Share Forum - Discuss JSE shares and join the Investor Challenge

I think it is best to spend time researching the stocks before you buy them. You will lose money if you do not do this. If you do this well you will make money and will not need exact performance figures, you will just know you are doing well.

Standard Bank tells you your own performance. Personally I do not measure myself against the market. Sometimes commodities will do well and you will look bad if you are not in them. Just worry about yourself.

Trafulha - I am battling to understand what you are trying to track/compare/benchmark against. Firstly are you really trading or are you buying and holding particular counters in a single portfolio. Secondly what are you trying to beat the ALSI or the sector average of the counter you are holding in the portfolio. Thirdly if you are going the route of trading then you know your tax situation will differ materially compared to holding counters for 3 years and only being assessed for CGT.
You may also want to subscribe to Sharenets daily report as it shows sector indices and whether they incremented/declined per the previous day, the newsletter I find informative and maybe it will give you some clues as to how you want to track your performance and against what.
So if you crystalise your thoughts then maybe one or more of the forumites will be able to assist in achieving what you want to achieve/measure

My account shows % total growth since I bought it, per share, that is what I keep eye on, see "Pulverized Sand Box "

What the market does is important, but what your individual shares are doing is more important, if you down 5% and market is up 10%, then you are in say commodities, if the market is down 5% and you up 10%, then you in commodities.   

If u wanna perform same as market the ETF people and fund trackers on this site will tell u which ones to go for.

But if u wanna do it, every Monday put your figures (share price showing Share growth) in spread sheet and put in JSE index  showing growth. Next Monday put it in again and you will have it vs JSE.

but u gonna beat it some weeks and some weeks the JSE will beat you, depending on which sectors your shares are in.

J - what you say is valid, but,my question still is why would one want to relate capital appreciation on a counter against the JSE index (Alsi or Top40) surely the objective is to gain capital appreciation primarily and a dividend stream secondary. My opinion - it is irrelevant comparing my counters capital growth to any of the two indices - it illustrates nothing other than the direction that the indices are moving on a daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis. I run a spreadsheet which I update weekly where I plug in that Mondays closing prices, but I include mutual funds TFSA's but this is merely to establish my overall wealth on a weekly basis. What this spreadsheet illustrates is what value increase/decrease you suffered on a weekly basis and what it did to your overall wealth and whether your share portfolio is performing well or badly by counter held

J - what you are saying is totally plausible.
Personally I worked on a different set of criteria - my objective was to be a $ millionaire by 2020 based on an exchange rate of R 6.55 to $1. The timeframe I was working on was from 2005 through to 2020 so 15 years. Also I then broke down my milestones into yearly recordings but I re evaluate every quarter. Based on the exchange rate at that time I will meet my objective but the reality is that the exchange rate has moved decidedly against me so I shan't be a $ millionaire by a long way - but that does not stop me striving for the original goal. In 2019 I will set another objective and goal for a further 10 years. I have a brilliant package for managing and controlling my finances called Quicken - it was brought to market by Intuit a South African company but they sold the package to the Americans and as is typical of the Yanks they have made it their own and won't provide me with a copy with the capability to do all financial operations in Rand so I am stuck with the program unsupported and dread the day it falls over. This program allows you to capture all financial transaction across bank accounts,investment accounts, share transactions and you can drawn down reports like net wealth, CGT liabilities on your portfolio based on this countries tax year - so as I say a brilliant package but no longer available in SA - my last version update was 2005 so nothing since then ad it is still running