Asset performance in 2012

[carlsbadworker]

It is another year that my investment returns trails S&P 500 index. And guess which asset class has the best return in 2012?

The answer is Greek bonds! Both Greek/Portuguese bonds have return over 80% in dollar term in the past year.

[moneymaker]

My wife got returns like that with the BAC stock I recommended to her.

[Coronita]

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[Coronita]

[quote=carlsbadworker]It is another year that my investment returns trails S&P 500 index. And guess which asset class has the best return in 2012?

The answer is Greek bonds! Both Greek/Portuguese bonds have return over 80% in dollar term in the past year.[/quote]

Actually, take note of this for the next 2-3 years. If you’re consistently underperforming benchmarks, that you tell you just to put it into benchmarks and not worry about it…

Lot’s of time, some folks hit a home run one year, only to crap out the next year and vice versus. Or someone doubles on one investment and loses bigtime elsewhere..

Also, size of the money also makes a difference, as an individual. Me thinks doing 60+% returns on say $10k is a lot easier than say doing 60+% returns on $100k or $1mil….

So what matters is are you consistently beating the benchmarks YOY. Only time will tell. If you are, great. If you’re not, we’ll then you just saved yourself a lot of headaches because you can just put stuff into a passive account and forget about it…

[carlsbadworker]

[quote=moneymaker]My wife got returns like that with the BAC stock I recommended to her.[/quote]

Single stock doesn’t matter unless you invest all your money in that single stock. I have stock picks myself that appreciate in that range but it doesn’t mean anything. You have to use the entire asset.

I didn’t expect 2012 to be a good year for investment but it actually was. There are very few asset class that didn’t appreciate over 10% last year, which include:
1. Precious metal
2. Safe bonds (e.g. German/US bonds)
3. Hedge funds (who would guess that?)
4. Commodity actually suffered a loss in 2012

[carlsbadworker]

I am under-performing comparing to the market because I was very conservative in asset allocation last year. Part of it was forced because I have cash sitting in my account earning nothing (well, to say fairly, it earned some miles for me sitting there) because I have a pending short sale for 7+ months. But part of it was voluntary because I was worried about China slow down, emerging market as well Europe.
That said, in overall asset allocation, if I can close on the house on Dec 31st, I might slightly come ahead of the S&P benchmark because I believe the value of the property has increased in the past few months by looking at the very recent comps nearby. But now it all depends on when the bank would table the fund. Escrow office is also super busy because they have more than 10 sellers who want to close today or next Monday to avoid the tax relief act expiration. So we will see…

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