periodic personal perceptions
As a few friends are now following us into parenthood, I thought it might be helpful to put down on paper some of the things we found most useful. In that spirit, here’s part 1: baby books that we liked. Many thanks to Nancy Kurylowicz, who first pointed us towards many of these books.
Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy
My local video stores all closed two years ago, and we switched largely to iTunes rentals, plus the occasional Bay St. video or Film Buff for obscure films. I was initially quite unhappy with the selection on iTunes Canada – we watch a lot of obscure, old and foreign films, but most of the video-on-demand services are mainly good for post-2005 North American films. So, I’ve just done a quick scan of the alternatives.
The verdict: iTunes Canada is considerably better than it used to be, and iTunes US is a little better – but not massively better. Using both iTunes US and Amazon Instant Video is probably the best bet.
Here’s the math. We’ve got a list of 81 movies we’d like to see. This list already excludes many easy-to-find titles that we’ve already rented from iTunes Canada, but still has a number of popular movies. Many films on the list are from the Onion A.V. Club’s Best of 2000s and orphans lists, the American Film Institute’s Top 100, and good films I’ve previously seen and would like to watch with my wife. You can think of my list as an “obscurity-ometer” – the more you can hit off, the better for viewing obscure films.
A more electronic-heavy mix, to celebrate the start of my summer break!
There’s not much more to say, except maybe that track #7 is supposed to be a metaphor about the music industry, not just raw sex.
Download here, for a few weeks only. I was hoping to post this as an iTunes Store playlist so you could buy the tracks… but apparently that feature has recently been removed.
[ Postscript: Mixcloud now lets me do something reasonable. ]
I have little new to add about my investment portfolio; mostly, this is just an update on the fine, fine results of the past year – a +12% year!
Past editions: 2009, 2010, 2011
I’ve made only a few tweaks to my portfolio targets this year:
Here’s a table comparing last year’s portfolio target with my current target:
| Weight (last year) |
Weight (now) |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| Equities | |||
| U.S.A. | VTI | 28.7% | 28.7% |
| Europe / Pacific | VEA | 26.4% | 24.2% |
| Emerging | VWO | 8.9% | 7.1% |
| Canada | XIC | 16.0% | 15.0% |
| Subtotal | 80% | 75% | |
| Fixed income | |||
| Broad bonds | VAB/XBB | 11.3% | 20.0% |
| Real return bonds | XRB | 3.8% | |
| Subtotal | 15% | 20% | |
| Cash | 5% | 5% |
Let’s close with a quick review of the performance of this portfolio over the past several years. The table below shows the annual returns of each component of the portfolio, giving the “sequence of returns” for each piece.
| 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equities | |||||||
| U.S.A. | VTI | -9% | -23% | 11% | 11% | 6% | 16% |
| Europe / Pacific | VEA | -6% | -27% | 10% | 3% | -8% | 18% |
| Emerging | VWO | 17% | -42% | 52% | 13% | -15% | 19% |
| Canada | XIC | 9% | -33% | 34% | 17% | -9% | 7% |
| Subtotal | -2.2% | -27.8% | 18.9% | 9.9% | -3.3% | 15.2% | |
| Fixed income | |||||||
| Mixed bonds | XBB/VAB | 3% | 6% | 5% | 6% | 9% | 3% |
| Subtotal | 3.0% | 6.1% | 5.1% | 6.0% | 9.1% | 3.0% | |
| Cash | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | |
| Total | -1.1% | -19.7% | 15.2% | 8.6% | -0.7% | 12.0% |
Same assumptions as usual:
Cumulative returns:
I started investing in late 2008, so I usually look at the Jan. 2009 – Dec 2012 return – but it’s always good to remember that this gives a very rosy view compared to other starting dates.
Despite all of the European fear and the “fiscal cliff” in the US at year end, it’s been a very good year. This year finally demonstrated the value in a globally balanced portfolio, as Canada’s markets stagnated. And the portfolio’s already up another 3% since Jan. 1st…