This time three months ago, the Slow & Steady passive portfolio was suffering under the strain of Trump’s one-man assault on the global trade system. But we’ve made up all our losses since then.
Indeed we’re now ahead, albeit by a none-too-convincing 1.6% year-to-date.
Our four equity funds have put on double-digit gains in the space of a quarter. Global property is dragging its heels though – and good old gilts continue to make me rue the day.
Here are the numbers. See the annualised returns column for the all-important long-term gains:
The Slow & Steady is Monevator’s model passive investing portfolio. It was set up at the start of 2011 with £3,000. An extra £1,310 is invested every quarter into a diversified set of index funds, tilted towards equities. You can read the origin story and find all the previous passive portfolio posts in the Monevator vaults. Last quarter’s instalment can be found here. Subtract about 3% from the portfolio’s annualised performance figure to estimate the real return after inflation.
Stick or twist
I’m more convinced than ever that nobody (but nobody) can predict what’s around the corner.
Is the US market being slowly poisoned by political risk? Or is it the last bastion of economic dynamism in the Western world?
Flip a coin? Best of three?
I’m in no hurry to make a call. The political and commercial climate seems so changeable, I’d sooner make a claim for whiplash.
It’s funny how the more febrile the world becomes, the more obvious it should be – but somehow isn’t – that a passive strategy makes sense.
The thing is: we’re primed to look for new answers to new problems. Ideas, strategies, and products that are supposedly tailor-made to meet the moment.
It’s less the triumph of hope over experience than the triumph of marketing over rationality.
Perhaps there’s an analogy to be drawn between attitudes to passive investing and the apparent loss of faith in our democratic institutions?
Both realms offer the same old solutions. Products that can only achieve so much and suffer from a perceived lack of ambition in the age of moonshots. Results that are far from guaranteed and sometimes you must go backwards before you go forwards. Patience required.
The alternative? Roll the dice on a buzzy new venture fronted by a man with a tan promising the Earth.
Because that always works, right?
Portfolio Manager R.I.P.
In other developments, Morningstar’s Portfolio Manager has finally died a death. You can still visit the embalmed remains of your portfolio for a few weeks but you may not like what you see.
Four out of my five portfolios were inaccessible and the promised Export Data function doesn’t work.
Morningstar has long neglected what was a really excellent tool that could have been a fantastic promotional opportunity for its brand.
As it is, losing 16 years of transaction data is exactly the sort of customer disservice we’re being conditioned to expect from companies that do the cost-benefit analysis and decide they’d rather absorb the reputational shrapnel than look after their users.
I intend to road-test some alternatives over the coming weeks, so please let me know if you’ve found a happy home for your portfolio.
I suspect a bespoke spreadsheet may be the way forward in the end. Enforced rooting around the Internet – plus some able assistance from ChatGPT – has helped me to automate much of the work.
My efforts aren’t slick enough to share yet. But hopefully we’ll have a workable portfolio spreadsheet ready for the Monevator Massive before too long.
New transactions
Every quarter we put £1,310 down on our portfolio’s horses and hope that a few eventually romp home in the steeplechase of life.
We split our stake between our seven funds, according to our predetermined asset allocation.
We rebalance using Larry Swedroe’s 5/25 rule. That hasn’t been activated this quarter, so the trades play out as follows:
Emerging market equities
iShares Emerging Markets Equity Index Fund D – OCF 0.2%
Fund identifier: GB00B84DY642
New purchase: £104.80
Buy 48.64 units @ £2.15
Target allocation: 8%
Global property
iShares Environment & Low Carbon Tilt Real Estate Index Fund – OCF 0.17%
Fund identifier: GB00B5BFJG71
New purchase: £65.50
Buy 28.648 units @ £2.29
Target allocation: 5%
Developed world ex-UK equities
Vanguard FTSE Developed World ex-UK Equity Index Fund – OCF 0.14%
Fund identifier: GB00B59G4Q73
New purchase: £484.70
Buy 0.672 units @ £721.34
Target allocation: 37%
UK equity
Vanguard FTSE UK All-Share Index Trust – OCF 0.06%
Fund identifier: GB00B3X7QG63
New purchase: £65.50
Buy 0.215 units @ £304.43
Target allocation: 5%
Global small cap equities
Vanguard Global Small-Cap Index Fund – OCF 0.29%
Fund identifier: IE00B3X1NT05
New purchase: £65.50
Buy 0.146 units @ £450.08
Target allocation: 5%
UK gilts
Vanguard UK Government Bond Index – OCF 0.12%
Fund identifier: IE00B1S75374
New purchase: £301.30
Buy 2.259 units @ £133.39
Target allocation: 23%
Royal London Short Duration Global Index-Linked Fund – OCF 0.27%
Fund identifier: GB00BD050F05
New purchase: £222.70
Buy 205.443 units @ £1.08
Dividends reinvested: £167 (Buy another 154.06 units)
Target allocation: 17%
New investment contribution = £1,310
Trading cost = £0
Average portfolio OCF = 0.17%
User manual
Take a look at our broker comparison table for your best investment account options.
InvestEngine is currently cheapest if you’re happy to invest only in ETFs. Or learn more about choosing the cheapest stocks and shares ISA for your situation.
If this seems too complicated, check out our best multi-asset fund picks. These include all-in-one diversified portfolios such as the Vanguard LifeStrategy funds.
Interested in monitoring your own portfolio or using the Slow & Steady spreadsheet for yourself? Our piece on portfolio tracking shows you how.
You might also enjoy a refresher on why we think most people are best choosing passive vs active investing.
Take it steady,
The Accumulator
Very useful as always – the power of viewing a real-time experiment in asset allocation, patience and compounding.
It is easy to do backtests and look at the results on a page, but seeing it here in real – time on a regular basis with all the swings is priceless.
It really does show you the benefits of averaging in, compounding and patience.
This experiment alone has probably taught many people the basic principles of good investing.
Re: Morningstar…
I wasn’t particulary tempted by the Morningstar Premium membership offering. I would though have been quite happy to pay an upgraded Free membership for their Portfolio Manager, if they’d kept it. Looks like they’re adopting something of a scorched earth attitude towards all current offerings, whilst saying little about what they’re offering next.
Reminds me a little of the saying that goes something like…
Q. Who are the only people who refer to their customers as users ?
A. Drug dealers and tech outfits.
Thank you for the article.
‘Rue the day’ ?
But Grasshopper didn’t the Ancients say that to be diversified you have to accept that often there will be something doing badly?
Thanks as ever. Commentators such as John Mauldin are of the view that the era of growth stock outperformance is coming to an end and are advocating a move to dividend paying stocks as they believe they are likely to outperform going forward.
As a passive investor myself I’m not keen on following the latest fad but it seems to me to make sense to reallocate where large trends can be foreseen or where one believes that an allocation to the asset sub-class makes sense in general. One could take the view that the reallocation will happen naturally as the high growth stocks fall behind and the dividend stocks gain on the index but that could involve quite a lot of pain.
Do you have any thoughts on allocating a portion of the Ex-UK Equities to a dividend paying fund (either as a permanent allocation or for the foreseeable future) such as the Vanguard FTSE All-World High Dividend Yield UCITS ETF (VHYG)?
It’s a little slow and clunky but I’ve been using the PortfolioPerformance desktop app for tracking, probably off the back of a mention in a comments section here
@Mr Optimistic — Re: ‘rue the day’, TA went off on a family road trip somewhere yesterday, so not sure when he’ll be checking in.
However I’m pretty sure I can step in for him and say ruing is not the same (and probably significantly less costly) than taking action and shifting allocations or selling. 🙂 Note that nothing has actually changed in the SSPP’s weightings this month.
It’s a good point though and I thought the same thing when I sub-edited it.
In the same vain, I’ve also cautioned TA that time is running out on us playing the ‘passive investors as underdogs’ card, as he sort-of does in the latter half of his introduction here.
Of course plenty of pundits are still out there urging/selling alternative strategies, such as @Warren’s John Maudlin. 🙂
But with index funds at over 50% of AUM IIRC, there’s no denying passive is a mainstream choice now, if not the default choice!
Hello
I recently started using Snowball Analytics to track my portfolio and dividends. I’m loving it so far. It’s just a shame that I only found it after finally getting my Excel spreadsheet to work properly!
@TI cheers.
FWIW I was able to use the Export Data function from Morningstar’s Portfolio Manager, albeit from the Canadian version of their website.
I’ve resorted to a simple google sheets spreadsheet with a simple formula that goes to get the (more or less) live stock prices. It’s surprisingly easy and I’m wondering why I didn’t do it before…
It’s even got me thinking that on a rainy day I might be able to plug in 15 years worth of trades and figure out my annualised returns over that time, purely out of curiosity.
Thanks @TA for an always stimulating and inspirational piece. I’m impressed with your spreadsheet mastery, though wondering how you take account of the quarterly investments in the spreadsheet when you do your return calculations? I’d love to be able to do the same with my own SIPP but the combination of monthly contributions, switching some funds while playing the trend game, and a total lack of excel expertise has made this impossible… so far.
Hat Tip to Scott for the Portfolio Performance Desktop App. I’ve taken a look and am wondering if, with a free morning and a cold flannel, I might be able to use it to monitor my own SIPP with ETFs and Funds.
Perhaps another article on tracking performance (but this time for dummies) might be possible?
Cheers guys
@very good – cheers!
@Trufflehunt – I hadn’t heard that one before – did make me chuckle.
@Mr Optimistic – Quite right. I was just being a bit down in the mouth about bonds. Thank you for bucking my ideas up 🙂
@Warren – I was quite surprised myself to see that ‘dividend growth’ has done pretty well over the last 40 years: https://monevator.com/do-the-risk-factors-beat-the-market/
I’ve personally plumped for small value and momentum as my diversifiers but I can see why someone would take a punt on dividend growth. I’m doubtful that the end of the current era of growth dominance is forseeable. Though the longer it lasts, the more people will call time. Reminds me of the reams written about bondogeddon. Some of those commentators had to wait 12 years to be right.
@TI – I understand what you’re saying but think of the analogy this way: democracy is the dominant political system throughout the world. Hundreds of millions vote in elections. Yet it’s democracy and governing from the centre ground that’s under strain and being called into question. So while yes, “passive investing” strategies likely comprise about half the market now, in terms of buzz and mindshare and the expectations of retail investors, I’m not sure the fundamental principles are so widely understood, or adhered to. I think, for example, it’s reasonable to say that large numbers of people trade ETFs like shares.
You’re right, I don’t intend to change the bond allocation. Think of it as an emotional outburst amid all the passive investing stoical acceptance 🙂
@ColinThames – I could definitely do more on portfolio tracking the Google Sheets way. I’m currently working on just automating it all – as much as possible anyway – and then working with TI on releasing a Monevator portfolio tracking spreadsheet that’s quite easy to use. One of the problems I find, when trying to use other people’s spreadsheets, is that either I don’t understand them, or they don’t do what I’d like them to do. I’m hoping I can come up with something that’s quite simple at first blush, and which can be iterated via the Monevator community.
Re: tracking contribs etc. Have you seen this article in the archives: https://monevator.com/how-to-unitize-your-portfolio/
If you’d like to rustle up a spreader but are a bit rusty on Excel, you can crack a lot of problems in tandem with ChatGPT.
@All – thanks for the portfolio tracking suggestions. I’ll take a look at those.
I have my own Excel spreadsheet which I add to in terms of what it records from time to time. I was updating the figures manually each month from Morning Star PF manager. Last month, without, was a time consuming nightmare. Any help on how to get Excel to pick up live prices would be greatly appreciated!
Just tried the Morningstar export function in the UK and it gave me an Excel spreadsheet of the holdings (including past holdings that I’ve had which are listed as zero held now) but none of the transaction data. Like others I’d have happily paid for a membership to keep it available.
I’ve started to use II’s watchlist function within their Portfolio Tools which allows you to put holdings in rather than just a simple watchlist. It allows a tear off function for the current prices of all my holdings (not just the ones in my II account). Easy cut and paste or CSV export into a spreadsheet gives me an up to date portfolio value. Not figured out how to record transactions going forward but probably in a custom spreadsheet as I don’t trade a lot.
I tried many portfolio managing apps. But i still use excel in the backup system.
I used StockMarketEye (now defunct) which ran locally (my preference) but also use SeekingAlpha (no good for stocks outside the US and no cash management but excellent narratives) and Yahoo Finance (portfolios 2.0 have improved). I currently prefer to use SimplyWallStreet (they have a free option but paying is best) – it supports just about any stocks and symbols, but, to my frustration still no cash management/foreign currency holdings. But transactions are supported, reporting and analysis incl projected div income is nice. There seems to be a bit of a focus in adding a “community”, inmy view a shame, I would rather see them make it into the best portfolio manager first. (you cannot compete easily with SeekeingAlpha and the like). Probably the best from an accounting/reporting standpoint is ShareSight. (both the latter now also show gains and losses broker down by fx gain/loss/Dividend income and capital gain) A bit expensive and lacking in with charting and news but reporting and tracking is excellent. If the missing cash management comes to SimplyWallStreet, I will likely stay, if not soon, I will switch to Sharesight. Most offer direct links with Brokers, not somethign I am interested in, but it seems many are.
Good luck, would love to hear any other discoveries.
@TA – thanks for your suggestion re the unitisation article. It went way over my head, but the piece on using a spreadsheet to track the annual return was just about doable for me.
On another note, I noticed that most of your investments are ETFs, but not the global small cap. As my SIPP provider caps (no pun intended) fees on ETFs I’d prefer using an ETF. Any reason you went for a unit trust? And if you were using an ETF, any thoughts on best one?
You’ve done some good pieces in the past on best funds for global trackers, S&P500 (I think). How about how you chose your funds in your passive portfolio and the options?
@ColinThames
All of the investments in the S&S portfolio are funds (OEIC / unit trust) not ETFs. Quite some time ago, TA expressed a preference for funds but maybe he’s more neutral on the issue now.
@TA
Bad luck on the loss of transaction data. I firmly subscribe to the view that to control your data you need to keep it in-house. Consequently, I just record sales/purchases in my desktop spreadsheet, and use unitisation and IRR to see how the investments are performing (out of curiosity rather than as a management tool). The spreadsheet file gets included in my ad hoc backups to an external hard drive. I guess Google Sheets is unlikely to disappear anytime soon but, hey, you never know. 🙂
@Martin T – I use Google Sheets and you can pick up most ETF and stock prices using Google Finance formulas. I’ve got formulas that currently work for funds, stocks, ETFs, and gilt prices that Google Finance doesn’t recognise. Let me know if of any interest.
For Excel, it looks like you type a ticker into a cell, then go to the Data, click on Stocks and then tell Excel to pull in the price and all kinds of other info to boot. Looks really good: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/get-a-stock-quote-e5af3212-e024-4d4c-bea0-623cf07fbc54
@ColinThames – Curlew is right, all of the Slow & Steady holdings are funds rather than ETFs. Ultimately, this is a throwback to when funds were typically the cheapest option for a new investor – because you could trade for nothing. I’ve stuck to funds for the Slow & Steady portfolio because not everyone is comfortable with zero-fee brokers.
My personal portfolio now uses ETFs instead of funds. In large part that’s due to broker pricing structures: e.g. platform fee caps on ETF holdings.
I’m personally agnostic about which vehicle I use.
TI and I are both reluctant to talk about our personal portfolios for various reasons but I have left plenty of clues in various articles 🙂
@Curlew – you were definitely wiser than me 🙂 I’ve now fully converted to your way of thinking. I could reconstruct the transactions from a substantial pile of contract notes I suppose, but that would have to be a very rainy day.
@TA – I’m not sure if you’ve ever clarified the specific dates you use for calculating your updates, but this quarter I noticed a notable difference between your portfolio’s performance and mine – which have historically tracked each other quite closely. I measure performance from the last trading days of each quarter and recorded a 5.71% increase. By comparison, your reported 7.97% uplift is quite a bit higher and, frankly, relatively disappointing from my side…
It turns out that in this case, just a few days’ difference significantly impacted the reported returns of the equity funds. For example, according to data from ii, VDWXEIA returned 5.37% between March 31st and June 30th, but a striking 16.54% between April 4th and July 4th!
This disparity in returns really underscores the importance of time in the market versus timing the market. Even small differences in date ranges can lead to seemingly large discrepancies, especially in volatile conditions – a useful reminder of how critical consistency in measurement is when comparing performance.
In a batch email from Morningstar they said that, “The ability to download your portfolio holdings and transaction data will be available early August 2025. We will notify you when this feature is available”, so am still hopeful about retaining a portfolio’s history. Still haven’t worked out the best/easiest destination for this data though. Would be quite reluctant to use a spreadsheet since they’re invariably a bit faffy!
@TA thanks, I’ll give it a go sometime and report back.
Taken cathartic pleasure in unsubscribing from Morningstar mailing lists, as they give you the option to say why. Look forward to hearing your portfolio management options @TA; bound to be a step up from my rather clunky spreadsheet!
As a Yorkshire born and bred accountant, I’m not drawn to extravagance, but I might have to push t’boat out to stump up the £6 per month subscription for Sharesight
I’ve tried to Excel my portfolio but the baked in stock pricing doesn’t seem to cover funds and webscraping prices is tedious to say the least
In most cases I can upload transaction data by csv file from my brokers if it doesn’t materialise from Morningstar
The Sharesight broker link appears to be restricted to emailed trade confirmations, which is of limited use when your brokers don’t email trade details because “everything is in our app”
However the Sharesight demo seems to cover everything I got from Morningstar’s free portfolio manager with added reporting and the annualised return figures that I’ve always missed
Time to go wild and spend some money!
@sn05lud — We’ve had diving into Sharesight on our docket for many weeks now, and yes I’ve heard good things too. Please watch this space! 🙂
First-time poster here.
Love this site, and both the quality and quantity of content are fantastic.
Plus the BTL comments are invariably as insightful as the articles.
I just wanted to add Stockle (https://stockle.app/) to the list for evaluation. I’ve not yet had chance to test it in anger but the user interface looks great and the developers publish a (mostly) monthly newsletter with updates on forthcoming features.
Thank you for your comment NS. Much appreciated. And thanks for throwing Stockle into the mix too 🙂