What's your YTD Performance?

Jungle wrote: ↑Stocks up 14.78%, (XIRR) outperformed market by 0.5%
Networth up 19%
Spending up 42%...
Real estate up 9%
RESP up 9%, not included

Wild ride this year, faced two dividend cuts in one portfolio, then TFSA was underperforming TSX, managed to come back for year end. I hung on and did not buy or sell, during the dip. 13 years in the market now and staying invested.

Jungle wrote: ↑My XIRR incudes all 2014 dividends calculated in CAD dollars from start to finish. It's benchmarked against the corresponding ETF total return (in cad dollar)

I used XUS to benchmark US stocks and XIC for CAD stocks. Both are calculated in CAD dollar, making it easy to compare. I got the total return off the website.

This year CAD stocks underperformed by roughly 1%, US stocks outperformed 4%. Portfolio is overweight CAD, resulting in a blended benchmark. Portfolio outperformed by only about 0.5%.

For the amount of risk I took buying stocks, I could have just bought the ETFs, for the same return. Our five year returns are showing the same results, pretty much matching the benchmarks, but with more risk doing stock picks.

In some years, we had great outperformance in CAD stocks, but underperformed US stocks. Net result would have been less risk, just buying ETFs. I expect to outperform with stock picks but so far in tracking returns by XIRR over five years, I am not getting meaningful outperformance.