TLDR: 1. how should I be measuring up the performance part of my advisor managed portfolio knowing he was right to have me in bonds due to my own fault. 2. What am I missing here in understanding 10 year return on SPY?
edit - is that 12% 10 year the average annual return over a 10 year period? That would make more sense.
You've got it right in your edit.
Some stuff you might want to look at (last one is most important):
Returns
If you want to compare two funds over a specific timeframe, using charting tools is a good way to do it--most will automatically normalize the start date so that the growth rates are relative. Just make sure you use one that reinvests dividends (adjusted close price is good enough):
Total return chart of SPY,VUSE with dividends reinvested.
totalrealreturns.com
Timeframe is relevant to performance, so it isn't as easy as looking across your portfolio to see total gains. As an example, I'm assuming 87% growth in VUSE is the ~137% growth from the 2016 portion weighted against 10%ish from the 2022 portion.
If you wanted to understand how your entire portfolio performed against an index, you'd have to take each cash investiture, calculate its growth against that index from the date of investment to whatever current date your portfolio data is showing, then sum up the total theoretical $ and compare to the $ number you see in your portfolio (minus the bonds).
That's a
lot of work, so most portfolios will show you weighted performance for 1mo/3mo/1/3/5/10yr vs. indexes for the same timeframe. So you'd compare that 12% SPY to whatever your own 10-year performance was, which will likely be weighted in some way to adjust for the mix/volume changes. Not sure if you'd be provided a view of that which excluded bonds.
Risk
If your performance is below an index, your manager might argue that they invested in lower risk/volatility funds, so you made less but were more protected from a potential downbeat.
Sharpe ratio is a simple metric that provides a measure of excess returns/volatility--the higher the number, the greater the return above the risk-free rate for the level of volatility, and you can compare this across funds to understand relative performance on a risk-adjusted basis. It's not a be-all, end-all measure by any means, but it can be useful as a comparison (as a counter-example, the TQQQ
C
Creslin
was joking about earlier earned 2,100% over the last 10 years and looks fine by this metric, but has the uncaptured, long-term risk of completely obliterating nearly all of your wealth in a downturn).
Yahoo Finance will show you Sharpe ratio under 'Risk', Fidelity is under 'Research' > 'Performance and Risk'. By this metric, 10-yr SPY is 0.77 and 10-yr VUSE is 0.51, so the argument that VUSE was a smart risk-adjusted play vs. the market would fall flat to me (I'm sure shaving 0.5% in fees doesn't help). But as ever, past performance blah blah blah.
There are other metrics that can provide different measures of risk. I wouldn't go crazy.
Management Fees
The last metric you should absolutely know is what your manager is charging you. What is their fee structure? What % have they been taking annually cumulatively out of your wealth? I'm sure it isn't a fun conversation, but it is an undeniable factor in performance, and I'd imagine many managers are happy to show you returns gross of fees rather than net. You might set aside bonds for your stock picking evaluation, but I'd bet your manager isn't netting out bonds from their fee calculation.