Nearly doubling my money in five years

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Now that I had this understanding of sectors and funds, along with access to the monthly performance data, my investment decisions improved enormously. And, very gratifyingly, my returns improved in a corresponding fashion.

During the remaining four or five years that my two investment bonds had to run before reaching maturity, I was able to nearly double their value. That’s right. They went up nearly 100% in five years.

And that was even with enormous costs I had to pay. At that time it was costing me from 4% to 5% to switch from one fund to another. Yes, 5% ! Even so, with my up-to-date fund performance numbers it was still possible for me to make these very substantial gains. This level of success would certainly not have been possible if I had only been able to use the finance industry’s standard one-year, three-year and five year fund performance numbers to make my decisions.

The fact is most trends come and go in periods much shorter than the timespan of the finance industry’s standard figures. Some trends last maybe six months. Others, if you are fortunate, longer. My monthly numbers allowed me to take advantage of these trends. The industry’s very long term numbers did not.

For the DIY investor many things have changed for the better since I started in the early 2000s. Trading costs have come down, fund supermarkets have multiplied, and dealing using the internet has made life much easier all-round.

Last but by no means least, with the Saltydog system we can now provide weekly performance data, automated and beautifully presented for easy analysis, on ten thousand funds. Quite an improvement on the monthly data, handwritten by me, on seventy funds, which is what I started out with!

One thing has not changed, however, and that is that you want your money to be invested in a rising sector. The order of importance is still: sector first, and fund second.

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