The September 2019 optimal portfolios are now available to subscribers of ETFMathGuy. So, please log in and select your discount broker to see the effect of current market conditions on our optimal portfolios. In this post, we discuss the year-to-date returns of my personal account using the ETFMathGuy portfolios.
Year-to-date returns
Although there are still four months remaining in the year, I thought this would be a good time to talk about my year-to-date returns. I have personally been using the moderate risk level portfolios in my Fidelity brokerage account since the beginning of the year. Monthly returns, based on the balance in my account, appear below.

To better understand the returns in my account that maximizes return for a portfolio with volatility half-way between stocks and bonds, I created the next table. Here, you can see that the ETFMathGuy portfolio return so far in 2019 is 14.1%, with a monthly volatility of 2.1%. To one decimal place, the same volatility is seen if an investor had simply maintained a 50% stock and 50% bond fund, re-balanced each month. But, the 50/50 portfolio would have seen a return of only 13.7%

Key takeaways
The ETFMathGuy portfolios appear to be behaving as expected. That is, they have about the same amount of volatility as their benchmark. However, I realized an additional return of about 0.4% in my brokerage account. For a $100,000 portfolio, that is an additional gain of about $400. I will revisit my portfolio’s performance again at the end of the year, so please stay tuned!
The future of ETFMathGuy
For the near future, I will continue to provide the optimal portfolios without a fee. But, in the meantime, I decided to begin accepting donations, if you are so inclined. Please find the donate button at the bottom of the “Join Us” page. For your convenience, it also appears below.
Thank you all for your interest and support in 2019. I hope you all had a wonderful labor day weekend!


You must be logged in to post a comment.