October 3, 2016: Survey & Feedback

Oct 5, 2016 | Asset-Allocation, Bonds, Economy, Feature, Gold, Headline, Income, Investments, IRA, Markets, Mutual-Funds, Newsletter, Retirement

Re-balance Cycle Reminder All MyPlanIQ’s newsletters are archived here.

For regular SAA and TAA portfolios, the next re-balance will be on Monday, October 24, 2016. You can also find the re-balance calendar for 2016 on ‘Dashboard‘ page once you log in.

As a reminder to expert users: advanced portfolios are still re-balanced based on their original re-balance schedules and they are not the same as those used in Strategic and Tactical Asset Allocation (SAA and TAA) portfolios of a plan.

Please note that we now list the next re-balance date on every portfolio page.

Survey & Feedback

At MyPlanIQ, we take our users’ feedback seriously. We are always hungry for this information. At the end of every newsletter, there is this button

How can we improve this newsletter? Please take our survey 

that collects your feedback. In this newsletter, we want to share with you what you have to say about us.

The newsletter survey results

The following charts show the breakdown on your evaluation on our newsletters.

Overall, we are satisfied that we provide quality contents to you. We believe that, in addition to our system, our newsletters offer unreserved and comprehensive education materials.  It’s also clear that we still have work to do: about a quarter of users are clearly not satisfied.

Samples of the feedback

Here we show some example feedbacks:

Have you decided against have comments following the newsletters? I would like to see the community’s thoughts on some of the portfolios.

My father and I regularly read your newsletter and enjoy it! Thank you!

I personally would like it if the Market Overview section was a little less conservative, or if it painted a better picture of what the market is at any given point in time. 

I usually can’t read the charts. The colors are too close together, and I am not color blind. Pick better colors and use thicker lines. Also, any chart with a date range over 5 years ought to be a Log chart or it is Totally misleading in the importance of the last 2 or 3 years. Seriously, a 25 year chart that isn’t logarithmic is just nonsense. And you should have more charts 15 and 20 years long.

Your observations me and insights are directly on target, refreshingly ringing true – consistently. THANK YOU!!!

I just want to thank you for your unique newsletters and for all of the archived data, which is not available elsewhere for litle guys, to my knowledge. Today’s newsletter is an example of how you help–you diagnosed the problem (in a portfolio I follow, as it happens) and figured out a solution. This is really wonderful. Please keep up the great work.

On the critique side, I have to say I am still a little confused about what it means to follow a portfolio and to personalize one. Perhaps you could either remind us, or put up an “IQ for dummies” page where it’s easy to figure out all the rules.

IMO, there may be too much weight placed on using fixed income rather than cash to provide higher returns in both tactical and strategic portfolios. If US interest rates on high quality bonds were to trend upward over an extended period as they have in the past (prior to the recent 25+ year bull market in bonds), the value add by bonds vs cash would most likely be negated.

While back testing will show improved risk/reward using bonds in lieu of cash, we can easily recognize that it really is different this time….when it comes to the level of interest rates and the potential for future bond fund returns. Going forward the bond bull market returns will not as likely be duplicated.

A screener to sift through the hundreds (thousands?) of plans

First let me say that I have been an avid investor for about 20 years, read all of your newletters, am sincerely interested in the subject matter …

Your explanations of the various strategies are very good. However, there are so many options to choose from, the sheer number of possible portfolios (and combinations as you have suggested in newsletters) makes it difficult for even a fairly experienced investor to choose which strategy (or combination thereof) to use… 

There appears to be a reformat to the email update the last few months as it displays in a difficult to read manner. It only occurs in Webmail (Earthlink). I can send a screenshot if you like

1) Would like to see portfolios designed specifically for taxable accounts.

2) It would help investors “narrow the field” of portfolio choices if there was a chart or series of multiple choice questions that would lead investors to those portfolios best suited to their individual situation.

3) Alternatively (to 2 above), a newsletter or article specifically devoted to assisting investors (who have self-directed IRA’s) choose a portfolio approach that was best suited to them, all things considered.

1] still making changes on re-balance days is difficult and avoiding broker complaints with switches is a problem

2] Being away and unable to re-balance for a few days is also a problem – once I am 3 or 4 days out of sync each month what do I do ? Is it better to leave things alone until the next re-balance – this is the dilemma ….

3] the concept is good but is also hard to implement with large portfolios in different accounts with different brokers. Some are retirement, some annuity and some are straight brokerages – all with different tax implications

Although I don’t go to your web site, your newsletter is the only one I receive that provides realistic, rational advice. I really like it so I don’t think it can be improve

……

The takeaway is that we would  like to encourage your continuous feedback. Furthermore, we also would like to remind our readers that the comment section of a newsletter is open for every user.

We are also actively working on a mobile app that makes it very easy to use. From what we got in the survey, this is perhaps one of the most desired improvement.

Again, thank you for participating!

Portfolio Review

The alternative portfolios listed on Brokerage Investors page have kept up with general markets. Given the current elevated market levels, we think these portfolios should have a place in an investor’s investment account.

Latest Alternative Allocation Portfolios Performance Comparison (as of 9/30/2016):

Ticker/Portfolio Name YTD
Return**		 1Yr AR 3Yr AR 5Yr AR 10Yr AR
Harry Browne Permanent Portfolio 11.5% 11.6% 6.0% 4.7% 6.7%
Permanent Income Portfolio 8.7% 10.0% 6.9% 6.5% 6.2%
My Simple Alternative Hedge Fund 8.3% 8.7% 5.0% 7.2% 9.4%
VWINX (Vanguard Wellesley Income Inv) 8.0% 10.8% 7.0% 8.6% 6.9%

**YTD: Year to Date

Market Overview

Stocks are consistently at an elevated level, though investors have shown less and less conviction. Deutsche Bank’s woe created some dislocation in markets but in general, at least at this moment, it seems to be contained. However, we shall remind our readers that markets are highly unstable. Given the upcoming US presidential election, it’s possible for markets to be on hold for a while. We repeat our cautious position: maintain proper risk allocation, choose a well designed investment strategy and be prepared for possible market disruption.

For more detailed asset trend scores, please refer to 360° Market Overview.

We would like to remind our readers that since the financial crisis in 2008-2009, we have not seen substantial structural change in the U.S., European and emerging market economies. Economies have heavily relied on low interest debts. Capital might be misallocated to unproductive investments and consumption. U.S. stock valuation is at a historically high level. It is thus not a good time to take excessive risk. However, we remain optimistic on U.S. economy in the long term and believe much better investment opportunities will arise in the future.

We again would like to stress for any new investor and new money, the best way to step into this kind of markets is through dollar cost average (DCA), i.e. invest and/or follow a model portfolio in several phases (such as 2 or 3 months) instead of the whole sum at one shot.

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–Thanks to those who have already contributed — we appreciate it.

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