Want to be a better investor? Chuck your online portfolio

There are many things which you can do to evolve as better investors. Multidisciplinary learning, reading annual reports, deep knowledge in some business areas, asset allocation, position sizing, concentration vs diversification, portfolio management etc. In this post, I want to share one area which subtly pushes you to becoming a better investor.

These days nearly everyone maintains an online portfolio. These portfolios provide real-time (or delayed by a few minutes) portfolio value. It maintains your buy price, number of stocks, current market price and total current market price of holding.

Now let me come to why you should NOT maintain an online portfolio. It is important to know and understand what action we are taking based on the information I possess. Having an online portfolio does not help in taking any action. For example, if the market value of your portfolio rises 0.5% on a day, do you start thinking that "Wow, I am 0.5% richer, let me sell all my holdings!!". You don't. You mostly stare blankly at the computer/mobile/tablet screen and feel happy (if the portfolio is up), sad (if it is down), very happy (if it is up more than the index) or very sad (if it is down more than the index). So, if you don't really do anything productive with your online portfolio, isn't it time to question why you need it in the first place?

Here are some distinct benefits of NOT having an online portfolio:

• You don't waste time on tracking prices on a daily (or hourly) basis
• You actually do something productive with your time (like reading annual reports, sector reports or getting your day-job completed)
• Your time horizon for investing increases as you are not on a minute-by-minute tracking mode
• You maintain an offline (paper or simple spreadsheet) and update the prices once-a-quarter (or more infrequently if you like). Simple fact of having to look up individual prices will deter you from updating frequently!!
• You will limit the number of stocks in your portfolio from 100s to a much lower number if you have to track prices manually!!

This is one easy way to inculcate a good investing practice. (Apart from stopping to listen to the chatteratti on CNBC). Try it and see if it works for you.

Portfolio Performance - 2011

2011 was an interesting and eventful year (probably like any other). For the Indian equity markets, it was full of fears that was imported from first US and then Europe. This year started with the Sensex at 20509 and Nifty at 6134. It closed the year at 15455 and 4624 respectively. This amounted to a decline of 24.6% on the Sensex. Along with the general market, my portfolio also fell. For the whole year, the portfolio was down 15.19%. That is a substantial percentage. The fall was especially vicious during the last couple of months. When I look back, the portfolio was generating positive returns till the end of October and then fell off sharply. This is because the only stocks I hold are mid and small caps and they have been beaten down in the current environment of extreme uncertainty with respect to the currency depreciation and Eurozone problems.


Although, I do not expect a great turn around in 2012, I would continue to deploy most of my savings to stocks. This is primarily because I am more convinced about the future of businesses to generate above inflation returns than any other form of investment I am aware of. With the market fall, stocks (specially the small and mid-cap variety) are available at good valuations for someone with a reasonably long time horizon. I am not very concerned about short term currency fluctuations and other issues. I don't expect basic business demand & supply to alter based on macro economic concerns, and good and resilient businesses should be able to weather the storm.

Serial #	Name of Company	% of Portfolio (Dec'11)	% of Portfolio (Jan'11)	Since Jan'11	Comments
1	Astral Poly	4.94%	0.00%	New	Accumulate
2	Balaji Amines	5.19%	8.34%	Down	Hold
3	Balkrishna Industries	4.49%	3.59%	Down	Accumulate
4	Cravatex	4.22%	0.00%	New	Hold
5	Elecon Engg	2.43%	0.00%	New	Accumulate
6	GEI Industrial	3.77%	0.00%	New	Accumulate
	Hira Ferro	0	5.12%	Sold
	Indag Rubber	0	0.95%	Sold
7	JK Lakshmi Cement	2.38%	3.32%	Down	Accumulate very slowly
8	Lloyd Electric	1.67%	5.03%	Down	Hold
9	Manjushree Tech	3.70%	0.00%	New	Hold
10	Mayur Uniquoters	10.44%	5.29%	Up	Accumulate aggressively on every dip
11	Opto Circuits	6.05%	8.32%	Down	Hold
12	PI Industries	6.51%	0.00%	New	Accumulate
	Pidilite	0	0.00%	Sold
13	Poly Medicure	1.34%	0.00%	New	Hold
	RSWM	0	6.68%	Sold
14	Shriram TransFi	7.37%	10.90%	Down	Accumulate aggresively on every dip
15	Sintex India	4.02%	9.97%	Down	Accumulate aggresively on every dip
16	Supreme Ind	16.86%	20.65%	Down	Hold
	Supreme Infra	0	3.64%	Sold
17	Titan Industries	4.36%	0.00%	New	Accumulate very slowly
18	Yes Bank	6.86%	5.88%	Up	Accumulate
19	Cash	3.21%	0.09%	Up
20	Nifty Put Option	0.19%	0.00%	New

Portfolio Review: Half-Yearly

H1 2011 comes to an end. Sensex started the year at and is today at 18763. During this period., India's primary index has lost 8.51%.

My portfolio fund which I started last year has returned a meagre 6.44% during this period. From a relative performance view, the portfolio has outperformed Sensex by 14.96%. But then, you cannot eat relative performance, can you :-(

Here are the highlights of the portfolio activities during this period. 

• Added a few stocks to the portfolio - Astral Polyteknik, Elecon Engineering, GEI Industrial, Manjushree Technopak, Pidilite and Titan
• Booked profits in Supreme Infrastructure
• Enhanced cash levels of portfolio from nearly 0 to over 10%

Click on this link for current portfolio details

Annual Result 2010

2010 comes to an end. Sensex started the year with 17,473 and closed the year 20509. It touched a high of 21,108 and a low of 15,651. On an annual basis the gain in Sensex was 21.38%.

My portfolio which started this year has returned a 43.40%. That is a little more than double that of Sensex. Hoping for a better 2011.

Portfolio Update:9 Months of Performance

After 9 months of NAV based tracking, the portfolio performance has been reasonable. The fund is up 53.96% (versus 24.79% of the Sensex).

The portfolio composition at this point in time is as follows:-

Measuring Portfolio Performance - Do it like a mutual fund

There is an old Chinese saying which says "what cannot be measured cannot be improved". I have thought about how I invest in the markets. As I get a monthly salary, I tend to put money into the markets also in monthly tranches. After a while it is difficult to measure the returns that I have got from my portfolio as a whole and not from individual stocks. All the websites that are out there that I have used does not really give a true picture of portfolio performance because it tracks the current holding and provides the percent gain or loss. I looked at various softwares, websites and did not find anything that actually helps me in doing this. So, I built a rudimentary spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel which helps me track my portfolio as a mutual fund on a NAV basis.

If you want you can use a similar concept. The concept is fairly simple and straightforward. The initial amount you start off with, say, Rs 1000 is your initial capital. Take an arbitrary face value (I chose 10 more out of convention, you could take 1 or 100 or whatever number takes your fancy). The number of "portfolio units" you allocate yourself are calculated by the total portfolio value divided by the face value (in this case, 1000/10=100 units).

Once you have the basic framework in place, it becomes easier from here. Every time you put money in your stock account, just calculate the number of "portfolio units" you would get. For example, if your initial capital of Rs1000 has grown to Rs 1200, your NAV would be 1200/100=12 (portfolio value divided by units equal new NAV). So, if you add Rs 60 to your portfolio, you will get 60/12=5 more units. So, you will have 100+5 units. So, your portfolio would be now 105*12=1260.

Keep track of a benchmark index if you are interested to know if your stock picking skills are good enough for you to continue at it. Over a period of time (not less than 3 years) if you are not doing better than the index, it is probably better to get out of managing your funds and hand it over to a mutual fund or an exchange traded fund (ETF).