Dan Bortolotti: Just shy of two years ago—in October 2011—I wrote a post that laid out the year-to-date returns for the Complete Couch Potato portfolio. If you can remember that far back, the third quarter of 2011 was truly ugly. The European debt crisis was all over the news, the US government’s credit rating was downgraded, and the global economic outlook was bleak. If you held a diversified portfolio, your equities were in the toilet, but you were saved by a solid performance from REITs and outstanding returns from bonds, especially real-return bonds. Overall, the portfolio experienced a small loss over the first nine months of the year:
January–September 2011
Ticker
%
Return
iShares S&P/TSX Composite
XIC
20%
-12.02%
Vanguard Total Stock Market
VTI
15%
-5.26%
Vanguard Total Int’l Stock Market
VXUS
15%
-13.82%
BMO Equal Weight REITs
ZRE
10%
5.77%
iShares DEX Real-Return Bond
XRB
10%
9.53%
iShares DEX Universe Bond
XBB
30%
7.20%
Total
-1.6%
Now let’s look at how the Couch Potato has performed so far in 2013. Here are the returns as of August 30:
January–August 2013
Ticker
%
YTD return
iShares S&P/TSX Composite
XIC
20%
3.2%
Vanguard Total Stock Market
VTI
15%
20.8%
Vanguard Total Int’l Stock Market
VXUS
15%
5.6%
BMO Equal Weight REITs
ZRE
10%
-10.5%
iShares DEX Real-Return Bond
XRB
10%
-2.1%
iShares DEX Universe Bond
XBB
30%
-10.5%
Total
0.2%
How’s that for an about-face? So far this year, equities are in the black, with the US leading the way with
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