I have updated the Lazy Portfolio Smackdown page for results through the end of April. Realize that not all dividends may be included yet. We’ll get things worked out at year end. Things have really changed since last month. Remember when mudfud ruled? Now guess where [he] ranks? Dead last. Also look at the professional […]

I have updated the Lazy Portfolio Smackdown page to show the March results for both the game entries and the professional lazy portfolios. I’ve moved the composition breakouts for the Professional Lazy Portfolios and the Game Entries to two new pages to help make the results page more readable.
A reader at Diehards.org/forum asked me to […]

The Columbia Journalism Review has an article entitled Mad Money, Bad Blood in which they follow up on last summer’s story from Barron’s about Jim Cramer’s stock picking performance on Mad Money. The article focuses mainly on the disagreements between Barron’s and CNBC.
But the article’s author concludes that the Barron’s piece is sound. And I […]

I don’t know if anyone ever reads comments to the blog postings, so I will think about raising some of them to the level of a posting itself. Here’s the first example:
wizkid writes in Some Lazy Portfolio Entries Backtested:
OK - Ready to audit the calculations. Please define the calculation of Return […]

From the 66 entries in the Lazy Portfolio Smackdown game, I have taken these 19 portfolios in which all component funds existed back on 1 August 2000 through 31 January 2008 and computed their Return vs. Risk profile. To see the components of each portfolio, go to the Portfolios page and find the ID number […]

At the Lazy Portfolio Smackdown page, I have put in a table showing the returns of all entries into the game thru the end of January. No surprise that most of the portfolios are down. The exceptions being the clever China Bear portfolio and a commodities-heavy portfolio.  What I intend to do is to show the standard deviations of these portfolios over the long term. That is hard to do for ETF portfolios, obviously. Here are the long term (well, since August 1st 2000 at least) risk vs. reward results for the professional lazy portfolios that invested in mutual funds.

Some of the IFA Index Portfolios are shown in circles. Notice how as the portfolios take on greater risk, they also achieve greater return. Notice how the IFA Index Portfolios generally have greater return for the same amount of risk than the other portfolios. There is a single outlier in the Scott Burn Six Ways from Sunday Portfolio. So let’s take a detailed look at it.

Click the header to read all the details…

James in south Florida alerted me to a great feature in the Canadian MoneySense magazine of Feb/Mar 2008 entitled Child’s Play: The Couch Potato Portfolio in which they describe lazy investing and using passively managed index funds instead of actively managed funds. Here’s a snippet:
Let’s say you have a $200,000 portfolio. This year alone you […]

I’ve been lazy about getting the 2007 Lazy Portfolio Results reported to you. But here they are now. You can see the details of the portfolios here.
Ted Aronson’s portfolio did well because it’s equity portion was composed of 25% emerging markets VEIEX which went up 39% in 2007. He only had 6% in Small Cap […]

Win valuable prizes and fame by playing the Mad Money Machine Lazy Portfolio Smackdown Game in 2008: Email me your Lazy Portfolio before 2 January 2008 to enter!
In 2006 we had a portfolio smackdown between a portfolio of Cramer’s recommended stocks that I selected vs. a basket of ETFs I bought and held. The ETFs […]

In his new book, Jim Cramer’s Stay Mad for Life, he lists some mutual funds he likes. I thought I would look at a portfolio of these funds. I selected only those that existed on 1 Jan 2000. The results here are from then through 1 Oct 2007. Two things to notice: the risk seems […]

You’ve used the IFA Benchmark Your Portfolio tool to review the performance of the Index Funds Advisors portfolios. They give you the return and the risk for each of their 20 IndexFolios over a timespan you select. I thought it would be cool to do the same thing for several of the Lazy Portfolios (click […]

Here’s a summary of how the “Lazy Portfolios” have done through the 3rd Quarter of 2007. Below is the Long-Term Sort. Click here to see the Short-Term Sort and more detail of the makeup of each portfolio here and on the podcast. I also show each portfolio’s annualized performance for the previous 1.75 and 2.75 years.

NOTE THAT THESE ARE THE EQUITY ONLY PORTIONS OF EACH PORTFOLIO. I REMOVED THEIR BOND COMPONENT (IF ANY).

ravjim asked, and I hereby answer: how would the do-it-yourself portfolio from show 59 have stacked up against the lazy portfolios?
So, here’s the portfolio I constructed of Vanguard (and one Bridgeway) funds to try to match the IFA Indexfolio 100:

VFINX
Vanguard 500 Index
12.00%

VIVAX
Vanguard Value Index
12.00%

VISVX
Vanguard Small Cap Value Index
20.00%

BRSIX
Bridgeway Ultra-Small Company Market
20.00%

VGSIX
Vanguard REIT Index
5.00%

VTRIX
Vanguard International Value
9.00%

VINEX
Vanguard […]

Here’s a summary of how the “Lazy Portfolios” have done in the first half of 2007. Click here to see more detail of the makeup of each portfolio here and on the podcast. I also show each portfolio’s annualized performance for the previous 1.5 and 2.5 years.

NOTE THAT THESE ARE THE EQUITY ONLY PORTIONS OF EACH PORTFOLIO. I REMOVED THEIR BOND COMPONENT (IF ANY).

I gotta tell ya, even I’m surprised at the way the Portfolio Smackdown is shaping up so far this year. Is IFA Indexfolio 100 really that good? Or are all you guys (including me!) really that bad? Read on for an analysis…

I was looking for several volunteers to be on the Mad Money Machine “Board of Directors” for 2007. Thanks all you folks for signing up.

So thanks to some feedback from you guys, I got the idea to combine the Investment Guru Challenge and the Portfolio Smackdown into one thing for 2007. I have created a game at MarketWatch’s Virtual Stock Exchange (VSE) in 2007 for our Investment Guru Challenge and for the Portfolio Smackdown. The Game ID is […]

I count PAUL B. FARRELL among the good guys in investing. His most recent article at MarketWatch.com is called
ETF flood calls for portfolio ark and it is worth a look.
I also got from the library yesterday the new book The Smartest Investment Book You’ll Ever Read by Daniel Solin. He also says buy the […]

Jim said today on Mad Money that he was bearish on Bank of America (BAC). That means sell. We held it for, what, seven days? I don’t know what financial to buy, but tomorrow night I’ll look through his rantings and see what he’d say to buy. He did like the New York Stock […]

I forgot that on 1 Dec, Cramer blessed selling Nokia (NOK) saying while it was inexpensive, he didn’t like the cellphone sector. And since he has been a perpetual Google fanboy, (GOOG) how can we not buy it as the tech play in the Portfolio Smackdown? I will sell/buy today at 2:30.

addthis_url […]

Wow, the ETF Portfolio crossed the 20% gain mark for the first time today. It is time to take a step back and talk about this some. Click to read it…