Portfolio 1 Updated April 2017

Portfolio One is 15 1/2 years old.  The beneficiary contributed $7500 and the trustee $15,500 for a total of $23,000.  The current value is $41,421 for a gain of $18,421 or 80%, which is about 6.2% / year when adjusted for the timing of cash flows.   You can see the data here or follow the link on the right.

The portfolio is generally doing well.  This portfolio is the first to be moved from a trust fund to the beneficiaries control (although technically they were under control from 18 onward).  The trustee now has agency to track the stocks and dividends and make transactions.  Now there will be charges for buys and sells (I think it is about $20 / trade) but this shouldn’t be too bad since we don’t do a lot of transactions annually.

Portfolio 3 Updated April 2017

Portfolio 3 is 9 1/2 years old.  The trustee contributed $5000 and the trustee $10,000 for a total of $15,000.  The current value is $17,483 for a gain of $2,483 or 16%, which is about 2.7% / year when adjusted for the timing of cash flows.  You can see the detail at the links on the right or go here.

The portfolio is generally doing well.  We will consider selling ConocoPhillips (COP) which has been selling off assets to pare down debt and reduced their dividend.  Their stock has stabilized but this may not be the best oil play.  We are also sticking with ExxonMobil (XOM) which we bought near a high because that company has proven to be well run over the last few decades.

In the new “analytics” tab you can see that this portfolio has a heavy non-US component, with 62% of stocks from non-US countries.  We have 2 of the 3 major Chinese internet companies and also 2 large Canadian banks, among others.

Portfolio Four Updated April 2017

Portfolio Four is 7 1/2 years old.  The beneficiary contributed $4000 and the trustee $8000 for a total of $12,000.  The current fund value is $14,444 for a gain of $2444 or 20%, which is 4% / year when adjusted for the timing of cash flows.  You can see the detail here or go to the links on the right.

We have a couple of stocks on watch.  Devon Energy (DVN) got waxed with the downturn of the oil industry a couple of years ago and has recovered a lot of its losses but cut its dividend significantly in the interim.  DVN seems to be plateauing and is thus on watch.  Oracle (ORCL), the technology company famous for its database software (although they own many other products, including cloud software) is in a long term price and technology war with AWS and other cloud providers (including Microsoft’s Azure).  They have been performing well but are on watch as a result.

There are analytics on the “analytics” sheet.  A few worth paying attention to is the price as a % of its 52 week high, which shows its relative strength over the last year (obviously anything near 100% means that the stock is moving up and hitting highs regularly).  The portfolio is 68% US stocks and 44% of them are “high dividend” (meaning a dividend around 3% and higher).

 

Portfolio Five Updated April 2017

Portfolio 5 is 7 1/2 years old.  The beneficiary contributed $4000 and the trustee $8000 for a total of $12,000.  The current value is $14,151 for a gain of $2151 or 18%, which is about 3.6% / year adjusted for the timing of cash flows.  You can go here to see the portfolio or go to the links on the right side of the page.

The portfolio is about 50/50 with US and foreign stocks.  Almost half the stocks are considered “high dividend” with a dividend of near 3% or greater.  Gilead (GILD) is a recent drugmaker purchase and Anheuser Busch InBev (BUD) are both pretty well run companies on or near watch.

On a side note, this is one of the first portfolio to be almost totally run by formulas in Google Sheets.  I incorporated vLookups and re-arranged the sheets a bit to have more of the information on buys and sells populate automatically.  Due to these changes, it will be much easier to update this portfolio in the future and it will be the template that I will apply to the other portfolios as I migrate them to Google Sheets.

Portfolio Eight Updated April 2017

Portfolio eight is 2 1/2 years old.  The beneficiary contributed $1000 and the trustee $2000 for a total of $3000.  The current value is $3201 for a gain of $201 or 6%, which is 4% / year over the life of the fund.  Go here for a view of the stocks or use the links on the right.

The stocks are 1/2 US and 1/2 foreign and right now we are watching Gilead (GILD), one of the health care stocks that is potentially impacted by various health care proposals.

Portfolio Seven Updated April 2017

Portfolio 7 is 2 1/2 years old, with the beneficiary contributing $1000 and the trustee $2000 for a total of $3000.  The current value is $3670, for a gain of $670 which is 22% or 14% / year over the life of the fund.  Here is a PDF of the fund activity and you can also see this in the right column on links.

The stocks are doing well, with 3 of the 4 near their 52 week highs.  The stock is half US and half foreign and the largest sector is Techology (if you consider Mastercard, the payment processor, as Technology) at half the portfolio.

Google Sheets

I have been keeping track of the portfolios in excel for over a decade now.  Although I am pretty good at updating the data, it does take a little while and is error prone.

I recent started moving the portfolios over from Microsoft Excel to Google Sheets.  Google Sheets have formulas that automatically update the stock prices via a formula call like =googlefinance(PG, “price”) and there are a host of other values you can invoke from 52 week high / low to PE to EPS.  It is very cool when you build something that can auto-update just upon opening the spreadsheet.

It has been a while since I’ve built detailed spreadsheets with functions and formulas and it is a lot of fun (for me, at least).  Google Sheets have many of the same features as Excel such as pivot tables and conditional formatting and Lookups and they mostly function the same.  I was surprised that they could name a lot of features using the same names as Excel but I guess I’ve just been away from the game for a while, perhaps that is the norm.

The concept that the spreadsheet just opens up and auto updates via formulas or API’s is very powerful.  It is interesting what data is readily available and for what exchange, while other information (notably the dividend yield) has to be obtained by looking it up manually (which is also not even correct sometimes).  This is something I will be writing about more in the future as I do additional research.

The ability to share documents is also very powerful.  I can create a spreadsheet and share it with the beneficiary via Google Docs and they can go in any time and see how everything is going.  It will be about 98% right (the cash balance won’t auto update and the last few dividends won’t be recorded) and some of the new analytics I’ve created (just a start) will also auto update.

This is going to be something that I’ll be working on a lot and it opens a whole universe of possibilities.  If you think about it, most of the data is out there somewhere in the public cloud, available in a database or by API.  The data that you have on your particular situation is a mere tiny portion of the grand total.  The fact that most of this can be available FOR FREE is also astonishing.

After I’ve beaten up Google Sheets for a while I will have to ask myself what incremental value, if anything, that Excel provides.  I’m sure there are some advanced formulas they have that Google does not but sharing Excel files has always been a nightmare, and this is easy with Google Sheets (I realize that O365 is supposed to help this, but still….).  I am using Excel 2011 for my Mac and haven’t seen the urgent need to upgrade and this won’t really help the need to upgrade, either.  Microsoft still sends me security patches, which is great, when and if that stops I’ll have to consider my options.  I guess the patches will stop in October 2017 for Mac 2011.  Maybe at that time I will also trade in my Macbook from 2011 which has given me great service but likely will be reaching the end of its useful life.