Tags
alternative assets, benchmarking, Bloomberg Euro 500, correlation, diversification, FTSE 100, FTSE AIM All-Share, Irish shares, ISEQ, portfolio allocation, portfolio performance, quantitative easing, S&P 500, stock ideas
OK, that’s enough TGISVP (though rubbing resource muppets’ noses in it is lots of fun) – time for the rubber to hit the road: So how did the Wexboy Portfolio make out in H1-2014?! Well, first you may want to reference my FY-2013 performance – now, let’s turn our attention to my benchmark indices:
[NB: I’ve dropped the FTSE Eurotop 100 – I can find it elsewhere, but I’m used to seeing it on Bloomberg.com & I can’t find it as a ticker any longer. I could use the EURO STOXX 50 (SX5E:IND), but that’s a ridiculously small universe of stocks, so I’ll opt for the Bloomberg Euro 500 (BE500:IND) instead – not as well known, but functionally it gets the job done.] [btw Bloomberg’s fantastic, but they have some annoying habits – on the one hand, they abruptly discard useful features, while they also add awesome new features which they barely ever highlight!? Check this out: Bloomberg Industry Leaderboard].
A +3.4% benchmark gain isn’t too inspiring – quelle surprise, the S&P’s the only index which really makes the grade! And the individual indices don’t bode well for my own portfolio, since it’s particularly focused on the UK. In my case, that’s more about UK-listed stocks (& funds), rather than UK-exposed stocks – but in my experience, a poor FTSE performance usually weighs on both. As for the US, I suffer from the inverse – I have a decent allocation to US-exposed assets, but little exposure to US-listed assets! I also opted for the UK & Ireland as an attractive substitute for a European portfolio weighting – again, that focus may hurt me (though the ISEQ’s performance was only marginally worse). This is a fairly typical stock-picker problem:
Why make it so bloody complicated…when the simple & most obvious strategy is so often the winner?!