Performance Update for Colm Fagan's ARF

Itchy said:
Best I could find https://funds.nationalpensionhelpline.ie/funds, not sure of the quality of the data or source.
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I never trusted that site given that it misleadingly tries to masquerade as some sort of official statutory body and many people have been caught out by this.

Unofficial Pension Fund Comparison Tool Launched

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2025/0724/1525045-pension-comparison-tool/ Strange though, there is no link to the actual tool.
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Thanks all.
I have a link for Zurich Life: https://www.zurich.ie/funds/fund-performance-calculator/
Ideally, I would like figures for other companies. Can anyone post a link to those, Irish Life being the most obvious?
I notice, by the way, that Zurich's first half performance for the two funds I've looked at in the past, the Performance Fund and the International Equity Fund, was better than my pension in the first half of 2026, 9.17% and 11.37% respectively compared to my 4.7%. The significant underperformance of my pension fund can be explained, in part at least, by the awful call on Goodwin, discussed above.
 
ClubMan said:
Have you compared passive global equity index tracker funds to your own self-managed funds over the years just out of curiosity?
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No. I think @GSheehy may have given us those figures in the past, but I definitely don't have up-to-date figures.
Thanks for the advice on Goodwin!! I'll try to let it go!
 
Thanks @Redzer
Who'd want to be an adviser?! There's an amazing variety of funds on offer. I don't know how an adviser is supposed to choose. That's one problem I don't have!!!
It's very difficult to make comparisons. The Irish Life figures (as of today) are for periods to 3 July; Zurich's are to 7 July. My figures are to 30 June.
For anyone who's interested in the 10-year figures (with the above qualification on dates), my figure (which can be got from the table dated 30 June on the pensions tab of my website) is 193.5% (323.9/110.37-1), Zurich's Performance Fund is 178.43%, Zurich's International Equity Fund is 233.86%; Irish Life's Multi-Asset 6 Fund is 127.84%, IL's Consensus Equity is 188.1%, IL's Dynamic Global Equity is 143.64%, IL's Exempt Equity is 136.37%. Those are just a sample of the myriad of funds for each of those two companies. Then there are all the other players in the market!! Phew!!
PS: Please do NOT take any of the above figures as gospel. I could have got some of the figures wrong - but not my own, I hope! I took some consolation from the Zurich figures. They were consistent with what I had concluded previously: my fund's performance was better (over 15 years and 10 years) than Zurich's Performance (multi-asset) fund, but inferior to its International Equity Fund. That's understandable.
 
Both my most exciting and my most traumatic experiences as an investor were with the same company. That’s some trick.
I bought Novo Nordisk in 2020, on the sensible but boring premise that it was a solid insulin-maker with a strong balance sheet and oodles of cash. It made up about 7.4% of my portfolio - a sizeable commitment, even for me, but I saw it as a safe long-term investment.
At the time, I was a dyed-in-the-wool “buy and hold” investor, so I promptly forgot about it.
While I wasn't looking, the world discovered Ozempic and Wegovy, and my sleepy Danish stock had morphed into a pharmaceutical rocket ship. By mid-2024, Novo Nordisk had become grossly overweight: it was now worth almost five times its original cost and commanded a whopping 27% of my entire pension fund.
I would love to claim that I foresaw the Hollywood weight-loss boom. The truth is that I was just incredibly lucky.
This is where a sensible investor would have taken some chips off the table. In July 2024, I wisely advised readers on Askaboutmoney that “with advancing age comes a greater degree of caution. … That could mean selling some of my Novo Nordisk holding.” But did this experienced risk professional, former chair of numerous insurance/ reinsurance company risk committees, take his own risk advice? Not a chance. He did nothing as his golden goose embarked on its own drastic weight-loss program. Adieu foie gras.
By end 2024, the share price had collapsed nearly 40% from its mid-year high. The misery extended into 2025. It ended 2025 down another 50%, to less than a third of its value just 18 months previously. My star performer had shrivelled from over a quarter of my fund to less than 9%.
And the crowning ignominy of this self-inflicted disaster? I didn't sell a single share over the entire period, didn't realise a single cent of profit.
Have I learned my lesson? You could say that I have, but the outcome isn’t quite what I'd hoped for. This year and last, I’ve kept cutting my holding in Standard Life, which once accounted for more than 40% of my portfolio, selling at prices ranging from 632p to 872p, ten sales in all, each at a higher price than the last, yet the price keeps melting up, to its current 885p a share. If I had held on instead, a ridiculously high proportion of my pension would now be invested in Standard Life, but I’d be much wealthier.
Karma.
 
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Colm Fagan said:
While I wasn't looking, the world discovered Ozempic and Wegovy, and my sleepy Danish stock had morphed into a pharmaceutical rocket ship. By mid-2024, Novo Nordisk had become grossly overweight
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I think you'll find that that sort of word play is offensive to some people around here... ;)

Best car for a fat person

My cousin is looking to buy a new car. He's extremely fat (his description) so wants something with flat seats and a big door. Other than an SUV can anyone recommend something (other than a diet)?
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Colm Fagan said:
Have I learned my lesson? You could say that I have, but the outcome isn’t quite what I'd hoped for.
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Earlier in my investing journey I had two stocks that doubled probably around a year after buying them, and I thought it was sensible to take half off the table, so I'd be playing with 'house money' from that point on. One is up 10x since then, the other is up 35x!

The lesson to be learned may be to let your winners ride, or at the very least question whether the upside potential really is over or not before divesting a sizable chunk. Easier said than done of course.
 
DazedInPontoon said:
The lesson to be learned may be to let your winners ride, or at the very least question whether the upside potential really is over or not before divesting a sizable chunk. Easier said than done of course.
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Or, more simply, don't try to time the market. Having said that, I did get very lucky doing just that by buying a good chunk of BRK.B and MKL in early 2021 practically at the floor of the COVID dip. But that's what it was - luck. :D
 
Johnny apples said:
Would I be correct in saying that Berkshire would have underperformed a simple snp500 etf since covid dip by a large margin ?
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I don't know but BRK.B definitely outperformed the deposit account in which my money was sitting before I bought it by an absolutely massive margin.
 
Early
ClubMan said:
I don't know but BRK.B definitely outperformed the deposit account in which my money was sitting before I bought it by an absolutely massive margin.
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Early investors did great with Berkshire, but he admitted he completely missed the tech run of the last 5 years . Might be proven right in the future
 
I don't want to ruin the risk of falling foul of the "no individual share discussion" rule, but I'm very happy with my returns from BRK.B so far especially compared with the fact that the money had been on deposit before I invested it. If the S&P500 (probably only accessible to me via an ETF with all that that entails) might have given higher returns then so be it. I'm happy for not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good in this case, especially with hindsight when I can do nothing about it. My rationale for buying BRK.B was that it was an easy way to get cash off deposit into a fairly well diversified conglomerate investment, often comprising approximately one third each of publicly listed shares, wholly owned private businesses, and cash.
 
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I see Goodwin is a star performer. It seems that this was a very good call if it were not for the out of left field announcements.
 
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For me and my fellow county men and women, the most important event by far in the last seven days was Mayo winning the All-Ireland, after falling at the final hurdle eleven times since our last win 75 years ago.

A variation on Vitas Gerulaitis's priceless reaction after beating Jimmy Connors on the 17th attempt comes to mind: “And let that be a lesson to you all. Nobody beats Mayo 12 times in a row in All-Ireland finals.”

Another big sporting event this week was the Galway Plate. It too brought back memories.

Charlie McLoughlin, who had the sweet shop next to our primary school in Knock, went to the Galway races every year. He invariably backed the winner of the Plate - and would have the betting slip to prove it. I was very impressed at the time. I only learned years later that Charlie backed every horse in the race.

I often think that people who buy index funds are a bit like Charlie McLoughlin. So too are many so-called active managers, who invest in hundreds of companies. I’m not sure what to make of an active manager’s fifty-third top investment pick.

As readers of my investment updates know, I have what I used to call an actuary’s dozen shares in my pension portfolio, i.e. a stochastic variable between eleven and fourteen; however, I learned a few days ago that my profession frowns on such concentrated portfolios, so I’ll have to find another adjective to describe it. Maybe a Mayo man’s dozen.

I firmly believe that, if the shares chosen provide reasonable coverage across industries and geographies – but by no means trying to cover all sectors - this number provides sufficient diversification, without sacrificing much if anything in performance terms.

Long-term returns support my conviction. My pension fund’s average money-weighted return, net of all expenses, in the fifteen years seven months since I “retired” in December 2010 is just over 11% a year. (Monthly figures from Jan 2014 are on the pensions tab of my website colmfagan.ie, on the spreadsheet dated 1/8/2026, here). I don’t claim any special expertise, just (a) a commitment to being as close as possible to 100% in equities at all times, (b) not trying to time the market, (c) keeping expenses and transaction costs low, and (d) avoiding shares whose current value can only be justified on heroic assumptions, Tesla being an obvious example at present.

Also, as the chart below* indicates, variations in the fund’s yearly returns compared to a passive portfolio aren’t that great, either in individual years or cumulatively.

Far more importantly, it’s much more fun to hold shares in real businesses.

*Compares Mercer’s Passive Global Equity CCF(EUR Hedged) Net Performance with my pension portfolio’s performance 2015 to 2024. (I would love to have more comparators, and over a longer period, but can't get my hands on the numbers. If anyone can supply figures for passive or active funds, that would be great. Feel free to PM me if you prefer. )

View image
 
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Colm Fagan said:
Charlie McLoughlin, who had the sweet shop next to our primary school in Knock, went to the Galway races every year. He invariably backed the winner of the Plate - and would have the betting slip to prove it. I was very impressed at the time. I only learned years later that Charlie backed every horse in the race.

I often think that people who buy index funds are a bit like Charlie McLoughlin.
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That's a false comparison. Buying an index isn't usually (or ever?) buying every listed share like backing every horse in a race. And a horse race can only have one winner which isn't the case with a stock market/index.
 
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ClubMan said:
That's a false comparison.
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Ah now! Metaphors wouldn’t survive if they were to be taken literally.
In fact the metaphor is very apt and used by proponents of diversification. @Marc has quoted some guy who has shown that the great bulk of the growth in say the S&P 500 is produced by a handful of stocks. So it is like a horse race except the pot generally is greater than the stakes but the pot is only shared by a tiny few, so back as many as you can to ensure you get a share of the pot.
@Colm Fagan is of course using the metaphor in the opposite direction. I don’t think that it is because he thinks he can pick the winners but rather that it is more fun. It wouldn’t be for me. :)
 
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