My batting average

[Deaddog]

Deaddog,

I guess I do have a DRIP set up. Haven't heard that word for a long time. It's more than a share or 2 having been doing this for more than 25 years the accumulation becomes Huge. I've not taken out a dime in all that time.Also most of the big div. payers aren't very volatile and not as risky as the speculative picks. Maybe a little boring but I can live with 10%+ compounded each year. These are long term. My play money buys the others.

---------------billy

I did the same thing for years but now I’m in the withdrawal mode so those dividends and capital gains go towards worthwhile causes like sending the Old Dog to winter in warmer climates than the Frozen North.

[smaskell]

MrM returns...

Well it sounds pretty impressive but I’ve been tracking you since last Nov and in that time frame you have had 12 winners. Based on an equal position size with enough spare cash in the account to hold 14 positions the realized gain is 13.32%; pretty damn good; sure beats a savings account.

But that Old Lazy Dog, He started a portfolio with only 8 stock around the same time. Out of 7 pick he only had 5 winners. But you know the realized gain on the portfolio is 14.25%.

Could it be that the number of winners in a row isn’t the number we should be concerned about. I’d rather know how much money my money made for me.

I've been meaning to do this for awhile as I'm also basically a "bottom line" kinda guy. I went through all of the MrM picks that are currently posted on the /huge page starting with SYNT on 08/18/09 through today. During that period (assuming SYNT was the first postion) the highest number of open positions was 10. I assumed an account size of 10k and used MrM's own figure of 14 positions. 10k/14 = 714.29 per position before any reinvested gains. As each position closed I added the gain to the total, divided by 14 and increased the next open position amount to that value. For simplicity and to give the best possible number I assumed that for positions occurring on the same day, the existing close occurred before the new open so that the new position gain was realized. For the period from 08/18/09 through today the total portfolio gain (assuming current open positions are flat) is $3973.78 or 39.74%. If on 08/18/09 you would have plunked the entire 10k in SPX and just let it ride you would be up 37.12%. Pretty much a wash. One of the problems was that I had to scale in the portfolio so there was a lot of time spent sitting on idle cash. It took almost a year just to get to 9 open positions. I re-ran the numbers using a 10 position account since that was the highest seen in the numbers I have. Using 10 positions you end up with a 58.43% gain over the same period. Basically just putting more of the idle cash to work. To mitigate the scale-in issue somewhat I looked just at the last 12 months (using the 10 position formula). The total portfolio gain is 31.54% (05/03/2010-05/05/2011). The SPX is up about 13% for the same period. The GLD index is up about 26% for that same period. I guess you could say MrM is huger than gold!
Later

[mrmarket]

I've been meaning to do this for awhile as I'm also basically a "bottom line" kinda guy. I went through all of the MrM picks that are currently posted on the /huge page starting with SYNT on 08/18/09 through today. During that period (assuming SYNT was the first postion) the highest number of open positions was 10. I assumed an account size of 10k and used MrM's own figure of 14 positions. 10k/14 = 714.29 per position before any reinvested gains. As each position closed I added the gain to the total, divided by 14 and increased the next open position amount to that value. For simplicity and to give the best possible number I assumed that for positions occurring on the same day, the existing close occurred before the new open so that the new position gain was realized. For the period from 08/18/09 through today the total portfolio gain (assuming current open positions are flat) is $3973.78 or 39.74%. If on 08/18/09 you would have plunked the entire 10k in SPX and just let it ride you would be up 37.12%. Pretty much a wash. One of the problems was that I had to scale in the portfolio so there was a lot of time spent sitting on idle cash. It took almost a year just to get to 9 open positions. I re-ran the numbers using a 10 position account since that was the highest seen in the numbers I have. Using 10 positions you end up with a 58.43% gain over the same period. Basically just putting more of the idle cash to work. To mitigate the scale-in issue somewhat I looked just at the last 12 months (using the 10 position formula). The total portfolio gain is 31.54% (05/03/2010-05/05/2011). The SPX is up about 13% for the same period. The GLD index is up about 26% for that same period. I guess you could say MrM is huger than gold!
Later

Interesting...remember no analysis is complete unless you risk adjust the investment. Higher risk requires higher returns. I like to think that since I use valuation as a criteria, most (not all) of the companies I buy trade at valuations lower than the SPX. So beating the SPX, while taking less risk, always allows me to sleep better at night.

By the way, we shouldn't be so fascinated with my overall returns. I think how each of you do with YOUR money is much more interesting.