With the year 2009 behind us, I'm all to happy to say goodbye to it.
My overall portfolio returns were miserable -4.99% in the taxable account and and -1.41% on the retirement side. Even more depressing is the comparison with the SP-500 which was up +23.45% for the year. Basically, I sold out of my long on the sell-off back in late 2008 and came into 2009 with a high cash position. At one point (at the March low) the SP-500 was down -24% for the year, and I was down only 9%. I though I was being so smart staying in cash, instead the market took off and I was late to re-enter. I finally caught onto the rally in September and got some decent upside price action from there.
Also on the positive side, my company 401K plan (which have nothing to do with managing) was up 20%, so I caught a nice gain there.
Anyway, below is my target asset allocaiton for 2010. I plan to transition toward this new allocation throughout the year. The allocation itself was created by Financial Engines, and deemed appropriate for someone of my age and risk tolerance.
Under the Current column, the 35% is marked with an asterisk.
That's because its not purely invested in SPY. Instead, its a mix of AAPL, SPY, DIA and YUM. When and if I sell these, I need to replace them with an equivalent amount of SPY, but keep this category at about 32% of the portfolio.
To Do List
- Add to EFA, VO, IWN on a pullback. Expect a pullback in this market.
- As the CD's come due, roll into EFA, IWN and DFA International Securities
- Get the prospectus for DFA International Securities and see how I can best replicate it
Resolutions for 2010
- Stop spending so much time trying to pick individual stocks and let the ETF's do the heavy lifting. Remember dividends are a big part of long-term returns.
- Focus more on the overall allocation then trying to find the next hot stock, or time the market.
- Stop screwing around in the Forex market until I have a proven, researched automated method that's proven to work. And good luck finding one by the way.
- Smile more, stress less and stop worrying about money and instead just enjoy living my life.