{"id":138281,"date":"2025-03-16T22:17:26","date_gmt":"2025-03-16T22:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/investing\/couch-potato-portfolio-returns-for-2020\/"},"modified":"2025-03-16T22:17:26","modified_gmt":"2025-03-16T22:17:26","slug":"couch-potato-portfolio-returns-for-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=138281","title":{"rendered":"Couch Potato Portfolio Returns for 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Just about everyone was happy to wave goodbye to 2020. By the spring it was shaping up to be the worst year for markets since 2008: when the market touched bottom on March 23, Canadian, U.S. and international equities were all showing huge losses. From peak to trough, Canadian equities had declined more than 37%, and foreign markets saw losses between 26% and 29%.<\/p>\n

Even the safety net had gaping holes: Canadian bond ETFs saw peak-to-trough price drops of about 14%, which no one had ever seen before.<\/p>\n

Then, almost as quickly as the markets fell, they roared back more swiftly than anyone expected. For example, the Vanguard Growth ETF Portfolio (VGRO)<\/a> declined more than 25% in 40 ugly days during February and March, then had fully recovered just 196 days later. The whiplash was enough to make you want a neck brace to go with your face mask.<\/p>\n

Last year was also the first in which my model portfolios<\/a> consisted of asset allocation ETFs from Vanguard and iShares. Below I\u2019ve presented a summary of the 2020 results for the individual equity and fixed income components in these products. Then we look at the overall return of the all-in-one asset allocation ETFs, as well as the returns of the two-ETF portfolios in my models.<\/p>\n

For a deep-dive into the performance of the asset allocation ETFs in 2020, watch Justin\u2019s video recap of one of the weirdest years investors have experienced in recent memory:<\/p>\n