Pretty impressive numbers for the month, in a partial bounce back after months of declines. Equities the big winners, with crypto surging too. Interestingly, though, is that even after a great month, all portfolios are still below their level at the start of June.
Who knows if, looking back, we’ll see July 2022 as the month where the slide ended, or whether we’ll see it as one of those little bumps that gives you a chance to catch your breath before you go down even faster. The portfolios were all up this month, from a low of 1.65% (the RPC Stability) all the way up to 7.79% (100% Equities). It’s important to keep these gains in perspective, though, as June was so disastrous that even this booming July didn’t make up for it.
In terms of individual assets, cryptocurrency was the big winner, up 38.5%. The two leveraged equities funds TNA and UPRO were the next largest gainers, up 28.1 and 24,8%, based on the strength of equities in general. VTI finally had a good month, up 9.4% and even long-term bonds went up 2.4%. This was the good kind of correlation between stocks and bonds, for the first time in a while. The big losers for the month were those assets that portfolios depend on for non-correlation: gold, commodities and managed futures. In this, they all did their job, heading down by 2.5 to 3% as every other asset went up.
Inflation, though, was the real winner for the month, of course. The numbers released in mid-July showed a 9.1% annual inflation rate for the twelve preceding months. This meant the chunk taken out from portfolios continues to grow, and is now up to a withdrawal of $3,541. Since there were few dividends this month, this meant large amounts withdrawn from the best performing assets in each portfolio. Even with commodities having a bad month, they were still the course of withdrawals for several portfolios.
The portfolios that did well were the ones with larger equity concentrations, so the 100% Equities, followed by the RPC Growth portfolio (up 6.65%, boosted there by the jump for GDLC), and the Bogleheads 80/20 came in third, up 6.35%. The worst portfolio was the RPC Stability. It was up just 1.65%, but then again, that’s exactly what it should do. That portfolio is still in first overall, for the fifth month in a row. Its total value stands at almost $922,000, which considering all that we have been through in the first half of 2022, might be very comforting to some.
So, just two, well... three, no, actually, four months as good as that one and we'll be back to even! woo hoo.
Monthly Results:
Cumulative Results:
Asset Performance:
