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Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

A helpful place to also put any annual reports etc, of your own portfolios
nathan
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Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#107180

Postby nathan » January 1st, 2018, 5:17 pm

Happy New Year all.

The following is more an overview 'portfolio of portfolios' review, rather than a detailed analysis of each portfolio. After 7 years of running a number of strategies in parallel, I feel it's getting to the point where I can start to say which suit me best, both in terms of performance and fit to my investment temperament. One of my friends who works in an investment bank said that it was a good year for anybody who invested in a diverse mixture of assets and I guess he was right. Now what's ahead for 2018?



Notes
Years = length of time I've been running the same strategy for each portfolio pot.
Scale = relative scale of funds in each strategy
XIRR = calculated IRR of all cashflows
2017TR = Total Return in calendar year 2017
Yield = current running yield

Portfolios
HYP = A 31 share HYP
FI = Corporate Bond ETF portfolio
SIPP = My SIPP, which is 70% regional Vanguard ETFs (20% is UK (FTSE100/250), 16% Investment Trusts, 11% Corporate Bond ETFs, 3% Property ETFs
Lazy ETF 1 = ETF portfolio with 6 Vanguard / iShares ETFs rebalanced every 6 months (65% regional ETFs, 25% UK(FTSE100/250), 10% Property ETFs)
EIS = EIS Portfolio of 14 individual hightech early stage investments
Cash = deposits, National Savings Index-Linked, Premium Bonds etc
Lazy ETFs 2 & 3 are portfolios I run for my partner and parents on the same lines as ETF 1. ETF 3 is the simplest, with 80% VWRL + 20% VUKE (Vanguard World and FTSE100 ETFs)

Benchmarks
World Index TR 2017 = 13.2%
FTSE100 TR 2017 = 11.9%
RPI + 4% = 7.9% (Nov-17) (This has been my main benchmark for my SIPP and Lazy ETF).

Summary
The HYP underperforms over every time period. It's more work than the Lazy ETF portfolios and suffers the well documented downsides of an active stockpicking strategy. It's not performed terribly in aggregate, but keeps getting dragged down by the Carillions, Pearsons, Tescos etc.
The SIPP has performed well, picking up index performance in Japan, Asia and Emerging markets + great growth from my 4 IT selections (all in smaller companies to spice up the large cap ETFs)
All of the Lazy ETFs are doing well, outpacing the HYP over every timescale and being much less work. I just download the values monthly and rebalance 6-monthly by reinvesting the dividends. Crazily, the simplest one (ETF 3) has performed the best over every time period. The yields have been consistently within the range 2-2.7%
EIS Portfolio. The least discussed on these boards and subject of its own treatise. I'm aiming for >20% IRR over 10 years and I think I'll achieve that with excellent tax shielding, but it's a very bumpy ride. You can probably guess from the table above that I've had a very good exit in 2017, after 5 complete wipeouts and 1 with just my money back. If I received no further exits, I'd be at the 13.2% above, but I feel pretty confident that the remaining 7 companies will boost that to my target 20% within the next 2-3 years. The 4.4% shown as invested in this portfolio is an understatement of the real picture - with 5 failed investments and 1 recent exit, the residual amount only reflects the written down NAV of the remaining companies.

It's interesting that people are talking of indices having risen by 20% in 2017, but I feel that my World TR index is more accurate of the overall picture.

Changes for 2018
Gradually liquidate the HYP. I just don't believe in the investment thesis any more and it doesn't suit my temperament.
Work out how to reinvest the cash liberated from my recent EIS exit - the market feels at a funny point now.

All probably a bit high level but it's interesting to take a helicopter view occasionally.

Nathan

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#107224

Postby BreakoutBoy1 » January 1st, 2018, 9:12 pm

It is interesting to see you arrive at the same conclusion as I did in 2017: HYP kinda works but other strategies seem to work a bit better with less effort and stockpicking risk.

EIS is an area I have no experience of so I would love to hear more of your thoughts. I am dabbling with VCTs currently to bear down on what is looking like a big 2017-18 tax bill for me, a nice problem to have!

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#107296

Postby moorfield » January 2nd, 2018, 10:47 am

nathan wrote:The HYP underperforms over every time period.


You might be comparing apples with pears there - remember HYP is firstly an income strategy (although many of us, myself included, use HYP in effect as a total return strategy while we save for the future). If it's producing a high yield income (> 3.7%ish today) increasing ahead of inflation, then it's doing its job.

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#107383

Postby nathan » January 2nd, 2018, 2:37 pm

Hi Moorfield & Breakoutboy

Yes you're right. The mistake I have made is that I no longer agree with the idea of a 'building phase', as I'm a number of years away from needing an annuity replacement. I am still at the stage of life where I'm trying to grow my investments and Total Return is more important than yield. Each of my portfolios deliberately takes a different approach to alpha and beta opportunities and risks.

On the matter of EIS, I haven't seen any real discussion of it on here - I am aiming for at least 20% IRR over 10 years and hopefully nearer to 25%. I'm 7 years in and still expect to achieve that, but it's really not for the faint hearted as my brief exposition described. I come from a commercial technology background and generally invest in early stage technology businesses alongside a bunch of mates. Lots of wipeouts (so loss relief on EIS brings the exposure down to around 48%), and the odd jackpot, like the one in December. I unitise everything, and the accumulation unit value for the EIS portfolio has been down to 23% of par at times!

Nathan

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#107406

Postby tjh290633 » January 2nd, 2018, 3:32 pm

nathan wrote:Hi Moorfield & Breakoutboy

Yes you're right. The mistake I have made is that I no longer agree with the idea of a 'building phase', as I'm a number of years away from needing an annuity replacement. I am still at the stage of life where I'm trying to grow my investments and Total Return is more important than yield. Each of my portfolios deliberately takes a different approach to alpha and beta opportunities and risks.

On the matter of EIS, I haven't seen any real discussion of it on here - I am aiming for at least 20% IRR over 10 years and hopefully nearer to 25%. I'm 7 years in and still expect to achieve that, but it's really not for the faint hearted as my brief exposition described. I come from a commercial technology background and generally invest in early stage technology businesses alongside a bunch of mates. Lots of wipeouts (so loss relief on EIS brings the exposure down to around 48%), and the odd jackpot, like the one in December. I unitise everything, and the accumulation unit value for the EIS portfolio has been down to 23% of par at times!

Nathan

Do you really expect to achieve an IRR of 20% over 10 years? The best I have achieved is about 13% over 13 years to 2000, but since then market movement has reduced it to about 10-11% over 30 years.

20% seems to me to be overly optimistic.

TJH

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#107514

Postby nathan » January 2nd, 2018, 9:10 pm

Hi tjh

Yes, 20% is my best current estimate of the position after 10 years, with the XIRR currently at 13.2%. If I'm lucky, it could reach my upper target of 25%. Without putting together a complete portfolio breakdown for you, it may be helpful to realise that in cash terms, the remaining 7 investments would need to yield just over 2 x the input investments to achieve the 20% goal.

In simplistic terms, I treat the 10 year pot as a baby VC fund, so I'm now entering the drawdown phase, and investing in 'fund 2'. It took me about 4 years to make the 14 investments, so further investments are purely in further funding rounds for investee companies. The 5 big failures mostly happened in years 2-5, and in year 5 one of the companies paid a dividend roughly equal to the original investment. I've then had one big exit just before Christmas. Of the remaining 7 companies, I feel that 2 may still go bust, 2 may make small wins (1-2x) and 2 could make substantial exits (3-10x). The weighted forecast is about 2.2x but that is a projection!

I followed your helpful guidance on unitisation of this and all my other portfolios, and the drought of low 'unit price' was pretty extended.

Please note that I have not taken account of tax in any of the above, as it would be a fun but longish exercise. The overall effect would be to substantially increase the XIRR as investments decrease (EIS relief on investment + share loss relief) and returns have no tax (well there are smallish elements outside of EIS for various reasons).

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#107517

Postby dspp » January 2nd, 2018, 9:23 pm

nathan wrote:Hi tjh

Yes, 20% is my best current estimate of the position after 10 years, with the XIRR currently at 13.2%. If I'm lucky, it could reach my upper target of 25%. Without putting together a complete portfolio breakdown for you, it may be helpful to realise that in cash terms, the remaining 7 investments would need to yield just over 2 x the input investments to achieve the 20% goal.

In simplistic terms, I treat the 10 year pot as a baby VC fund, so I'm now entering the drawdown phase, and investing in 'fund 2'. It took me about 4 years to make the 14 investments, so further investments are purely in further funding rounds for investee companies. The 5 big failures mostly happened in years 2-5, and in year 5 one of the companies paid a dividend roughly equal to the original investment. I've then had one big exit just before Christmas. Of the remaining 7 companies, I feel that 2 may still go bust, 2 may make small wins (1-2x) and 2 could make substantial exits (3-10x). The weighted forecast is about 2.2x but that is a projection!

I followed your helpful guidance on unitisation of this and all my other portfolios, and the drought of low 'unit price' was pretty extended.

Please note that I have not taken account of tax in any of the above, as it would be a fun but longish exercise. The overall effect would be to substantially increase the XIRR as investments decrease (EIS relief on investment + share loss relief) and returns have no tax (well there are smallish elements outside of EIS for various reasons).


You are better placed than I am to make the judgement call on whether the remaining 7 will yield 2x, 2.2x or whatever. If it is >2x then you are - to my mind - doing a good job of selection. In my tech area the wipe-out rate has been >99% and so far only one early stage proposition made 1x, and nobody >1x !!! (over a 15-year period). Early stage tech, even in USA, but definitely in UK is definitely not an area for the faint hearted, or for the unwise. The shape of the typical outcome distribution is not widely available.

Thank you for taking the time to post your results. I agree with you re your HYP concerns.

regards, dspp

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#107542

Postby Wizard » January 2nd, 2018, 11:48 pm

nathan wrote:The mistake I have made is that I no longer agree with the idea of a 'building phase', as I'm a number of years away from needing an annuity replacement. I am still at the stage of life where I'm trying to grow my investments and Total Return is more important than yield. Each of my portfolios deliberately takes a different approach to alpha and beta opportunities and risks.

Interesting thread, thanks for starting it.

So is your view now to build by other methods, then if necessary at the point you need income reconsider whether to assembly an HYP?

Terry.

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#107565

Postby nathan » January 3rd, 2018, 8:33 am

Wizard wrote:
So is your view now to build by other methods, then if necessary at the point you need income reconsider whether to assembly an HYP?

Terry.


In broad, Terry, yes. Although after running an HYP over several years now, I would look first at whether (a) a Total Return + capital drawdown strategy or (b) a basket of ITs would work for me better than an HYP. It's fascinating to see why with 20/20 hindsight how few shares are safe from the double whammy of bad news affecting dividends and capital value. And I do care about capital value!

TR + drawdown - with my Lazy ETFs producing 2-2.8% yield, there's not much drawdown needed to secure a 4.5% income, and my data so far shows less volatility and greater TR.

Income producing ITs - I have followed these baskets on the TMF and now LF boards and don't have much experience of them. So I'll start learning.

Nathan

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#108022

Postby Gengulphus » January 4th, 2018, 9:37 pm

nathan wrote:Yes, 20% is my best current estimate of the position after 10 years, with the XIRR currently at 13.2%. ...

Eh? I can't see why you expect the rate of return to be much different after 10 years than after 7. The overall growth in your investments will go up, yes, more-or-less like travelling for 10 hours at 70 mph will result in 700 miles travelled compared with 490 miles for 7 hours of such travel. But in both cases, the speed (i.e. rate of progress) is 70 mph...

Or looked at another way, if I invested a lump sum of say £100k and achieved a 13.2% rate of return over 7 years, it would grow to £100k * 1.132^7 = £238,191. To go on to have achieved a 20% rate of return over 10 years, it would have to be worth £100k * 1.2^10 = £619,174 after another 3 years. So it would have to achieve growth by a factor of £619,174/£238,191 = very nearly 2.6 over those 3 years, which annualises to about a 37.5% rate of return for the next three years. Do you really expect to achieve that, or have you got confused about the difference between a rate of return and the overall return, or have I somehow misunderstood what you're saying?

The exact rate of return you need over 3 years to raise an IRR of 13.2% over 7 years to one of 20% over 10 years will differ from 37.5% if the investments were funded differently than with a single lump sum at the start. But only somewhat - for any halfway sensible funding pattern, it will be well over 20%.

One other observation I'll make about the strategy comparison in your OP is that we're currently in an unusually long period of reasonably stable market conditions. As a result, although seven years of history would usually be a reasonably good test of how strategies compare in a good variety of market conditions, I very much doubt that it is in this case, and so I would treat any conclusions I currently drew about the matter with quite a lot more caution than usual.

Gengulphus

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#108043

Postby Wizard » January 5th, 2018, 8:35 am

Gengulphus wrote:
nathan wrote:Yes, 20% is my best current estimate of the position after 10 years, with the XIRR currently at 13.2%. ...

Eh? I can't see why you expect the rate of return to be much different after 10 years than after 7. The overall growth in your investments will go up, yes, more-or-less like travelling for 10 hours at 70 mph will result in 700 miles travelled compared with 490 miles for 7 hours of such travel. But in both cases, the speed (i.e. rate of progress) is 70 mph...

Or looked at another way, if I invested a lump sum of say £100k and achieved a 13.2% rate of return over 7 years, it would grow to £100k * 1.132^7 = £238,191. To go on to have achieved a 20% rate of return over 10 years, it would have to be worth £100k * 1.2^10 = £619,174 after another 3 years. So it would have to achieve growth by a factor of £619,174/£238,191 = very nearly 2.6 over those 3 years, which annualises to about a 37.5% rate of return for the next three years. Do you really expect to achieve that, or have you got confused about the difference between a rate of return and the overall return, or have I somehow misunderstood what you're saying?

The exact rate of return you need over 3 years to raise an IRR of 13.2% over 7 years to one of 20% over 10 years will differ from 37.5% if the investments were funded differently than with a single lump sum at the start. But only somewhat - for any halfway sensible funding pattern, it will be well over 20%.

Sure Nathan can answer with more detail if he chooses, but given he is discussing early stage investments, presumably a scenario where the returns are back-ended is not unrealistic. Of course, that does not mean it will happen.

Gengulphus wrote:One other observation I'll make about the strategy comparison in your OP is that we're currently in an unusually long period of reasonably stable market conditions. As a result, although seven years of history would usually be a reasonably good test of how strategies compare in a good variety of market conditions, I very much doubt that it is in this case, and so I would treat any conclusions I currently drew about the matter with quite a lot more caution than usual.

Gengulphus

Maybe I am being a bit slow, but I am struggling to understand the point you are making, could you expand on why a stable market makes the comparison over a seven year period questionable? On the HYP board I have been told to give it 5 years to see if HYP is working, so surprised that 7 years may not be enough. At that rate I'll be dead before I can decide if my investments are working :lol:

Terry.

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#108072

Postby nathan » January 5th, 2018, 10:42 am

Wizard wrote:Sure Nathan can answer with more detail if he chooses, but given he is discussing early stage investments, presumably a scenario where the returns are back-ended is not unrealistic. Of course, that does not mean it will happen.


Terry is right, the results from EIS investments are hugely backweighted. I could publish an indexed version of the cash flows, but I've already written above that the cash took 4 years to invest and that I've had a 1x return and a very high x return so far. If I get no more returns I'll be at 13.2% IRR, and if my projections come to reality for the remaining 7 investments, returns will be boosted to 20-25% IRR.

The typical pattern of a 10 year fund is 3 years of hopeful investments, broken promises and early failures, 4 years of follow-on investments, more broken promises and spectacular failures (the ones that have taken in more funding), and 3 years of exits (decent ones or zombies that go nowhere). As I've said, it's not for the fainthearted. I am however pretty confident now of achieving the 20% IRR benchmark based on the profiles of the remaining 7 investments.

...
Wizard wrote:Maybe I am being a bit slow, but I am struggling to understand the point you are making, could you expand on why a stable market makes the comparison over a seven year period questionable? On the HYP board I have been told to give it 5 years to see if HYP is working, so surprised that 7 years may not be enough. At that rate I'll be dead before I can decide if my investments are working :lol:

Terry.


Gengulphus has a point - a 7 year bull market is not long enough to assess what for me will be (hopefully) a 40 year journey. Nevertheless, the Lazy ETF versus HYP comparison is made over the same period so has some validity. The HYP is an alpha strategy, but I now tilt towards beta on those portfolios.

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#108133

Postby Gengulphus » January 5th, 2018, 2:41 pm

Wizard wrote:Sure Nathan can answer with more detail if he chooses, but given he is discussing early stage investments, presumably a scenario where the returns are back-ended is not unrealistic. Of course, that does not mean it will happen.

Ah, thanks (also to Nathan for confirming it). I'd somehow lost track of the fact that that strand of the discussion had focussed down to just the EIS investments and was thinking in terms of the "overall portfolio" mentioned in the thread title...

Wizard wrote:Maybe I am being a bit slow, but I am struggling to understand the point you are making, could you expand on why a stable market makes the comparison over a seven year period questionable? On the HYP board I have been told to give it 5 years to see if HYP is working, so surprised that 7 years may not be enough. At that rate I'll be dead before I can decide if my investments are working :lol:

Different strategies can perform very differently in any particular market conditions, so to get a good idea how they'll do relative to each other over the long term, you want to include a decently representative variety of different market conditions in the period you look at. The longer the period you look at, the better the chance of getting such a variety of market conditions - but it's always only a chance, not a certainty. Or in other words, a comparison of how strategies perform relative to each other over a limited period is never an entirely reliable guide to how they'll perform relative to each other in the future - all else being equal, it tends to become a more reliable guide as the limited period becomes longer, but it never becomes an infallible guide. And yes, that means you'll be dead before you can decide whether your investment strategy is a good one - if you aim to make a decision you're certain is correct. So the best you can sensibly aim for is an increasing level of confidence that your decision is correct.

The give-it-5-years advice is basically a rule of thumb in the absence of further information that 5 years is pretty much the minimum to get a reasonable level of confidence: historically, most 5-year periods have included at least one fairly major change of market conditions. But by no means all of them, and 5-year periods that don't include such a change are less likely than ones that do to give you a reasonably good picture of what might be expected in the future - i.e. they should inspire a lower level of confidence in the picture they give.

So the level of confidence you should have in comparisons for periods that have already completed being a decent guide to the future depends not only on the length of the period, but also on how varied market conditions were during it. They happen to have been rather unusually non-varied for the last 7 years, so I would regard a strategy comparison over that period as inspiring a significantly lower level of confidence than would usually be expected of a 7-year period.

I would still regard the give-it-5-years advice as sensible about future or mostly-future periods - i.e. for planning when you're going to try to assess a strategy you're trying out. For that purpose, you can only determine how long a period you're going to allow, not how highly or lowly varied the market conditions you're going to encounter during it will be. And basically all you can do about the possibility that the answer will be "lowly" is allow the assessment at the end of the period to produce an answer in which you only have a fairly low amount of confidence.

One final point to add is that when giving such advice, I generally phrase it along "give it at least 5 years (more is better)" lines (apologies if I've failed to do so on an important occasion). That's longer than "give it 5 years", but I do have a reason for the extra words!

Gengulphus

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#108305

Postby Julian » January 6th, 2018, 11:12 am

Wizard wrote:
nathan wrote:The mistake I have made is that I no longer agree with the idea of a 'building phase', as I'm a number of years away from needing an annuity replacement. I am still at the stage of life where I'm trying to grow my investments and Total Return is more important than yield. Each of my portfolios deliberately takes a different approach to alpha and beta opportunities and risks.

Interesting thread, thanks for starting it.

So is your view now to build by other methods, then if necessary at the point you need income reconsider whether to assembly an HYP?

Terry.


Thanks also to Nathan for opening a very interesting thread.

I'm afraid that I don't have Nathan's discipline in tracking my portfolios but I do also run different strategies (only 2) and seem to be heading in the same direction. I started out and still am predominantly invested in HYP but am seriously considering shifting emphasis from mainly HYP to a more total return (implemented by trackers) strategy. The difference between Nathan and me however, and addressing Terry's question ("... build by other methods, then if necessary at the point you need income reconsider whether to assembly an HYP?"), is that I have been out of the HYP building phase for 9 years now, live entirely off my investment income (so about 80% coming from HYP), and even so am considering at least a partial shift away from HYP. I see no reason why shifting to needing to draw income needs to have any influence on yield requirements.

My "income"(*) portfolio, a mixture of mainly HYP shares with a few income & growth ITs thrown in, is about 80% of my investments and generates 81% of my income. My "growth" portfolio, a mixture of Vanguard trackers and a few wealth preservation ITs, is most of the remaining 20% of my investments and generates 19% of my income so really there isn't much difference in terms of income extraction ratios between my two portfolios and I am becoming increasingly comfortable with, and tempted by, switching to a bigger percentage for my "growth" portfolio.

The way I extract income from my growth portfolio is extremely simple. Right now I have two bank accounts where I collect income from my investments, one is a current account where all my income portfolio dividends are paid into and which pays out a fixed standing order each month for my living expenses (aka a salary where I control the amount). The other is a savings account where all the dividends from my growth portfolio are paid into and has the facility (which I use) to have a scheduled payment out for a fixed amount each month to an external account (i.e. a standing order) which is essentially my salary part 2. For my income portfolio collection account the incoming dividends each year exceed the 12 x monthly standing orders so all I need is a float in that account to smooth out the non-uniform distribution of divi payments over the year and it looks after itself apart from a once-a-year scraping the surplus dividends out to re-invest. For my growth portfolio collection account the dividends paid tend to be pretty nominal (e.g. 1%-ish yields on many Vanguard funds) so the total dividends received each year are not sufficient to cover the 12 x monthly payouts. To keep things running all I do is look at the balance of the account at the beginning of each year to check that it has a start-of-year balance of at least 12 x monthly payouts and if it isn't I top-slice holdings to release enough funds to get to my start-of-the-year balance. This way I only need to do sell-offs once a year and I always do it at the same time so I don't stress about whether I am selling at a good or a bad time (it's sort of stealing an HYP mantra, "the time to buy is always now", i.e. don't try to time the market because you're just as likely to get it wrong as to get it right, with "the time to sell is always now" for the same don't try to time the market reasons).

I honestly think that running and extracting income from my growth portfolio is just as simple as my income portfolio, each only requires one investment decision each year (for my income portfolio it is how to invest surplus dividends, for my growth portfolio it is what to sell - timing of those actions is proscribed by me as being at the beginning of the calendar year in each case).

It's also worth noting that each portfolio takes advantage of different tax allowances, my income portfolio uses my personal and dividend income tax allowances and my growth portfolio uses my capital gains tax allowance. That's why I don't think that I will ever go 100% into my growth portfolio but I'd be pretty comfortable with a much heavier growth weighting. Capital Gains built up in my income portfolio are what's getting in the way of me doing anything more than a gradual drift in rebalancing at the moment.

TL;DR - I see no reason to have to consider switching to HYP when out of the building phase and wanting to draw income except for maybe a toe in the high yield world (HYP or ITs) to make full use of all personal tax allowances if income tax allowances aren't already being fully used by other income sources such as pension, rental income etc.

- Julian

(*) "income" and "growth" in quotes because these are the simplistic terms that I use to refer to my two portfolios rather than intended to be particularly accurate descriptions.

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#108482

Postby TimR » January 7th, 2018, 11:36 am

Hi Nathan,
Thanks for posting your review
I have one large Sipp and ISA portfolio which has a similar breakdown to your SIPP portfolio:-

70% Regional Vanguard ETFs
15% Equity Investment Trusts (covering small cap & EM)
11% Fixed Income
4% Property

The 15% allocated to Equity Investment Trusts is partially in the area of Small Caps and EM where I feel active management may have an edge. – I may be wrong to assume this ?

I struggle to find passive ETFs for Fixed Income and I have tended in the past to use the Fixed Income Investment trusts which John Baron’s portfolio uses HDIV, NCYF, IPE and SLI (Property). However I believe these ITs could behave more like equities in a future downturn ?

I would be interested in what Corp Bond / property ETFs you have in your FI portfolio ?

Do you have any Gov Bond ETfs ?

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Re: Nathan's overall portfolio review 2017

#108630

Postby MartynC27 » January 7th, 2018, 8:06 pm

[quote="TimR"][/quote]

Tim,

I don't believe that active managers have an edge in in the area of small cap and EM so I would just use passive ETFs or trackers for all of my equity exposure.

The same applies to fixed income exposure. I don't like active High Yield Investment Trusts such as HDIV, NCYF , IPE and SLI and I much prefer passive ETFs such as IGLS, VGOV for Gov Bonds , IS15, SLXX, ISXF for Corporate Bonds and iUKP for property.

MartynC


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