Portfolio Two Updated January 2017 – Tax Time

Portfolio 2 is our second longest lived fund, at over 14 years.  This fund has transitioned from individual stocks to an ETF and CD mix.  The beneficiary contributed $7000 and the trustee $14,000 for a total of $21,000.  The current value is $32,151 for a gain of $11,151 at 53% or about 5.5% / year when adjusted for the timing of cash flows.  You can see the spreadsheet supporting this at the link on the right or download it here.

The fund contains 4 ETF’s and one CD.  The $10,000 CD earns 1.55% and will redeem in July, 2018.  This investment is essentially risk free (if the issuer goes under the FDIC will pay out the accrued interest and return the principal).

The largest ETF is VTI, which covers the US stock market on a capital weighted basis (that is to say that the largest market capitalization stocks comprise a larger portion of the index).  Since we have had a rally in Technology (prior to the election) and financials and commodities (mostly since the election), this ETF has done well.

There are two non-US ETF’s, the VEU (all world non-US, unhedged) and HEFA (major non-US markets, hedged against the dollar).  Surprisingly, these two funds mostly performed alike in terms of returns, even though the dollar rose during this period.  This is something I will investigate further in the future when I have some more time.

The fourth ETF is IBB, a NASDAQ bi0technology ETF.  This one was kind of a bet on future growth since it had been pummeled in the period before we purchased it.

In general, these ETF’s are low expense and overall the portfolio has a decent yield at 1.9% comprised of dividends and interest on the 1.55% CD.  This is a nice cash addition in an era of zero yields on short term cash and when even some large issuances have negative yields over a ten year span (in Europe).

I noted that the ETF HEFA (the hedged fund) had a small capital gain.  This is rare for ETF’s (they are common for mutual funds).  Since it is immaterial it is listed as a dividend on the report.

Due to the fact that these trust funds are “subsidiaries” of my account, typically they don’t pay any fees on transactions for individual stocks (essentially zero expenses every year).  Since ETF’s do have expenses, this portfolio will incur implicit expenses (they come out of the returns of the ETF’s so you don’t see them directly).  About $70 in implicit expenses hit the portfolio during 2016 (the CD is free of all expenses).