Author Topic: positive Robo Advisor story  (Read 2537 times)

tll1975

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positive Robo Advisor story
« on: January 19, 2017, 07:58:00 PM »
so i signed up for FutureAdvisor, and linked my Vanguard Roth to it, years ago and totally forgot about it and never did a thing with it. About 3 months ago, I randomly stumbled back onto it and logged in. I was surprised to find that it had been tracking my Vanguard Roth for like the last 6 years. Because of that, I was able to sort of backtest the performances of the two. What i found was that my Vanguard Roth (80/20 split) basically yielded 4% and with futureadvisor (taking fees into acct and a similar investment portfolio and strategy) would have yielded 7%! Yes it has been a bull mkt but still, that's pretty impressive for a set it and forget it strategy. And with the frequent auto-rebalancing these robo advisors do, even in a down mkt, I think it would have beat Vanguard. Not bashing Vanguard mind you. I put my mom's money there. I like em. I'm just saying...

just thought i'd share. happy saving


Metric Mouse

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Re: positive Robo Advisor story
« Reply #1 on: January 20, 2017, 01:59:52 AM »
Nice! Thanks for sharing. Glad there is an upside to these things on occasion.

boarder42

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Re: positive Robo Advisor story
« Reply #2 on: January 20, 2017, 03:41:10 AM »
The last six years with an 80/20 split of vtsax to whatever the total bond fund is at vanguard should have yielded much much more that 7% annually. If we just assumed vtsax returns on 80% of the money it would have been around 10%.

So something is incorrect in how you're allocated. 

tll1975

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Re: positive Robo Advisor story
« Reply #3 on: January 23, 2017, 12:57:37 PM »
well some of my vanguard is the basic target retirement fund but, i have other riskier index funds in the IRA as well as some total bond mkt index. So i might not have been rebalancing as often as the robo but, I still think the robo beat Vanguard.

rpr

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Re: positive Robo Advisor story
« Reply #4 on: January 23, 2017, 01:14:02 PM »
Are you sure that you are comparing similar investing allocations? If you had it all in appropriate index funds such as VTSAX/VBTLX 80/20, this should have had an annual return of around 8% over the past 6 years.

« Last Edit: January 23, 2017, 01:25:41 PM by rpr »

boarder42

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Re: positive Robo Advisor story
« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2017, 01:40:50 PM »
robo didnt beat a reasonable vtsax to vbtlx alocation as indicated above.  you have poor data points.