Accounts in early August

It’s been 6 weeks since I last posted an update on the test accounts. During that period of time the market has been relatively flat. The S&P 500 index has been up and down almost on a weekly basis and is only up 0.1%. Three of the 4 accounts I’ve been tracking are up more than the S&P 500.

Betterment has gained 0.36% during the 6 weeks. The Folio Investing account grew 0.33%.  Overall though the Folio Investing account has outperformed the Betterment account The Folio Investing account has 1.6% more cash than has been deposited while Betterment is up 1.1%.

Lending Club is up 0.30% in the last 5 weeks and has 1.4% more than deposited. Lending Club’s weekly percentage returns have been down, but that’s only because the amount invested was increased significantly. We had maxed out at 400 notes before we added cash to the account. We now have 1165 notes active, but still have over 200 currently being reviewed. We’re spacing out the acquisition of notes and won’t max out to a bit over 2000 for another month or two. This is keeping the weekly increases down.

The real news is in the Schwab Intelligent Portfolio account. It has dropped 1.9% in the last 6 weeks and currently has 1.1% less cash in the account than was invested. Very disappointing. Looking at the holdings, there are several major losers. The biggest is emerging market stocks and bonds. Precious metals has also fallen a fair amount. These funds have over 20% of the total allocations Betterment only allocates about 10% to these funds. So what does this mean long term? I don’t know.

I’ll keep following these accounts and will document the results occasionally. Follow me on Twitter @billlanke to know when this occurs.