2016 returns in perspective – check your NSDL CAS

Now that 2016 is nearing the end, I have been engaged in looking at how my investments have done this year. Unlike many others, I do not create complicated Excel sheets to look at my returns at any point in time. I do have my portfolio details in MoneyControl which lets me have a broad idea about how the investments are doing. However, I just see the figures in it every week or so and do not try to do any analysis of the figures. This is mainly due to my greater importance to peace of mind rather than my net worth figure.

There is no denying however that the trend of returns in the immediate past is useful to check and I have been able to do this through my NSDL CAS statement which I have been getting since last year. It tracks all your investments which are linked to your PAN and provided data on your overall portfolio as well as the individual transactions undertaken each month. You get to see your purchases, sales and even dividends in the statement. The statement normally comes around the 10th of each month and has all these details for the previous month. It also gives you the overall trends of your portfolio for the past 12 months. The only issue I have with it is that PPF and other such debt investments are not part of it yet, but I hope it will be corrected soon.

I hope many of you are getting this statement monthly. Just in case you are not, go to the NSDL site and set it up. Remember, for all your investments you must have your PAN linked and also your primary email. Once you have this for all your Demat accounts and MF folios, you should be receiving this statement every month. Start using this as it will give you a great monthly review of your investments as well as an yearly overview.

Let me come back to my November CAS now. I looked at it yesterday and here are the salient observations I made from it:-

• My current portfolio allocation is about 55:45 between equity and debt. The equity part has come down in November. Note that my goal is 50:50 and the debt is low here as PPF is not part of it.
• In the past 12 months, the overall growth in the portfolio has been less than 5 %. This of course, is time sensitive and, if you look at October figures, the same growth figure would have been 8 %.
• The sharpest declines have been in the months of January ( 4 % ), February ( 5.5 % ) and November ( 4 % ). 
• The major gains have been in the months of March ( 6.91 % ), May ( 2.52 % ) and July (3.18 %). 
• Note that both of these are following the Nifty trends overall.

What do I conclude from these? Firstly 2016 has not really been a good year for equities unless things improve radically in December. The returns have definitely been less than Fixed income and debt investments. Secondly, asset allocation is really key in such a market scenario. For my asset allocation, I was hardly having any real returns this year in my NSDL CAS portfolio. This would have been worse if my equity investments were heavier. The fact that my debt investments are significant has definitely helped me.

Check out your own CAS or, if you do not have it yet, your portfolio history over the year and understand how you are doing? Are there any changes needed due to demonetization and all other seminal events in 2017? Absolutely, but let me tackle it in the next post.