Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

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TheDuck
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Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by TheDuck »

Vanguard calculates a Personal Performance value for various time periods for your entire account, the retirement and nonretirement accounts. There have been a number of discussions on the board about how this internal rate of return (IRR) is calculated, but I would like to know if there is a location where Vanguard publishes average values for the customer base. For many other parameters such anonymized data is possible and in some cases even broken out by demographics (age mostly - since older investors tend to be a bit more conservative).
Does anyone know of a source for such statistics?
Thanks
Wings5
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by Wings5 »

Have you tried calling Vanguard directly to inquire?
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livesoft
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by livesoft »

Occasionally, Vanguard puts out a "Our Customers Stayed-The-Course During XXXX Panic" articles. I put XXX in their to do SEO optimization. :twisted:

For instance, this link leads to some graphs with "Cumulative Total Return" on one axis:
https://institutional.vanguard.com/VGAp ... oronavirus

But I do not see how "average values" would be meaningful at all since we are all above average here. Do you know if ANY vendor publishes such a statistic? I guess the assumption should be that on-average the Vanguard customer base IS the stock market, so that should be what the performance of the aggregated average customer values should be.
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sycamore
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by sycamore »

I would find such numbers of dubious use. They would be based on an incomplete "account-based" picture for many of Vanguard's clients. After all, Vanguard only knows about accounts in their custody. So what about investors who have a 401k with all bonds at another custodian and Roth with all stocks at Vanguard. The Roth has high performance but that overstates an investor's portfolio performance, which is what really matters.
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TheDuck
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by TheDuck »

Wings5 wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 9:59 am Have you tried calling Vanguard directly to inquire?
I did, and what I got was information on the average return data for different classes. It is useful, but not what I was looking for.
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TheDuck
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by TheDuck »

livesoft wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 10:04 am Occasionally, Vanguard puts out a "Our Customers Stayed-The-Course During XXXX Panic" articles. I put XXX in their to do SEO optimization. :twisted:

For instance, this link leads to some graphs with "Cumulative Total Return" on one axis:
https://institutional.vanguard.com/VGAp ... oronavirus

But I do not see how "average values" would be meaningful at all since we are all above average here. Do you know if ANY vendor publishes such a statistic? I guess the assumption should be that on-average the Vanguard customer base IS the stock market, so that should be what the performance of the aggregated average customer values should be.
I don't think your last point is correct. I have almost all of my investments with Vanguard and I have a slight bias to mid/small cap and value. In addition I have bond funds. The 10 year average for my account takes into account the errors that I made as well my keeping funds in bonds. I am only curious as to what the average investor does - it is not the market since we(I speak for myself) are mostly invested a bit more conservatively.
I will look at the link. Thanks for it.
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TheDuck
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by TheDuck »

sycamore wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 11:08 am I would find such numbers of dubious use. They would be based on an incomplete "account-based" picture for many of Vanguard's clients. After all, Vanguard only knows about accounts in their custody. So what about investors who have a 401k with all bonds at another custodian and Roth with all stocks at Vanguard. The Roth has high performance but that overstates an investor's portfolio performance, which is what really matters.
Vanguard calculates a performance number for all of my accounts together or for each on it own, and even for each specific fund for the time I have held them. These calculations take into account my additions and withdrawals. It does not include any data from my TSP accounts, so it strictly the Vanguard information. It is limited, but I would be interested.
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goingup
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by goingup »

I'm not aware of an answer to your question.

A more common thing that investors do is to measure their portfolio against a benchmark. For instance, our portfolio is roughly 60/40. I like to see what Target funds, Balanced Fund, Wellington and Life Strategy funds have done YTD, 1, 5, and 10 years. My conclusion is that my portfolio lags because I hold too much cash and ST bonds. Also overweight SC fund.

I don't really care what other investors returns are because they are adding and subtracting from their holdings at a different pace than I am.
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riverant
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by riverant »

I don’t have the answer, but am genuinely curious as to what the point of knowing this number is.
livesoft
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by livesoft »

I used the Vanguard.com personal performance report for 1-, 3-, 5-, 10-year time ranges and put those numbers above a morningstar.com output of performance for VTSAX (Vanguard Total Stock Market) which seems a suitable benchmark to what my Vanguard portfolio is (VLCAX, VFSAX, VSIAX, but absolutely no VTSAX). I am not reinvesting VLCAX dividends. And here are the results:

Image

I see some time ranges my portfolio is worse than VTSAX and some time ranges my portfolio is better than VTSAX.

Would you care to give me your thoughts on these numbers?
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sycamore
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by sycamore »

TheDuck wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 12:58 pm
sycamore wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 11:08 am I would find such numbers of dubious use. They would be based on an incomplete "account-based" picture for many of Vanguard's clients. After all, Vanguard only knows about accounts in their custody. So what about investors who have a 401k with all bonds at another custodian and Roth with all stocks at Vanguard. The Roth has high performance but that overstates an investor's portfolio performance, which is what really matters.
Vanguard calculates a performance number for all of my accounts together or for each on it own, and even for each specific fund for the time I have held them. These calculations take into account my additions and withdrawals. It does not include any data from my TSP accounts, so it strictly the Vanguard information. It is limited, but I would be interested.
Some Vanguard clients have all their assets at Vanguard and other clients do not. IMO, that situation introduces enough uncertainty into the Vanguard-only purview to make generalizations about their customer base unreliable. I suppose if Vanguard could sample only the subset of clients who have all their assets with Vanguard. Then you could make some apples to apples comparisons between yourself and the aggregate.

In any case, I don't know where you could find such information.
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TheDuck
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by TheDuck »

TJat wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 1:24 pm I don’t have the answer, but am genuinely curious as to what the point of knowing this number is.
As much as anything to see what metrics might be useful in gauging my own performance. Over the last 10 years are my returns better or worse than the average. Note that I think on a whole Vanguard clients are good investors since the data I have seen says that they do not jump in an out of funds but keep long term commitments more so than many other investors.
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TheDuck
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by TheDuck »

goingup wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 1:14 pm I'm not aware of an answer to your question.

A more common thing that investors do is to measure their portfolio against a benchmark. For instance, our portfolio is roughly 60/40. I like to see what Target funds, Balanced Fund, Wellington and Life Strategy funds have done YTD, 1, 5, and 10 years. My conclusion is that my portfolio lags because I hold too much cash and ST bonds. Also overweight SC fund.

I don't really care what other investors returns are because they are adding and subtracting from their holdings at a different pace than I am.
I think that this is an interesting approach. I will do the same comparison.
Thanks.
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TheDuck
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by TheDuck »

livesoft wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 1:36 pm I used the Vanguard.com personal performance report for 1-, 3-, 5-, 10-year time ranges and put those numbers above a morningstar.com output of performance for VTSAX (Vanguard Total Stock Market) which seems a suitable benchmark to what my Vanguard portfolio is (VLCAX, VFSAX, VSIAX, but absolutely no VTSAX). I am not reinvesting VLCAX dividends. And here are the results:

Image

I see some time ranges my portfolio is worse than VTSAX and some time ranges my portfolio is better than VTSAX.

Would you care to give me your thoughts on these numbers?
I would say that the numbers are very good. Far better than mine, but in some respects I would expect that since I tend to hold about 30-40% in bonds and have for most of the last 10 years. One of the other comments suggested comparison with a number of long term portfolios from Vanguard, which I will do.
livesoft
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by livesoft »

TheDuck wrote: Sun Dec 19, 2021 10:37 amI would say that the numbers are very good.
My Vanguard assets are only a fraction of my total portfolio. I have bond funds and equity funds at other vendors. I run a nominally 60/40 total portfolio asset allocation and use 3 different 60/40 mutual funds (VSMGX, VBIAX, and DGSIX) as benchmarks that I compare my 60/40 total portfolio to. One reason I run a 60/40 asset allocation instead of 65/35 or 58/42 or something not 60/40 is that is not as easy to find simple benchmark funds as I have listed with the same asset allocation. Thus, 60/40 simplifies the checks and comparisons that I can make to demonstrate that I am not making behavioral mistakes or other moves that degrade my personal portfolio performance too much from expected performance. The three 60/40 funds actually have different underlying portfolios and thus can have modestly different performances. This is noted in the comments I add to the YTD thread quoted below.
livesoft wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:43 pm YTD (31 October 2021) returns of a few 60/40 funds for your viewing pleasure:

+09.26% VSMGX Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth fund, has US + International
+12.63% VBIAX Vanguard Balanced Index fund, has US only and no international
+11.77% DGSIX, DFA Global Allocation 60/40 I fund, a small-cap and value tilted 60/40 asset allocation

Once again, the performance of a 60/40 portfolio varies by quite a bit depending on how the 60/40 is constituted.
Anyways, have you changed your mind about finding out more about Vanguard statistics asked about in your starting post in this thread?
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Topic Author
TheDuck
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by TheDuck »

livesoft wrote: Sun Dec 19, 2021 11:25 am
TheDuck wrote: Sun Dec 19, 2021 10:37 amI would say that the numbers are very good.
My Vanguard assets are only a fraction of my total portfolio. I have bond funds and equity funds at other vendors. I run a nominally 60/40 total portfolio asset allocation and use 3 different 60/40 mutual funds (VSMGX, VBIAX, and DGSIX) as benchmarks that I compare my 60/40 total portfolio to. One reason I run a 60/40 asset allocation instead of 65/35 or 58/42 or something not 60/40 is that is not as easy to find simple benchmark funds as I have listed with the same asset allocation. Thus, 60/40 simplifies the checks and comparisons that I can make to demonstrate that I am not making behavioral mistakes or other moves that degrade my personal portfolio performance too much from expected performance. The three 60/40 funds actually have different underlying portfolios and thus can have modestly different performances. This is noted in the comments I add to the YTD thread quoted below.
livesoft wrote: Sun Oct 31, 2021 7:43 pm YTD (31 October 2021) returns of a few 60/40 funds for your viewing pleasure:

+09.26% VSMGX Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth fund, has US + International
+12.63% VBIAX Vanguard Balanced Index fund, has US only and no international
+11.77% DGSIX, DFA Global Allocation 60/40 I fund, a small-cap and value tilted 60/40 asset allocation

Once again, the performance of a 60/40 portfolio varies by quite a bit depending on how the 60/40 is constituted.
Anyways, have you changed your mind about finding out more about Vanguard statistics asked about in your starting post in this thread?
Following up:
This is a broad look at some of the portfolios that might be relevant compared to my results:

Equi/Bond 1yr 3yr 5yr 10yr
Me 70/30 13 11.6 10.1 9
Balanced Index 60/40 12.2 14.6 12.2 10.8
Wellesley 40/60 7.4 9.5 7.8 7.7
Life Strat Mod Growth 60/40 16.2 10 9.5 9.4

My profile closely matches a Balanced index, but over long times, the performance is not quite as good. In part this may be because I use tax free bond funds that have lower interest rates, but are better from a total cost including taxes. I trade very little and for most of the longer period have been weakly invested in international stocks. At Vanguards advice I am adding more international exposure, but this comparison is to other funds, not to other Vanguard investors.
livesoft
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by livesoft »

TheDuck wrote: Sun Dec 19, 2021 4:04 pm ....
Following up:
This is a broad look at some of the portfolios that might be relevant compared to my results:
....
A step up in complexity of a benchmark to compare to is a simple linear combination of 2 funds. For instance, because of my tilt to small-caps and value, I might use 50% of the performances of VSMGX and DGSIX as a number to compare to. So using the numbers I showed (9.26% + 11.77%) / 2 = 10.515%. If I was inclined, I could do Morningstar portfolio X-ray of a portfolio of 50% VSMGX and 50% DGSIX to see what the 9-box style grid looks like and see how that compares to a 9-box style grid of my own portfolio.
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TheDuck
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by TheDuck »

livesoft wrote: Sun Dec 19, 2021 4:27 pm
TheDuck wrote: Sun Dec 19, 2021 4:04 pm ....
Following up:
This is a broad look at some of the portfolios that might be relevant compared to my results:
....
A step up in complexity of a benchmark to compare to is a simple linear combination of 2 funds. For instance, because of my tilt to small-caps and value, I might use 50% of the performances of VSMGX and DGSIX as a number to compare to. So using the numbers I showed (9.26% + 11.77%) / 2 = 10.515%. If I was inclined, I could do Morningstar portfolio X-ray of a portfolio of 50% VSMGX and 50% DGSIX to see what the 9-box style grid looks like and see how that compares to a 9-box style grid of my own portfolio.
I will try that, but what I was looking for was more in the way of the human dimension, the returns that most of us face are affected by our decisions, and those are not captured by simple averages. However, it will be useful to compare my returns broadly with something that might be comparable - I will look at blending funds as you suggest.
Thanks
livesoft
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Re: Average Vanguard Personal Performance Numbers

Post by livesoft »

TheDuck wrote: Mon Dec 20, 2021 2:15 pmI will try that, but what I was looking for was more in the way of the human dimension, the returns that most of us face are affected by our decisions, and those are not captured by simple averages. However, it will be useful to compare my returns broadly with something that might be comparable - I will look at blending funds as you suggest.
Thanks
It certainly works for me, but since I use MS Money to keep track of my total portfolio I can calculate my personal performance at any time for any time range including every single day if I like. Thus, I can see how my behavior affects the results and I have done so. One thing that I have learned is that one's actual real-life asset allocation creates its own noise when doing comparisons. One can already see that in the YTD performances I listed for those three benchmark funds for which the highest minus lowest is already a 3.5% difference. I think it is pretty hard to a make a 3.5% behavioral mistake if one has an IPS and is following it.

Good luck!
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