By Tom Bradley

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” – Winston Churchill

It was a strong year in the capital markets and your portfolio was most assuredly up. Good news, right? Well, probably, but maybe not. A proper assessment of how you’ve done requires looking beyond 1-year returns. It involves digging a little deeper to (1) understand the market context in which the returns were generated, (2) analyze the longer-term results, (3) assess the potential for future returns, and (4) determine whether any action is required.

It’s a seemingly arduous task, which is why we’ve published a report to assist you. It’s called, How is Your Portfolio Doing? This is an updated version of a paper we originally published in 2011 (which was recognized that year at the Morningstar Canadian Investment Awards as the Best Stewardship Initiative). We’ve made only a few minor refinements to the text this year (why mess with an award winner), but have updated all the market returns to December 31, 2012. Included in the numbers is a ‘Default Portfolio Calculator’ that gives you a quick and dirty reference for how well your portfolio should have done over the last 1,3 and 5 years.

For Steadyhand clients with balanced portfolios, we’ve also updated a supplementary report that uses the same framework to assess the performance of the Steadyhand Balanced Income Portfolio, which is a hypothetical model portfolio used by a large number of our clients.

Both reports can be accessed by clicking the above links or visiting our website’s Library.