2017 Portfolio Review

After outperforming the market in 2016 my brokerage account returned to normal in 2017 and underperformed the market.  The market as represented by the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, VOO, was up 21.60% (19.47% capital gain, 2.13% income).  My brokerage account was up 19.17% (16.60% capital gain, 2.57% income).  So I lagged by about 2.43%.

Since I didn't make any transactions during the year it is relatively easy to determine the source of my underperformance.  At the start of the year my account was 30.44% invested in individual stocks, 46.46% invested in VOO, 14.72% invested in other Vanguard ETFs and 8.38% invested in cash.  My individual stocks actually outperformed returning 26.32% (23.19% capital gains, 3.12% income).   VOO of course matched the market.  However my other ETFs lagged badly returning 6.99% (3.31% capital gains, 3.68% income) as did cash returning about 1.01% all income.  So weighting by position size my individual stocks contributed 1.44% of outperformance, my ETFs contributed 2.15% of underperformance and my cash position contributed 1.72% of underperformance.  Which sums to 2.43% of underperformance.

My individual stock outperformers (beating the market by at least 10%) were CAT, AET, ALL, SOUHY, NSC and BBL.  My market performers (within 10% of the market return) were INTC, JPM, CM, PEG, BNS, ED, WFC and WBK.  My underperformers (lagging the market by at least 10%) were XOM, IBM and TGT.  Among my ETFs VYM and VPU lagged the market but were within 10%.  VNQ and VDE underperformed.