compatible, even though there web-site says both my phone and tablet are compatible ( was dealing with their developers in San Fran in Jan/Feb as they did not have access to a tab 3, before they agreed it will not work). How hard can it be for them to send me an "old" version of connect that will work with Vista (not asking them to support it). End Rant... Off to do the ironing to calm down. (holiday washing)...

Next divi payment on 30th, 3 of them. Means I have a buy/top-up amount available. Need an IT to buy...... Just in time for Just Do-It December. :lol:

Raptor.

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#99477

Postby evilbungle » November 28th, 2017, 10:25 am

So near yet so far - With just two days left of the challenge I only went and failed.

Total stupidity I was calculating something and went and opened the Tab on my finances sheet that downloads the share prices and bang, there it was.

All though in all honesty the fact that I made it to the 28th was less about will power and more about a giant **** up at work that has prevented me from doing just about everything for the last four weeks, but still I could have achieved it by default.

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#99498

Postby CaptainFlack » November 28th, 2017, 11:09 am

evilbungle wrote:So near yet so far - With just two days left of the challenge I only went and failed.

Total stupidity I was calculating something and went and opened the Tab on my finances sheet that downloads the share prices and bang, there it was.

All though in all honesty the fact that I made it to the 28th was less about will power and more about a giant **** up at work that has prevented me from doing just about everything for the last four weeks, but still I could have achieved it by default.


Commiserations. Was it a pleasant surprise or a disaster?

I need to do the monthly percentage increase / decrease exercise. If my numbers mirror Itsallaguess', then I won't be upset, and it will at least prove the pointlessness of hourly / daily monitoring.

Cheers.

Capt. Flack

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#99510

Postby evilbungle » November 28th, 2017, 11:50 am

CaptainFlack wrote:Commiserations. Was it a pleasant surprise or a disaster?

I need to do the monthly percentage increase / decrease exercise. If my numbers mirror Itsallaguess', then I won't be upset, and it will at least prove the pointlessness of hourly / daily monitoring.

Cheers.

Capt. Flack


The surprise for me was that it was neither a pleasant surprise or a disaster my varience was less than 1% (Luckily I had already moved Carillion from my HYP to my TRYPE portfolio so there movements didn't have an effect.)

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Re: 'No-look November'.....

#100236

Postby CaptainFlack » November 30th, 2017, 2:49 pm

Very interesting to see the figures produced so far.

I run a portfolio that includes equities (HYPable and other), funds (usually deliberately volatile), premium bonds, a bit of cash and a whole bunch of unlisted companies. I still have a few years to go and have made no effort to reduce risk.

The figures here are from the equities and funds. The figures are not 100% accurate as I've added money to the portfolio over the previous year, but because it's not unitised I've reduced the monthly figure each time by the amount invested cumulatively. It's also complicated by a pension transfer from an old personal pension to a SIPP which cost a bit in terms of fees and is reflected in the August figures. It's close enough as far as I'm concerned to give me some insight as to the possible swings that can occur.

Nov 16 - Dec 16   4.06%
Dec 16 - Jan 17 2.33%
Jan 17 - Feb 17 5.09%
Feb 17 - Mar 17 3.9%
Mar 17 - Apr 17 0.86%
Apr 17 - May 17 3.15%
May 17 - Jun 17 -3.91%
Jun 17 - Jul 17 3.13%
Jul 17 - Aug 17 -4.05%
Aug 17 - Sep 17 2.87%
Sep 17 - Oct 17 -0.76%


Got to agree with Itsallaguess, had I simply looked at my portfolio first thing tomorrow an seen a drop of several percent, I'd have been disappointed. Knowing the news that has come out over the previous month on shares I do hold, I don't think I'll be too upset when I see the final figures which I'm currently assuming will be down. I've got to add in two or three dividends that I think were paid this month which will help a bit.

Fascinating experiment over the month, very pleased I took part and I know I will be looking at my portfolio far, far less frequently from now on.

Cheers.

Capt. Flack


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