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My investment performance in 2017: A very long review

January 11, 2018 By John Kingham

2017 was another year of above average investment returns in what is now a very old bull market.

As with previous year-end reviews, I’ll review my model portfolio’s performance against its various goals as well as the performance of the individual stocks I sold in 2017.

Here are the goals I’ll be measuring the portfolio against:

  • High growth: Higher total returns than the FTSE All-Share over five years or more
  • High yield: Higher dividend yield than the FTSE All-Share at all times
  • Low stress: Volatility and price declines should be smaller than the FTSE All-Share over five years or more. Only one buy or sell decision should be made each month
  • Low risk: Keep company-specific risk low through diversification and valuation risk low by only holding attractively valued companies
  • A million within 30 years: Grow from £50,000 in 2011 to £1,000,000 within 30 years (requiring an annualised total return of at least 10%)

High growth? Yes – Beating the market over the long-term

In 2017 the model portfolio produced total returns of 17.5% compared to 14.5% for its Vanguard All-Share tracker benchmark.

Those results are more than double the long-run annualised return for UK stocks, which is about 7%, so clearly this was a good year to be in the stock market.

The longer-term results are also above average for both portfolio’s, with annualised returns since inception (in 2011) of 11.3% and 8.6% for the model portfolio and its All-Share benchmark respectively.

UK value investing portfolio returns 2018 01
Past performance is not a guide to future performance

Overall I’m pleased with the portfolio’s rate of progress, with annualised returns almost 3% ahead of the market. That’s a performance gap which I think could be sustainable over the long-term.

Dividend growth in 2017 was also in double digit territory, coming in at just over 19% for both the model portfolio and the All-Share tracker.

For me, dividend growth is more important than growth in the value of the portfolio. Dividends are the foundation of company valuations and price increases without dividend increases are no better than castles built on sand.

Both portfolios reinvest their dividends, so here’s a chart of how much has been reinvested each year since 2011:

UK value investing portfolio dividends 2018 01
Dividend growth is my preferred measure of investment success

Both the model portfolio and the All-Share tracker have grown their dividends by about 10% per year since the first full year of dividends in 2012, so by that measure they’re neck and neck.

Personally though, I don’t think the All-Share will maintain that sort of dividend growth rate over the long-term.

High yield? Yes – Both the market and the portfolio have decent dividend yields

The current dividend yield for the portfolio is 3.9%, slightly higher than the All-Share tracker’s yield of 3.4%.

The portfolio’s approximately half-a-percent yield advantage has been maintained since inception, so it’s comfortably met its high yield target.

It’s also nice to see that the index tracker’s yield is still a very reasonable 3.4%. Some investors think the UK market is overheated because it’s at a record high, but I don’t think that’s true.

The market price may be at a record high, but so are its dividend payments. And with a yield of 3.4%, which is above the long-term average, I think it’s hard to say the All-Share is seriously overpriced.

Low stress? Yes – Volatility and price declines are much lower than the All-Share’s

Price volatility is often used as a measure of risk, but I prefer to use it as a measure of how much stress the investor has been exposed to.

If an investment goes up and up and up, then most investors would see that as a low stress investment (think about how relaxed Madoff’s investors were, thanks to his “fund’s” clockwork-like 1% per month returns).

Contrast that with an investment such as The Restaurant Group (which I hold), which went from 375p in 2007 to 100p in 2008. That would have been massively stressful for many shareholders, even though the shares subsequently rallied to more than 700p in 2014.

Of course, some lucky investors are able to completely ignore share price volatility. I certainly try to ignore share price volatility, but it still affects me, although I think I’m less affected than most.

Here’s Buffett on the topic of volatility and risk:

“It is true, of course, that owning equities for a day or a week or a year is far riskier (in both nominal and purchasing-power terms) than leaving funds in cash-equivalents. For the great majority of investors, however, who can – and should – invest with a multi-decade horizon, quotational declines are unimportant. Their focus should remain fixed on attaining significant gains in purchasing power over their investing lifetime. For them, a diversified equity portfolio, bought over time, will prove far less risky than dollar-based securities… If the investor, instead, fears price volatility, erroneously viewing it as a measure of risk, he may, ironically, end up doing some very risky things.”

So volatility is not risk, as long as you can stay invested over the long term and not panic sell when things turn south.

But volatility is still stressful, and personally I’d like to reduce it as much as possible.

And on that front the portfolio has done reasonably well.

For example, since inception the standard deviation of one-year returns for the model portfolio has been 6.8%, lower than the All-Share’s 9.5%.

And this lower volatility of returns isn’t just because the portfolio’s returns are lower.

In fact, the portfolio’s average rolling one-year return has been 12.2%, higher than the All-Share’s average of 9.7%.

Another measure of stress is the aptly named Ulcer Index. This measures the size and duration of any price declines from a previous peak.

As with standard deviation, the Ulcer Index for the model portfolio is lower than the All-Share’s, at 2.1% and 4.3% respectively.

What that’s saying is that the model portfolio typically declined by smaller amounts and for shorter periods than the All-Share, which sounds like a good thing to me.

More specifically, since inception:

  • The portfolio’s largest decline has been 8.1% compared to 13.5% for the All-Share
  • The portfolio’s longest period “underwater” was eight months compared to 15 months for the All-Share

So the model portfolio has been a less stressful investment to watch than the All-Share, but what about individual holdings?

To be honest, extreme volatility at the individual company level is virtually inevitable. Even with super-defensive stocks you can still see massive share price swings.

A good example of a volatile defensive from the model portfolio is Centrica (the company behind the British Gas brand) which fell just over 40% in 2017. So investing in defensives is no defence against share price volatility.

The only sane answer is to simply ignore share price movements as much as possible, other than when you’re making pre-planned (rather than knee-jerk) buy or sell decisions.

In my case, I make one buy or sell at the start of every month and then try to ignore the portfolio’s individual holdings for the rest of the month.

When it comes to share price movements, ignorance is often the best policy, at least if you value your sanity.

Low risk? I think so, but without a bear market or recession it’s hard to tell

I’ve already said that volatility is not risk. So what is risk?

Risk is the product of the probability of a bad event happening and the magnitude of that event.

So if I eat a cheese sandwich there is a chance I’ll choke to death (a bad event of large magnitude, to me at least) but the odds of that happening are so vanishingly small that I don’t consider eating a cheese sandwich to be a high risk activity.

In terms of investing, risk is the failure to reach your long-term investment goals, not how much the price of a company or your portfolio goes up or down over a few days, weeks, months or even years.

I like to break this view of risk down into fundamental risk and valuation risk:

  • Fundamental risk: The risk that a company’s revenues, earnings and dividends fails to grow sufficiently over the long-term
  • Valuation risk: The risk that a company’s share price fails to grow sufficiently over the long-term even if the company itself does well

To reduce fundamental risk I stick to companies with long histories of profits and dividends, low debt and good profitability. I try to avoid other fundamental risk factors such as companies which are dependent on a handful of customers or a small number of large contracts.

I also know that I will make mistakes and that bad things happen to good companies, which means that some investments are going to lose money no matter how careful I am.

To reduce the impact of any losses I diversify across many companies that operate in many unconnected sectors in many different countries. Here’s what that looks like for the model portfolio:

UK value investing portfolio sector diversity 2018 01
Investing in lots of different sectors is one way to reduce risk
UK value investing portfolio company diversity 2018 01
Even if one holding goes bust, it won’t be the end of the world

None of these risk-reduction techniques can guarantee that the model portfolio will have a low level of fundamental risk. However, I do think the portfolio is, at the very least, not fundamentally riskier than the All-Share. But I’ll only really know if that true in a) a bear market and b) 20 years’ time.

As for valuation risk, I’m a defensive value investor so of course I’m interested in buying and holding companies only when their valuations are attractively low.

It’s hard to compare the model portfolio to the All-Share in terms of valuation multiples such as price to earnings or cyclically adjusted price to earnings. That’s because the portfolio’s companies are typically faster growing than average and therefore command higher valuations (although I still think those valuations are attractive).

However, an alternative measure of valuation risk which I think can be applied is the dividend yield, which is one of the reasons I insist on the portfolio having a higher yield than the index.

And with a higher yield than the All-Share, I think it’s hard to say that the model portfolio is carrying more valuation risk than the market average.

A million pounds in 30 years? It’s still very possible

One final goal I have for the portfolio is to grow it from £50,000 to one million pounds in 30 years or less.

That sounds like a giant task, but really all I need to do is double the value of the portfolio four-and-a-bit times between 2011 and 2041.

In 2017 the portfolio managed to complete the first of those doublings when it breezed past £100,000 for the first time.

Here’s a Blue Peter-style “millionometer” showing that the portfolio is now about a quarter of the way towards it’s million pound goal:

Reaching the million pound goal could take a very long time…

What I find interesting about this chart is that it highlights how the halfway point between £50,000 and £1,000,000 is £200,000 rather than £500,000 (or more accurately £525,000).

That’s good for long-term motivation, because £200,000 doesn’t seem far away now that the portfolio’s reached £100,000.

Investments sold in 2017: Some winners, some losers and lots of lessons

As usual I sold six companies and bought six companies over the last year as part of monthly process of portfolio improvement.

If you’re interested, here are the post-sale reviews from each company sold:

  • January: Sold TP ICAP (9% annualised return over 5 years)
  • March: Sold Standard Chartered (15% annualised loss over 2 years)
  • May: Sold BAE Systems (18% annualised return over 5 years)
  • July: Sold Morrisons (1% annualised loss over 4 years)
  • September: Sold Braemar Shipping (1% annualised loss over 6 years)
  • November: Sold Rio Tinto (8% annualised return over 5 years)

You may have spotted that half of those investments lost money. That is, of course, not ideal.

However, I’m not overly worried as there are two positive ways to think about investment that lose money.

First, if you are reasonably confident that your investment process is sound, then you can view a string of losses as statistically inevitable.

For example, imagine you have a magical coin. If the coin lands heads-up you win two pounds. If the coin lands tails-up you lose one pound.

The benefit of winning is twice the cost of losing, so it makes sense to toss the coin as often as possible. However, there is a one-in-four chance you’ll see two losses in a row, a one-in-eight chance you’ll see three losses in a row and a one-in-sixteen chance you’ll see four losses in a row.

If you do get four losses in a row, does that mean you’re no good at coin tossing? It’s unlikely. Does it mean the coin is broken? No. Is it simply a statistical inevitability if you toss the coin often enough? Yes.

So even if my investment process was perfect I would expect to suffer the occasional string or cluster of losses.

And when that happens I should just keep my head down, apply the investment process diligently and things are likely to work out well eventually.

The second positive way to view losing investments is to see each loss as a useful educational experience.

That’s because many losing investment contain valuable information about what to avoid, or at least what to watch out for.

If I extract any relevant lessons and integrate them into my strategy, then I would expect those lessons to significantly improve my investment strategy and my long-term results.

Some final thoughts for 2018

I’ve already written a FTSE 100 forecast and FTSE 250 forecast for 2018, and my conclusion was the same for both:

Neither is obviously undervalued or overvalued, so there is no particular reason, from a valuation point of view, to expect big moves up or down in 2018.

However, we haven’t had a bear market since 2008, and ten years is a very long time to go without a bear market.

The risk is that newer investors become complacent as the financial crisis passes into ancient history (i.e. outside the last ten years). These investors will only have experienced a rising market, and inexperience and overconfidence is a dangerous combination.

Personally, my preference is for a small bear market of perhaps 20% during 2018, leaving the FTSE 100 at about 6,000 rather than its current 7,500 or so.

At that level the market would be attractively valued again, and I could work on filling my portfolio with lots of  bargains.

An investor wishing for a bear market may sound like a turkey wishing for Christmas, but I’d rather have a small bear market in 2018 than several more years of double digit gains followed by an almighty crash.

Dear fellow investor,

This website was my home on the internet from 2008 to 2021, but I have now moved onwards and upwards to:

UKDividendStocks.com

To read the latest company reviews and other content, please head over to the new site.

Thank you

John Kingham

Comments

  1. Maynard Paton says

    January 11, 2018 at 5:12 pm

    Oh John.

    What did you write this time last year?

    https://www.ukvalueinvestor.com/2017/01/2016-portfolio-review.html/
    ————————-
    “What about returns in 2016 I hear you ask?

    To be honest, I have gone off the idea of tracking one-year returns. I have always been against tracking short-term performance, but in the past just went along with what pretty much everyone else had always done, which is to talk about results over the last year (calendar or rolling).

    But having recently read an excellent 2016 review and rant against tracking short-term performance, as well as The People’s Trust’s commitment to target returns over a seven-year period, I have decided to ditch what is essentially an unhealthy and pointless habit.”
    ————————-

    Seems like you have returned to the ‘unhealthy and pointless habit’:

    “In 2017 the model portfolio produced total returns of 17.5% compared to 14.5% for its Vanguard All-Share tracker benchmark.”

    What happened to your courageous stance against tracking short-term performance?

    I dare say it is only an ‘unhealthy and pointless habit’ when your returns that year are crap.

    Tell me I have missed something.

    Maynard

    • John Kingham says

      January 11, 2018 at 6:28 pm

      Hi Maynard

      No, you haven’t missed anything. I just forgot that I’d taken such a extreme stance last year!

      So Yes, I still believe that tracking one-year performance is an “unhealthy and pointless habit”, so thank you for picking me up on this.

      In my defence I would say that I didn’t exactly focus on one-year performance, mentioning it just once and then immediately moving onto long-term annualised returns. I also said I think long-term dividend growth is a better measure of performance than price growth, precisely because it’s less volatile and more closely linked to the fundamental performance of the underlying businesses.

      So don’t panic, I haven’t started switching my performance metrics around just to show my portfolio in the best light.

      And hopefully I’ll remember this conversation when the 2018 review rolls around so that I can re-take the moral high ground!

      • Maynard Paton says

        January 12, 2018 at 6:57 pm

        Hello John

        Thanks for the reply. I am surprised you could forget such an extreme stance.

        The inconsistency of reporting just looks bad from the reader’s point of view.

        For instance…

        For 2013, your portfolio beats the market (26% vs 19%) and the review’s introduction starts off with “A market beating year” and continues:

        “The defensive value strategy and model portfolio have therefore outperformed the market by some 6.3% in 2013, which is a better annual out-performance that I would expect in most years.”
        https://www.ukvalueinvestor.com/2014/01/defensive-value-investing-2013.html/

        For 2014, your portfolio lags the market (1% vs 3%) and the only reference of that (under)performance is one line within a table mid-way through the post.
        https://www.ukvalueinvestor.com/2015/01/investment-performance-review-for-2014.html/

        For 2015, your portfolio beats the market (14% vs 1%) and you are happy to cite the return in the post title: “The UKVI defensive value portfolio returned 14.3% in 2015”

        You then say early on:
        “Outperforming the market by 13.5% is the portfolio’s best one-year result relative to the market so far, so I am of course very pleased with that. “
        https://www.ukvalueinvestor.com/2015/12/investment-review-for-2015.html/

        For 2016, your portfolio lags the market (10% vs 13%) and there is no mention of annual returns, and you declare you will never mention annual returns again:

        “And so from now on I won’t talk about returns over the last week, month, year or even three years.”
        https://www.ukvalueinvestor.com/2017/01/2016-portfolio-review.html/

        For 2017, your portfolio beats the market (18% vs 14%), but you forget your declaration from 12 months prior, and instead mention your annual returns early on in the review:

        “In 2017 the model portfolio produced total returns of 17.5% compared to 14.5% for its Vanguard All-Share tracker benchmark.”

        See what I mean?

        Maynard

        • John Kingham says

          January 13, 2018 at 8:09 am

          Hi Maynard, yes I see what you mean. I’m sure there’s an element of ego in it, and marketing as well. But fundamentally my position has been the same for many years, which is that one-year performance is irrelevant, as per this follow-on post:

          https://www.ukvalueinvestor.com/2018/01/one-year-investment-performance.html/

          I can’t be much more explicit than that, so if I focus on one-year returns in the future I deserve to be chastised!

          (and if you knew me you would not be surprised at what I can forget. I have a memory like a goldfish which is why I systemise everything and use checklists)

  2. wealthfromthirty says

    January 12, 2018 at 1:04 am

    Well, I enjoyed reading the review. Maybe a “pointless” 20 mins with a coffee, maybe not. Its just a good reminder to develop a method, refine the method and hold to the method. Far easier to type than carry out. Your holding period on your sells seems quite long, which is refreshing in an age of stocks coming and going from a portfolio like millennials on a pub crawl.

    I’ve sold one stock out of 7 this year from my portfolio, which is just developing. It was a knee jerk sell although I was a little concerned management were being a little less than forthright with investors – I may have misjudged them, but it felt a relief not to have that concern about the holding.

    Thanks for the review John and enjoy your next cheese sanga, risk free.

    • John Kingham says

      January 12, 2018 at 11:26 am

      Thanks WFT. Your knee-jerk sale may be excusable if you have good intuition and are doing it because something happened in the business. It’s the knee-jerk sales on the back of price falls that are almost always a bad idea, IMO anyway.

      Time for another cheese sandwich (I like to live dangerously)…

  3. Michael Broom Smith says

    January 12, 2018 at 5:32 pm

    Hi John

    A very interesting post and entertaining.

    Is 3% enough reward to not just stick say 75% of the money in Vanguard All-Share Tracker and say 25% in Fundsmith Equity Ac and go off spend the time elsewhere?

    I can see that at any 13% annual growth as against 10% you will reach you £1m in 26 instead of 33 years and I fully admit that I invest my own funds directly in shares because I enjoy the intellectual challenge but would want more (and at the moment get many multiples more than 3%) than 3% per annum to continue doing so or certainly to continue doing so with the vast majority my money. (I have been doing it properly for five years.)

    One final note if you saw what the accumulated cheese sandwiches were doing to your arteries (think of it as an example of how compounding can cause bad outcomes) you might look at the risk factors of eating a cheese sadnwhich differently. :-). I am a veggie who doesn’t eat dairy!

    Thank you once again for all your very informative posts and have a great investing 2018.

    Kind regards

    Michael.

    • John Kingham says

      January 13, 2018 at 8:39 am

      Hi Michael, 3% is the historic rate of outperformance, but I have no idea what it will be in the future.

      Perhaps I’ll outperform by 5% per year over the next decade. Who knows?

      As for whether 3% is enough, I think it’s plenty. Using the rule of 72, a 3% outperformance per year will see my portfolio grow 100% more than the All-Share over a 24 year period. Having started in 2011, that means in 2035 I would have a pension fund twice as big compared to a passive strategy (this obviously ignores cash inflows and outflows). That certainly seems worthwhile.

      Another point is that mine is (hopefully) a low risk strategy, whether that’s measured in terms of price volatility or fundamental risk. I expect my returns to be considerably smoother than the market’s, although we haven’t had the acid test of a major bear market yet. So if I can maintain low risk and a 3% annual outperformance, I’d be happy with that.

      As for the cheese sandwich, I would class myself as almost vegan so I don’t eat them either. Perhaps I should have said peanut butter sandwich, although the accumulated risk to my arteries might be the same.

      I hope you have a great 2018 too.

      John

  4. Steve Kirk says

    January 13, 2018 at 11:54 am

    Hi John

    Thanks for the review. I’d agree with you that 2017 was a vintage year to be an investor, especially when the returns from cash and bonds are non-existent. My own highlights/lowlights from the year:

    – Overall total return of 16%
    – Best individual share was Persimmon (62%)
    – Worst individual share was Interserve (-72%)

    I agree with you and your other commentees that one year is too short to come to a conclusion and I definitely would not make any decisions based on such a short period of time. But I think it is useful to do this exercise:

    – It helps me track how my portfolio is doing against my long term goals
    – it flags up some possible warnings about poorly performing shares that merit investigation
    – it helps reinforce good habits by highlighting changes since the last year

    For example, I’ve taken these lessons from the year:

    – individual share performance is unpredictable and volatile so having a broad portfolio is key (I’m increasing my number of holdings)
    – avoiding losers is more important than picking winners (I’m picking more defensive shares)
    – beating the average market performance is very difficult but trying is good fun (I’ll keep investing time in stock picking and monitoring my portfolio)

    Finally, it was interesting that my pension that is invested globally (rather than just the FTSE350 like my portfolio) did better with total return of 18.5% which makes me wonder how value investors in the US, Europe or Asia got on, assuming they invested domestically. Any of your ‘regulars’ from other parts of the world? How have they got on?

    Here’s to a happy and successful 2018

    Steve

    • John Kingham says

      January 13, 2018 at 2:20 pm

      Hi Steve

      I agree that yearly reviews are a good idea, just not the one-year performance metric. Richard Beddard (well-known investment writer) said he only reviews his portfolio once every five years, which I wouldn’t feel comfortable with. He likes to think in terms of companies and not the overall portfolio, which works for him, but personally I like to keep an eye on the herd as well as the individual cows.

      And I quite like analysing index and portfolio returns, so I’m not going to drop my annual and quarterly reviews anytime soon.

      As for international investor performance, I haven’t heard anything. You might want to do a search for “seeking alpha 2017 review” or “seeking alpha 2017 dividend review” as the Seeking Alpha website has lots of US investors.

      Remember though that this is a self-selected subset of investors, i.e. you only know about the performance of investors who choose to write about their performance. And of course that will tend to be those with the best returns while those with the worst returns will tend to remain silent…

  5. pradeep a gowda says

    November 18, 2018 at 4:47 pm

    I feel the performance of the portfolio would be better in the future, considering the lessons that were learnt investing in Tesco, Rio Tinto, BP, Serco

    • John Kingham says

      November 18, 2018 at 6:00 pm

      Hi Pradeep. I certainly hope so! There has been a raft of small updates to the strategy over the past year or so, and obviously I expect (hope) they’ll pay off in the future.

After 13 years of writing about UK stocks on this website I have now moved to my new home at:

UKDividendStocks.com

Please head over to the new site.

Thank you

John Kingham

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