Most people would attest to the fact that the first – and oftentimes only – piece of data that they look at when evaluating their investments’ performance is annual return. The result of this kind of an approach can more often than not lead to knee-jerk reactions, such as reducing or stopping your contributions, or moving out of investments (or an investment strategy) that had actually been appropriate for you if left unchanged.
While it is important to know how your investments have performed over the past year, do you know how they performed relative to an appropriate benchmark? Did you remember to look not just at short-term performance (year-to-date, one year, three year, and five year), but more importantly at their long-term performance (ten years or more)? If your portfolio’s performance wasn’t where you thought it should have been, do you understand why?
These are all important questions that should be addressed when evaluating the performance of your portfolio. At DirectAdvisors, we are always available to help you evaluate your portfolio. Additionally, after reviewing your portfolio, we can help you to determine if a change needs to be made to your investment allocation, or if a simple portfolio rebalance can make the most sense for you
Click here to read an article by Paul Merriman of MarketWatch discussing ten considerations regarding your portfolio’s investment performance.