Since February 2017 I've had a little money with each of Betterment, WealthFront, and Schwab Intelligent Portfolios. I'm comparing how the robo-advisors do to my own DIY Index ETF portfolio of 32% SCHX, 8% SCHA, 25% SCHF, 30% SCHZ, and 5% Cash.
Original Post, 1st Update, and 2nd Update
I still get one or two PMs each month asking for an update, and the last thread is archived (no new comments allowed) so I figured I'd start yet another one. Mods, if you find this annoying, let me know and I'll just update via PM or edit old threads or whatever. But about half the PMs are people stumbling on the post via a search, apparently, so maybe it's good to have newer stuff in the search results.
This is not financial advice, and you'd be stupid to make a decision about robo-advisors based on a post by a stranger on the Internet, even if he weren't making it all up.
If you are interested in professional comparisons of robo-advisors that include other robos, Backend Benchmarking does a pretty thorough job every quarter: https://theroboreport.com/about/. I have never figured out why some of their quarterly results look so different from mine, so I am continuing to post my results.
As I explained last time, the vast majority of my investments are 65% equities, but I added a couple of robo accounts with high equity allocations. The percentage equities is in parentheses above each column.
I posted plots with the last update, but don't have time to do that right now [EDIT: /u/Potential_Soup had time: http://i.imgur.com/66yFRAQ.jpg]. If anyone knows how to anonymize a Google Sheet I'm happy to share one which has plots, dollar values, monthly changes, and a few other things. For now, you just get what's easy to post.
Cumulative Returns as a Percentage:
| Date | Comment | DIY(65) | Btrmnt(66) | SIP(66) | WlthFrnt(66) | DIY2(60) | WFHEH(92) | SIP2(85) | SIP3(85) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2/7 | Initial Transfer | -1.32% | -1.32% | -1.46% | -0.27% | -0.27% | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2/15 | Everything Invested (Clock starts now) | 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% | N/A | 0.00% | N/A |
| 2/28 | 0.16% | 0.12% | -0.21% | 0.03% | 0.42% | N/A | (0.05%) | N/A | |
| 3/31 | 0.96% | 0.75% | 0.54% | 0.94% | 0.92% | N/A | 0.84% | N/A | |
| 4/30 | 2.16% | 2.15% | 1.55% | 1.95% | 2.08% | N/A | 1.92% | N/A | |
| 5/31 | 3.57% | 3.68% | 2.43% | 3.57% | 3.35% | N/A | 2.84% | N/A | |
| 6/30 | 4.20% | 4.07% | 2.92% | 3.93% | 3.80% | N/A | 3.66% | N/A | |
| 7/31 | 5.88% | 6.12% | 5.11% | 6.16% | 5.28% | N/A | 6.01% | N/A | |
| 8/31 | 6.13% | 6.54% | 5.58% | 6.44% | 5.69% | N/A | 6.23% | N/A | |
| 9/30 | 7.83% | 7.88% | 7.17% | 8.26% | 7.07% | N/A | 8.65% | N/A | |
| 10/31 | Opened WFHEH on 10/16 | 9.24% | 9.41% | 8.00% | 9.88% | 8.42% | 0.00% | 9.87% | N/A |
| 11/30 | 10.48% | 10.68% | 9.35% | 11.37% | 9.31% | 1.77% | ?? | N/A | |
| 12/31 | 11.72% | 11.52% | 11.12% | 13.30% | 10.78% | 3.79% | ?? | 1.83% | |
| 1/31 | Rebalanced DIY | 15.06% | 15.52% | 14.98% | 17.43% | 14.11% | 9.16% | ?? | 5.93% |
| 2/28 | Added 0.6% to DIY2 | 11.42% | 11.58% | 11.02% | 13.03% | 11.50% | 4.19% | ?? | 1.59% |
| 3/31 | 10.81% | 10.71% | 10.97% | 12.42% | 10.64% | 3.25% | ?? | 1.31% | |
| 4/30 | 11.12% | 11.07% | 11.09% | 12.70% | 10.79% | 3.54% | ?? | 1.86% | |
| 5/31 | 12.20% | 11.31% | 11.09% | 13.83% | 12.06% | 4.10% | ?? | 2.32% | |
| 6/30 | 12.07% | 9.98% | 10.50% | 13.10% | 12.19% | 3.10% | ?? | 1.74% |
TLH, one of the touted benefits of robo-advisors, has been interesting. WF harvested about 2% of losses in 2017, but only captured $4 worth (0.05%) so far in 2018 despite the volatile first quarter. This is because 4Q2017 was super good and I haven't added any money to any of these, and TLH only works with new money because old money has gone up so much that there are no losses to harvest even fater a 4% dip in the market. Anyway, I stand by my initial assessment that DIYers can do the majority of TLH that robo-advisors claim to be able to do, because even a dummy like me can do TLH in 2008 environments.
SIP2 numbers should come in another day or two, but as of November 2017 I have opened my own 85% equities SIP account with another one of my kids' UTMAs. Later this year I'll probably convert another UTMA, so let me know in the comments if you want to see two identical SIPs, or yet another equity percentage.
WF still seems to have the best returns, but they do appear riskier, so a prolonged downturn could change that result. Both WF and B are adding new features frequently, but the whole point of robo-advisors for me is that I never have to log in and check on stuff, so mostly I don't see the new features. SIP is still the only one that can do custodial accounts, so my 4 kids plus my decade-ish-long history with Schwab index funds is probably biasing me somewhat. Altogether these robo accounts are a pretty small chunk of my portfolio, so I'll keep these running for a long time, even the ones that under-perform relative to DIY.
Cheers, plex
Submitted July 02, 2018 at 09:10PM by plexluthor https://ift.tt/2KEb3OB
