Over the past several months, I've been inspired by Seeking Alpha to develop a strategy with a portion of my portfolio that I could share with readers in hopes that this strategy would spark a reaction from readers. In turn, I hope the readers will follow this journey to help hone my portfolio into something more thoughtful than the original thesis.
And what is the thesis? Superyield. More specifically, I intend to create a long term portfolio that consistently yields 9% per year. I'm planning for a much more modest growth on equity of 2% for a total annual growth rate of 11%. These yields will come from ETFs and individual stocks that consistently produce high yields and are as stable and diversified as can be practicable at these insane levels.
I have a 25 year time horizon on this portfolio. I'm 39 now, and I hope to retire at 65. Based on an 11% total annual return compounded over a 25 year period I should make a return on the original investment of 1,358% or almost 14 times my original investment before taxes and fees. In my example portfolio for instance, I'm starting with a sum of $36,000 or about 15% of my current total portfolio (the rest is managed by professionals). $36K should be $489K when I retire according to this high yield methodology.
Now for the specifics. There are a number of rules that I've decided to already break, but it goes like this.
- Choose a pool of stocks and ETFs that yield between 6% and 14%.
- Review each stock and ETF for its relative strength, beta, and so on.
- Analyze future pitfalls and market sentiments which might adversely affect each investment in the pool.
- Hone the pool down to eight investments and give each investment equal weight along with an initial pool of cash. For instance, in my portfolio I've decided to start with $36K. So, each investment gets $4K and $4K stays in cash (or possibly gold).
- Each quarter, I will review the investments and rebalance to get the investments to equal weight. I will also want to review if certain investments get added or pulled from the pool of eight as better opportunities arise.
My portfolio: I spent an enormous amount of time deciding what goes in this portfolio, and ultimately to meet the 11% annual return over 25 years I felt like I have to "go for broke," as they say.
The portfolio is:
- BP Prudhoe Bay Trust (BPT) Yield: 9.8%
- WisdomTree Global ex-US Real Estate ETF (DRW) Yield 15.1%
- France Telecom (FTE) Yield 8.7%
- SPDR Barclays Capital High Yield Bond ETF (JNK) Yield 7.8%
- UBS E-TRACS 2x Leveraged Long Alerian MLP Infrastructure Index ETN (MLPL) Yield 13.1%
- Navios Maritime Partners L.P. (NMM) Yield 14.4%
- iShares S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index ETF (PFF) Yield 6.9%
- iShares FTSE NAREIT Mortgage REITs Index ETF (REM) Yield 10.7%
These were all purchased on Friday August 5, 2011 (on sale, in my estimation) with each investment given an equal weight of approximately $4,000. Quite frankly, there may be some boneheaded moves such as including a leveraged investment as a long term vehicle. But think, "rebalancing" and "long term" and any temporary losses seem reasonable over a 25 year investment horizon.
What happens next? I'd love to get feedback from SA readers letting me know how crazy and naive an investor I am, and more importantly, how I can adjust the portfolio strategy to make the perfect superyield engine.
Disclosure: I am long BPT, DRW, FTE, JNK, MLPL, NMM, PFF, REM.
