Investing in various asset classes and never bother to track and monitor its return, is like flirting with several girls at the same time and never bother whom will ultimately be your wife. Don’t blindly invest and forget. It is like flirting without knowing what you will get.
You just need an extra step to calculate the return of your investment portfolio.
Let’s say you invest in several asset classes. Your gold investment gives over 100% return last year. Your stock investment turned sour after the 8th of March Malaysian general election. The apartment you rented out gives you a consistent return month after month because of your loyal tenants. Many type of investment, all with different return. So how do you know your overall investment portfolio is doing? Is it on track?
This is a simple tutorial on how to compute your portfolio return.
Return of portfolio = (W1 x R1) + (W2 x R2) + (W3 x R3) + …..(Wn x Rn)
Where W1, W2, W3 and Wn stand for the weightings in % of assets, for asset 1 to n, in the portfolio. Whereas, R1, R2, R3 and Rn are returns for the respective assets, 1 to n, in the portfolio.
Example 1:
More than half is invested in real estates.
Weight of stocks = 50k/293k = 17.06%
Weighted return of stocks = 25% x 17.06% = 4.27%
Overall portfolio return = 4.27 + 0.44 + 1.01 + 4.10 = 9.82%
Example 2:
This is a very conservative asset allocation. about 73% invested in fixed deposit.
Example 3:
This is an “balance” portfolio, invested in four asset class with equal share.
Download the excel spreadsheet: investment-portfolio-return
By tracking your portfolio return, you will be able to construct a proper asset allocation to get the desired return.
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Nice summary of how to calculate investment returns.
Perhaps I have read it wrong, but I think you should also list the beginning market values and calculate weightings based on those MV.
Hi Gokou3,
Of course you need to find out the return rate of the individual classes. About how to arrive on the return rate, it will depends on many other variables.
Say you invest in RM10k in stock markets on Jan 1, and then review its return on Dec 31, it will be a very straight forward calculation. But I bet that in the real world, it doesn't work that way. You might buy and sell (trading), or using dollar cost averaging (different entry point). You have to calculate separately for every investment classes to come up with the appropriate return to be used in this form.
How about real estate investment? It is not simply buy a house at RM100k, and think that it has appreciate 10% by year end. It involves rental yield, maintenance etc.
We will talk more about calculating return for every single asset classes in the future.
Excellent work and very informative. Appreciated
Can we have a link exchange?
My blog name: Investment Internals
URL: http://investinternals.blogspot.com
contact: investinternals@gmail.com
Sorry that I don't exhange link at this moment. I'll probably link to
your article when it is appropriate.
http://www.kclau.com
Via iphone (爱疯)
Good post. Thank you.
http://MyAssociatesDegree.blogspot.com