WGL Holdings Inc. (WGL)

All Comments on WGL

  • commenter
    Roger Beep
    Feb 16 05:10 PM
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Hi Phil;

    I might try it. I have a few concerns about undertaking this project. One concern I have is determine the actual monthly return on the Global Giants and Diversifiers Individual Stock portfolio. If I personally held that portfolio the brokerage firm would tell me what the monthly return was.

    Let me step you thought how I might determine the monthly return and then you may wish to comment. Since this portfolio represents several years of investing experience and a few generations of portfolio development as per the Supercharge book I am going to assume $100K in total assets -- in reality it should be more but for the sake of modeling I will stipulate $100K.

    Using Yahoo Finance I think I can determine the closing price of a stock for any particular trading day. I will assume I bought all of the holdings on 12/31/2006. I am unclear how I could from a retrospective point of view determine the monthly return on the portfolio, including the dividends.

    Additionally, I would like to automate future monthly return data so I did not have to be scheduled in front of my computer to get that month's return data. From where I stand there are some practical considerations that I would need to figure out and for that reason I may not be able to undertake this project at least right away. For example, I anticipate having to write a macro for Excel to call the data that I would need. I am not that skilled at Excel but for a guy that self-taught himself computing in the old DOS days I feel like I could probably take it on. This could be a great learning experience for me after I clear the deck on a couple of other intense projects I have currently under taken.

    Also, I appreciate your observations about the extremes, the tail values and what they portend for a porfolio's risk vs. return and the median expected return vs. 1st percentile loss.
    Reply
  • commenter
    Phil DeMuth
    Feb 16 01:42 PM
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Hi Roger -- You'll get no argument from me here, I love charts. Perhaps Geoff will put this idea in the hopper for QPP version 5.0. In the mean time, if you have QPP, you can enter the tickers and date ranges and do the analysis yourself.

    Imagine that the 25%ile rank showed a loss of 1%. Then, a year later, the portfolio is down 1%. Is that a successful prediction? Perhaps. It would take a lot of samples to confirm -- you are likely to run out of lifetime before you accumulate enough data points, and by then it will be too late anyway.

    So it's really the tails that are of interest, and why the past few months are so relevant to examine here. Since the whole thing is based on the currently unfashionable but nevertheless highly relevant normal distribution curve, all the information (Mean - 2SDs, for example) is really contained in the tail values. Unless I'm mistaken, the shape of the chart in every case would be a standard curve.

    The issue of how to graphically present the risk/return tradeoffs in the most compelling way is one I often think about. For clients, I might present it as median expected return vs. 1 percentile loss at different equity allocations. I think this is more communicative than just mean vs. standard deviation.


    Reply
  • commenter
    Roger Beep
    Feb 16 12:12 PM
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Hi Phi;

    I appreciate you thoughts regarding taking a rather unsophisticated view of things, the 1st percentile risk, estimated median returns and endless attention to returns. What I really liked about the flow of the Supercharge book was the emphasis on risk and with examples showing us what to avoid up front and then moving on to core holding portfolios using indexes and ending up with an all stock portfolio that was developed with QPP.

    I could live with the "unsophisticated view" that you mentioned if I or perhaps you had developed the Individual Stock Portfolio that appears in the Supercharge book for my personal use. And on a practical level I think you are correct. However, as a purchaser of the Supercharge book and QPP I would like to see more on the predictive validity of QPP using the example portfolios.

    That is the reason for advancing a standardized graphical assessment. For example, the standard deviation (S.D.) levels from page 6 of QPP can be visually represented by the frequency envelope about the median using the Excel chart. I believe this can be varied by the user to reflect various S.D. levels. As I recall an X2 (read as “times 2”) frequency envelope is a ± 0.66 S.D. This all done graphically without having to resort to complicated statistical procedures. Most end users would much prefer a picture (chart) of these matters as opposed to confirmatory statistical data or summative comments about declines and gains. The upshot is one would be able to graphically see how QPP tracks to actual returns over time. In other words we would have a graphical picture of QPP’s predictive validity given the portfolio examples in the Supercharge book.
    Reply
  • commenter
    Phil DeMuth
    Feb 15 11:12 PM
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Mike & Geoff: Thank you for your comments.

    Roger: Thank you for your helpful suggestion. I tend to take a rather unsophisticated view of these things. I look at where the estimated median returns are, and then I look at the 1st percentile value-at-risk for an educated guess as to what I might experience in a really terrible year, short of World War III. Then, if I can't do the time, I don't do the crime, and I make adjustments. As for the upside, I figure it will take care of itself. As Peter Bernstein says, I can't control the returns, but I can control (at least to some extent) the risk. This is part of the message of the book as well. We see people devoting endless attention to returns but insufficient attention to risk.     Reply
  • commenter
    Roger Beep
    Feb 15 07:03 PM
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Hi Phil;

    I thought that this was another well written article. In addition to the "inputs" or holdings portion of the portfolio I would like to see a chart of the "outputs" to include the portfolio’s projected return using QPP's forward looking analysis using perhaps the 1st, 5th 10th, 20th and 50th (Median) values from p. 6 of QPP and the actual monthly return. I invite you to examine a standardized Excel chart template for this purpose which is resourced at harderchartingtemplate.../ and listed as SCCFB_mcpm_v7_1.xls. This chart covers a ten year period for each month. See the "LineFree" chart. It appears that BlueLine and LineFree have been switched. It should read "BlueLine." This would allow for comparisons using a standardized charting metric.
    Reply
  • commenter
    Geoff
    Considine
    Feb 14 06:48 PM
    My Website
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Note also that the EXPECTED return for this portfolio was higher than the historical trailing return. Reversion to the mean was set to act in favor of this portfolio. This is an attribute that I like in a portfolio and was not true of a number of broad indexes at the time. Reply
  • commenter
    granger
    Feb 14 10:36 AM
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Myabe the makings of a semi-actively managed ETF. I would rather on an ETF designed like that, then a market blanket one.

    Good stuff, keep us posted. I thorughly enjoyed it.     Reply
  • commenter
    kondalrao
    kondameedi
    Jan 15 08:01 PM
    10 Top Gas Utilities [view article]
    no comments today Reply
  • commenter
    sunrises
    Nov 03 03:26 AM
    The Top Dividend Paying ETFs and Stocks [view article]
    Hello. Is there an Emerging Market ETF that has included Alibaba.com ipo there holdings? Or, is there a new ETF which includes alibaba.com for those who cannot purshares the shares for quite some time? Reply
  • commenter
    jimarb
    Sep 20 02:41 PM
    Gas Utilities Stocks: 3Q06 Earnings Results [view article]
    the earnings info were so far out of date they were of no use - why print articles that are not current - history is great but not revelent to situations persued by this article Reply
  • commenter
    Sun
    May 14 03:23 PM
    My Website
    The Top Dividend Paying ETFs and Stocks [view article]
    Hi everybody:

    Thanks for the suggestions. I will look at some of ratios to add to the article. Also, for individual stocks, dividend growth rate is quite important in evaluating a stock's long-term performance in terms of dividend payout. However, due to limited resources, I am not sure if I can find all the information I need or not, but I will try. Actually, the initial purpose of the article was to compare the performance of dividend paying ETFs and see how much they are different from each other.

    Frank Emery: Yes, companies in the financial, utility and real estate sectors usually pay higher dividends. I will take a look at international dividend ETFs later.

    Frank Li: The ER column has the expense ratio of each ETF.

    bigjohn_hk: The main reason I am considering replacing Powershares ETFs with Vanguard ETFs is cost. Vanguard ETFs have much lower ER then Powershares ETFs and with a higher yield as well.

    Sun     Reply
  • commenter
    bigjohn_hk
    May 14 11:28 AM
    The Top Dividend Paying ETFs and Stocks [view article]
    Could you tell me, pls, why you are dissatisfied with PowerShares and are replacing them with Vanguard. I also own the same Powershare Divd. ETFs. Thanks Reply
  • commenter
    Frank Li
    May 13 09:23 PM
    The Top Dividend Paying ETFs and Stocks [view article]
    3 reasons to question the assumption here that high dividend yielding stocks or ETFs must be good:

    1. As Joe comments above, there's no discussion of dividend coverage.

    2. The theoretical case for dividends is weak. See Why Dividend Paying Stocks Are a Mistake.

    3. There's no discussion of the expense ratios of the ETFs -- even though the expenses are deducted from the dividends, and therefore lead to higher risk or lower growth for a given level of dividends.     Reply
  • commenter
    Frank Emery
    May 12 11:57 AM
    The Top Dividend Paying ETFs and Stocks [view article]
    Some thinking needs to be done about the nature of the companies and the type of diversification that you want. For instance, utilities, banks or financial companies, conglomerates, industrials, energy, etc. What about U.S. companies versus international companies? Reply
  • commenter
    pjindent
    May 12 11:04 AM
    The Top Dividend Paying ETFs and Stocks [view article]
    Couple of ratios that may add value is
    a) payout ratio: how much earning is being paid out as dividend. Some of the companies have payout ratio of >100%, which is unsustainable.
    b) dividend growth rate. I am more interested in consistent dividend versus, for instance, dividend that goes up or down based on commodity prices     Reply
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