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Even then, I think the fee was something small like $25 for the year. Which is pretty tiny compared to their usual fees.
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# ? Jan 23, 2017 21:10 |
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# ? May 17, 2024 01:28 |
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I just want to confirm that I'm doing this e-series thing correctly: From what I remember, the 'investor portfolio' I did when I set this up indicated that I should have a 'Comfort Balanced Growth Portfolio.' My automatic deposits deposit directly into that portfolio, and what I've been doing is rebalancing every year or so to the recommended index funds on CCP. Is there any way that I can set up automatic deposits so that I'm always at the recommended 10/30/30/30 allocations instead of having to rebalance every year? Or is this how I'm supposed to do it?
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 00:44 |
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Skizzzer posted:I just want to confirm that I'm doing this e-series thing correctly: If you rebalance more frequently, you're not giving your performing asset classes room to run.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 01:53 |
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Mantle posted:If you rebalance more frequently, you're not giving your performing asset classes room to run. Wouldn't that argue for never rebalancing, or treating rebalancing as "timing the market"?
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 02:03 |
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Is it really rebalancing if my money's being directly deposited into my index funds versus my comfort portfolio? Wouldn't I be giving those allocations more 'room to run' this way?
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 02:06 |
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I just top up to my targets rather than rebalance.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 02:11 |
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Skizzzer posted:I just want to confirm that I'm doing this e-series thing correctly: I'm fairly sure you can do automatic deposit directly into your four e-Series funds. This doesn't remove the need to rebalance every year or two! Unless each fund has moved in exactly the same way over the 1-2 year period, you'll be out of balance even if you stoically shovelled money in at the same ratio the whole time. The way you're doing it now seems ok, but I think you can eliminate the middleman balanced growth fund and make things just a little bit simpler (and slightly cheaper). If you truly want automatic rebalancing (and it's ok if you do!), maybe have a look at a robo-advisor or a single fund approach. They're a bit more expensive than manually rebalancing four e-Series funds (think 0.5% versus 0.8% versus 1.1%), but if a couple basis points is the difference between you staying in the market vs. bailing, it's worth it. Mantle posted:If you rebalance more frequently, you're not giving your performing asset classes room to run. I think the main argument against more frequent rebalancing is that it costs too much in commissions. Suppose you can make trades for $0. If index A goes up every day for a year while index B goes down, who cares if you sell A to buy B once a day, once a week, once a month, or at the end of the year? You should end up in the same place. cowofwar posted:I just top up to my targets rather than rebalance. Me too, but I admit that's a bit more work than automatic deposit and one annual rebalance. Also I imagine it'll stop working when my portfolio grows.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 02:27 |
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Subjunctive posted:Wouldn't that argue for never rebalancing, or treating rebalancing as "timing the market"? No, because the decision to rebalance on period of x time is made at the time of determining strategy, not at the time of rebalancing.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 03:17 |
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pokeyman posted:I'm fairly sure you can do automatic deposit directly into your four e-Series funds. Thank you, this is what I'm hoping to do. It just seemed like my current process could be streamlined a bit.
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# ? Jan 24, 2017 22:24 |
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Skizzzer posted:Thank you, this is what I'm hoping to do. It just seemed like my current process could be streamlined a bit. Let me know how it goes! I'm adjacent to a very similar setup so I'm curious how easy it is to manage.
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# ? Jan 25, 2017 00:07 |
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pokeyman posted:This doesn't remove the need to rebalance every year or two! Unless each fund has moved in exactly the same way over the 1-2 year period, you'll be out of balance even if you stoically shovelled money in at the same ratio the whole time. What? Oh holy gently caress no. 1-2 years is way too often to be re-balancing a portfolio unless you experience a serious life-changing event (marriage, kids, buy house, retirement). Re-balancing should be done according to your expected time horizon. Your actual portfolio distribution matters a shitload less than the returns you expect, and trying to re-balance too often will really screw that up. Mantle posted:No, because the decision to rebalance on period of x time is made at the time of determining strategy, not at the time of rebalancing. This is the start of a good strategy. Your asset allocation model is supposed to be an attempt to realize a certain gain over a certain period of time. Unless forced by a change in circumstances you should NOT be constantly re-balancing your portfolio within that time period. Your asset allocation model is an attempt to reach a goal, not a goal in and of itself. grack fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Jan 25, 2017 |
# ? Jan 25, 2017 20:31 |
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grack posted:What? Oh holy gently caress no. 1-2 years is way too often to be re-balancing a portfolio unless you experience a serious life-changing event (marriage, kids, buy house, retirement). Re-balancing should be done according to your expected time horizon. Your actual portfolio distribution matters a shitload less than the returns you expect, and trying to re-balance too often will really screw that up. When I say rebalancing, I'm talking about selling what's gone above your target allocation and buying what's below. Am I using the wrong term?
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# ? Jan 25, 2017 21:52 |
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grack posted:What? Oh holy gently caress no. 1-2 years is way too often to be re-balancing a portfolio unless you experience a serious life-changing event (marriage, kids, buy house, retirement). Re-balancing should be done according to your expected time horizon. Your actual portfolio distribution matters a shitload less than the returns you expect, and trying to re-balance too often will really screw that up. Not gonna lie, this is the first time I've heard this. Are we all talking about the same thing here? This sounds like what I think of as allocation. pokeyman posted:When I say rebalancing, I'm talking about selling what's gone above your target allocation and buying what's below. Am I using the wrong term? This is what I think of as rebalancing. Genuinely curious.
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# ? Jan 25, 2017 22:08 |
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grack posted:What? Oh holy gently caress no. 1-2 years is way too often to be re-balancing a portfolio unless you experience a serious life-changing event (marriage, kids, buy house, retirement). Re-balancing should be done according to your expected time horizon. Your actual portfolio distribution matters a shitload less than the returns you expect, and trying to re-balance too often will really screw that up. Expecting particular returns from a given allocation model is trying to time the market and is not couch potato investing.
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# ? Jan 25, 2017 22:11 |
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Studies have shown (I don't want to find them, but it was either CCP or Justin Bender, I think) that rebalancing every year on the dot, or every two on the dot, are the best times to rebalance in terms of long term return (using a retrospective analysis.) I just rebalance with distributions and contributions and then do it every two years.
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# ? Jan 25, 2017 22:22 |
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pokeyman posted:Let me know how it goes! I'm adjacent to a very similar setup so I'm curious how easy it is to manage. Pretty easy actually. I talked to a mutual funds representative and told her instead of x amount to be deposited into my portfolio bi-weekly, I wanted my bi-weekly payments split into these index funds, % 10/30/30/30, respectively. I had to redo that bullshit investor portfolio survey because my desired allocations didn't match my profile, but I just answered every question (and it was blatantly obvious I was doing so, the TD person was giggling) so that I would end up with the "aggressive" portfolio. My previous bi-weekly single deposit, in other words, is now split into 4 bi-weekly deposits into 4 different index funds. Obviously long-term those %'s will shift, but I plan to deposit more money periodically to keep those proportions. Not sure if rebalancing was the right term, but what was happening before was that my money was being directly deposited into my comfort portfolio, which I think has a 50/50 "fixed/equity" or bonds/stocks allocation? I was then transferring the funds in there to my preferred index funds every year or so.
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# ? Jan 25, 2017 22:42 |
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Jan posted:Expecting particular returns from a given allocation model is trying to time the market and is not couch potato investing. You have this completely backwards. Are you trying to say that changing your portfolio every year isn't timing the market and keeping the same funds/bonds/shares/etc. for 5 years is? That makes no sense. Let's try this again: When you first invest, you generally develop an asset allocation that suits your risk tolerance, time horizon and investment goals (or you should be). You buy in to a portfolio of investments that meets that asset allocation with the expectation that after x time period has passed the returns will be generally in line with your targets. After x time period you sit down and say "Okay, my asset allocation has/has not met my investment goals, what (if anything) should I change? Or should I change my asset allocation?" This is when you take a look and re-balance your portfolio. The other instance where you would change your portfolio would be a material change in circumstance. Either internal (new job, buying house, have kid, get married, etc.) or an external change (Trump just got elected). Do not get caught up in "I need to have x-cash/y-debt/z-equity at all times!" Of course your asset allocation is going to be different at the end of one year/two years, that's exactly what you expect to happen. To put it bluntly and in giant block letters: MAINTAINING A SPECIFIC ASSET ALLOCATION IN YOUR PORTFOLIO IS NOT THE GOAL. IT IS A STARTING POINT. THE GOAL IS THE INVESTMENT RETURNS YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE OVER THE TIME PERIOD YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE THEM.
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# ? Jan 25, 2017 22:59 |
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grack posted:MAINTAINING A SPECIFIC ASSET ALLOCATION IN YOUR PORTFOLIO IS NOT THE GOAL. Yes it is. grack posted:"Okay, my asset allocation has/has not met my investment goals, what (if anything) should I change? Or should I change my asset allocation?" This is timing the market. At a discrete point in time, you are peeking inside the black box that is your investments and try to make decisions based on your "investment goals" (which are a direct result of market performance) at that exact point in time. Blindly rebalancing to match an asset allocation can both improve or reduce returns, based on the time frame. But doing so at a fixed interval with no regards to the current situation at that time is not timing, since you are completely disregarding previous market performance or any "investment goal"/expected market return. Or, you know, every single couch potato advisor out there is wrong and you are right.
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# ? Jan 25, 2017 23:17 |
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Jan posted:Blindly rebalancing to match an asset allocation can both improve or reduce returns, based on the time frame. But doing so at a fixed interval with no regards to the current situation at that time is not timing, since you are completely disregarding previous market performance or any "investment goal"/expected market return. Did you bother to read that entire article? Because there's a couple of important points that are made, specifically the last paragraph: quote:It’s worth noting that the period from 1991 through 2010 was rather unusual when measured against historical averages. A 20-year trend of falling interest rates resulted in outstanding bond returns over this period, and a rising loonie gutted foreign equity returns that were low to begin with. As a result of these overlapping trends, bonds actually outperformed a globally diversified portfolio of stocks over the last two decades. This period may have been an unusually good one for the strict rebalancer. Over the next 20 years, if stock and bond returns are closer to their historical norms, rebalancing may not deliver that extra 30 basis points a year. The article cherry-picked a 20 year period of extraordinary market conditions that lead to historically high bond returns, and then said that those conditions aren't likely to re-occur (and they haven't). The article was written in 2011, is based on market conditions that no longer exist and at this point are nearly impossible to recreate. Interest rates can't really go much lower than they are now (the BoC overnight rate is 0.5%) and without consistent interest rate decreases, Bond prices will NOT provide better returns than equity over the long term. If Bonds can't provide better returns than equity, than strict rebalancing strategies don't work for anything other than managing risk tolerance in the long term. It took a catastrophic event to start the two decade market aberration (the near-collapse of Japan's banking system and a 20 year recession), and it would take another catastrophic event to cause another one, because interest rates would have to rise sharply before they could fall again. Even the mortgage crisis in the US only caused a depression in the capital markets that lasted 2-3 years. Jan posted:Or, you know, every single couch potato advisor out there is wrong and you are right. The couch potatoes were right in 2011. It is no longer 2011 grack fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Jan 26, 2017 |
# ? Jan 25, 2017 23:22 |
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grack posted:Did you bother to read that entire article? Because there's a couple of important points that are made, specifically the last paragraph: Genuinely curious, as I've never heard this side of the argument and with such capitalized, bolded passion. You mentioned bonds a few times in your last post. What if I'm an aggressive investor with a a 20/40/40 split of generic index funds (can/us/world). Is it still foolish to maintain that ratio with rebalancing every year, or should I let it go to 5/45/45 if the Canadian economy goes to poo poo? Cuz I'd feel foolish if it rebounded in year 2 and I left gainz on the table by not buying in the valley.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 07:55 |
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Reggie Died posted:Genuinely curious, as I've never heard this side of the argument and with such capitalized, bolded passion. If the Canadian market really goes to poo poo that badly I would consider that a change in circumstances, so it would be worth considering. That said, not only would it take something pretty drastic for this to happen you would also be subject to foreign exchange risk and that would need to be considered as well. What I'm against is situations where your year end asset allocation is something like 16/42/42 and feeling the need to rebalance your portfolio. Doing that essentially cuts off the legs of your highest performing assets and leads to situations where you're trying to time the market (should I buy or sell now?) which is basically universally a bad idea. Also you'll be incurring fees and/or commissions for the trades. Another question is how are you investing? If you're sticking to a regular investment plan (annual, semi-annual, monthly) at your desired asset allocation this will blunt some of these issues anyways - if share/unit prices drop the money you invest with will buy more buy more actual shares than before.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 08:28 |
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Go bonds and VXC. There is no reason to have Canadian equity exposure.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 13:25 |
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grack posted:If the Canadian market really goes to poo poo that badly I would consider that a change in circumstances, so it would be worth considering. That said, not only would it take something pretty drastic for this to happen you would also be subject to foreign exchange risk and that would need to be considered as well. I was being a bit facetious with the example, but I understand what your saying. To be honest, the only time I've sold to re balance was bring down my Canadian exposure. When I started, I followed the CCP too literally, and Canada made up 25% of my portfolio. Eventually, I decided to bring that down to 15%, but due to reasons (dry spell with savings, wanting to max out TFSA prior to RRSP, and wanting most of my USD stuff in RRSP's...), I decided to just sell instead of wait.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 14:59 |
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I know you were being facetious, I mean in your example the Canadian economy tanked so hard it broke the laws of mathematics. CCP does have some good stuff but the strict rebalance garbage needs to die a quick and messy death. It's no longer relevant and with interest rates the way they are it's not going to be relevant again for a long, long time (if ever). grack fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Jan 26, 2017 |
# ? Jan 26, 2017 18:21 |
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grack posted:strict rebalancing strategies don't work for anything other than managing risk tolerance in the long term. Which is exactly the point? Markets come and go in cycles that are similar but not identical and, most importantly, that are impossible to predict. It is a much more viable strategy for the average layman investor to choose an allocation and stick to it. If you're not a layman investor and think you have enough economic knowledge to buck the market trends, well bully for you. The fact that even "expert" investment counselors can't reliably beat the market is the point of the couch potato approach. What you're basically saying is that bonds aren't as valuable now with interest rates that can only go up. Which in no way contradicts strict rebalancing, just the allocation you choose to rebalance to.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 18:35 |
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Strict rebalancing strategies only, and I mean ONLY improve long term gains in an environment where debt outgains equity. The only way for debt to outgain equity over a long period of time is for there to be regular decreases in the interest rate. Interest rates are literally as low as they can go already. There is no room for regular interest rate decreases without a massive rise in interest rates first. It would take years, if not decades for this to happen, or an event on the scale of the Japanese banking collapse. This isn't an issue of market cycles, it is an issue of a change in circumstances in the underlying reality of the financial markets. If you don't understand that you have no business giving people investment advice because quite frankly you have no loving idea what you're talking about. Also, making changes in your asset allocation from year to year is timing the market despite whatever you want to think. grack fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Jan 26, 2017 |
# ? Jan 26, 2017 19:08 |
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grack posted:Strict rebalancing strategies only, and I mean ONLY improve long term gains in an environment where debt outgains equity. I don't think anyone arguing against you is advocating changing their asset allocation; they are advocating re-balancing at set points to maintain their original allocation ratio. I did change my asset allocations, but mainly because my initial allocations were incorrect for me, and overly weighted in Canada. This change came from doing more research and reading. And to be honest, I don't know what I"m doing which is why I'm interested in this argument.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 19:35 |
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Reggie Died posted:I don't think anyone arguing against you is advocating changing their asset allocation; they are advocating re-balancing at set points to maintain their original allocation ratio. Yeah, and the point I'm trying to make is that this strategy is no longer a good one because the market has fundamentally changed since that CCP article was written. I would comfortably say that 95%+ of the literature written about strict rebalance strategies over the last 5 years would agree. More to the point, current market conditions make it highly improbable that it will be a good strategy any time in the forseeable future.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 19:57 |
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grack posted:Strict rebalancing strategies only, and I mean ONLY improve long term gains in an environment where debt outgains equity. You keep bringing this up. The point is not to improve long term gains, the point is to maintain the same tolerance to risk. This is and always has been the purpose of rebalancing and you even said so yourself. The reason this practice is advised by CCP/this thread is it forces you to have a bit of control over the emotional kneejerk "oh no bonds are tanking right now better put everything in equities" that is due to happen precisely if you start factoring arguments like yours. This doesn't mean you should stay locked in a certain allocation all your life, but rather that you should make decisions on that allocation based on your risk tolerance, not the current state of the economy.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 20:40 |
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grack posted:Yeah, and the point I'm trying to make is that this strategy is no longer a good one because the market has fundamentally changed since that CCP article was written. I would comfortably say that 95%+ of the literature written about strict rebalance strategies over the last 5 years would agree. More to the point, current market conditions make it highly improbable that it will be a good strategy any time in the forseeable future. And this applies to a strict equity portfolio? Again, not arguing, just trying to learn... For simplicity sake; let's say I had a 50/50 split of index funds (USA and Global minus USA). If USA starts to dive a bit, and I leave my funds unchecked, I could be looking at a 40/60 split at the end of the year. When I go to make my contributions (or rebalance via selling), my first instinct is to say to myself "The USA is slightly undervalued. I should buy the while it's low, as it will hopefully gravitate towards the mean over time. Likewise, my other index is slightly overvalued. If I can't re-balance with my contributions alone, maybe I'll sell a few while it's high, as it might gravitate towards the mean over time." What is flawed in this thinking? This is what I've come to understand of passive investing. Edit; this would assume buying is free, and *if* selling, the commission is negligible/the number of share sold make the commission marginal.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 20:44 |
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I think grack is saying, Reggie, that you're better off "rebalancing" by upping your contributions towards one fund vs the other, rather than selling the extra 10% from one and buying 10% with the one you sold (rebalancing via selling). Your line of thought for the second seems like you're trying to time the market. I guess my question would be then, should I be contributing 10/30/30/30 and ignoring whatever my current allocation is, acknowledging that they will fluctuate in value? Or do I try to stick to my allocations by compensating my contributions? I'm also a novice but I'm trying to follow the conversation.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 20:57 |
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Skizzzer posted:I think grack is saying, Reggie, that you're better off "rebalancing" by upping your contributions towards one fund vs the other, rather than selling the extra 10% from one and buying 10% with the one you sold (rebalancing via selling). That's rebalancing via cash flows, which I don't think was really brought up. Incidentally, it is what I do, so when I speak of strict rebalancing, I don't really follow my own advice as my cash flows aren't important enough to cover a significant drift in allocation %. If I decided to change my allocation, I'd likely have to actually sell and start factoring in commission fees.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 21:04 |
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Skizzzer posted:I'm also a novice but I'm trying to follow the conversation. Ditto, which is why I'm intrigued. I hate selling myself, as Questrade charges a commission. TD doesn't, which is where I hold my TFSA, and is one of the contributing factors when I sold off a bunch of my TD900's.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 21:06 |
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Jan posted:That's rebalancing via cash flows, which I don't think was really brought up. Honestly, I just chuck in $xxxx into my accounts. Once it's cleared, I look at my handy custom spreadsheet to see which fund has the biggest negative deviation from the desired allocation. Then buy that fund, and work my way down. Am I doing this wrong?
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 21:12 |
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Jan posted:You keep bringing this up. First, no, it's not. The article you linked talked about improving investment gains, not risk mitigation. Secondly, the issue is actually much more complicated than saying "SR strategies help mitigate risk". In the long term (eg 15-20+ years) yes it can help but that's making the assumption that you're not periodically adjusting your portfolio at 5-10 year cycles (which I've already said you should be doing anyways). In the short term, however, SR strategies actually INCREASE risk, and in some cases dramatically. Why? It has to do with mechanics of the strategy. If you're rebalancing to a specific asset allocation profile on an annual basis you will be constantly overweighting your lower-return assets because you're always selling your high-return assets to buy them. What does this mean? It means over a 4-5 year period your returns will actually be lower than expected. Asset allocation profiles are developed with the idea in mind that different asset classes will show different returns over a given period of time. In layman's terms: You're taking higher risks to earn lower returns. So basically the opposite of what you should be doing. Reggie Died posted:And this applies to a strict equity portfolio? No, SR strategies generally deal with mixed asset portfolios, not strict equity. In your case pure returns are going to be substantially affected by foreign exchange risk and political risk. Reggie Died posted:Honestly, I just chuck in $xxxx into my accounts. Once it's cleared, I look at my handy custom spreadsheet to see which fund has the biggest negative deviation from the desired allocation. Then buy that fund, and work my way down. No, that's fine. Just be sure to re-evaluate every 3-5 years to make sure your returns are roughly on target.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 21:44 |
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grack posted:First, no, it's not. The article you linked talked about improving investment gains, not risk mitigation. http://canadiancouchpotato.com/2011/03/07/does-rebalancing-boost-returns/ posted:The first is that it helps control risk by keeping your asset allocation more or less consistent.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 21:54 |
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quote:Does Rebalancing Boost Returns? I mean it's just the title of article. And in the URL link. And the complete focus of the article. grack fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Jan 26, 2017 |
# ? Jan 26, 2017 21:59 |
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The loving article says that rebalancing may or may not improve returns, which is exactly how I initially quoted it. For someone accusing me of cherry picking, you sure are doing a fine job of it. If you want to go beyond cherry picking and look at more CCP articles, the original one in the rebalancing series even spells in plain out:quote:Rebalancing, then, is primarily about managing risk by keeping your asset allocation more or less consistent. If it does boost returns, that’s simply a bonus. So of course if you keep framing the couch potato rebalancing recommendation as having the goal of increasing returns, it looks wrong and bad. But that's not at all the goal, and the way you seem insistent on saying so makes me wonder if you have an ultimate agenda of selling your own financial counsel in here or something.
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# ? Jan 26, 2017 22:06 |
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Jan posted:The loving article says that rebalancing may or may not improve returns, which is exactly how I initially quoted it. For someone accusing me of cherry picking, you sure are doing a fine job of it. If you want to go beyond cherry picking and look at more CCP articles, the original one in the rebalancing series even spells in plain out: Jan posted:Blindly rebalancing to match an asset allocation can both improve or reduce returns, based on the time frame. But doing so at a fixed interval with no regards to the current situation at that time is not timing, since you are completely disregarding previous market performance or any "investment goal"/expected market return. So... okay, you're quoting an article that has everything to do with achieving better returns and now you're talking about risk mitigation? Edit: I'm going to state this yet again because it's continually getting lost: Asset allocation is a starting point, not a goal. Nobody thinks "When I'm 65 I need to have a semi-conservative asset allocation with a 15% cash/60% debt/25% equity portfolio distribution". They think "When I'm 65 I need to have x amount of money to retire and live comfortably so how do I do that?" Asset allocation profiles are meant to balance risk and return over a certain time period. There is a reason why time horizon is always, always part of proper financial planning. grack fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jan 26, 2017 |
# ? Jan 26, 2017 22:20 |
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# ? May 17, 2024 01:28 |
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grack posted:So... okay, you're quoting an article that has everything to do with achieving better returns and now you're talking about risk mitigation? From this, why even bother holding bonds? On a long enough time frame, they would be an insignificant portion of your portfolio. If I had a 10/50/40 spread initially to establish the risk I was comfortable with, and in 2 years it was 5/52/43, I'm now holding a portfolio that has a different risk profile. Is rebalancing not mainly about managing your risk? By your measure, in 30 years, I will be left with an extremely aggressive profile at the point I would wish for a more conservative one. This is an honest question, as my knowledge on the matter is not borne of intense study.
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# ? Jan 27, 2017 00:55 |