A brief history of my TFSA: My strategy is to invest the TFSA in high risk-to-reward candidates that ideally will generate income that would justify its positioning in the TFSA for tax sheltering. My goal is a rapid compounding of capital with high risk/reward candidates. The TFSA will not be diversified as it is part of an overall portfolio, hence the lack of diversification.
In 2009, $5,000 was deposited into the TFSA. The first investing was invested in debentures of Harvest Energy Trust on February 2009, which was bought out by KNOC in October 2009. I cashed out the debentures and the account was left with a balance of $13,043 at year-end. Result: A 161% gain for the year. This is obviously unsustainable year-to-year.
In 2010, $5,000 was deposited into the TFSA. On January 2010, I invested the proceeds of the TFSA into debentures of First Uranium Corporation, which turned out to be a badly timed entry (if I had waited a week later I would have received a price 10% less than what I paid for due to bad news that was released literally a day after I had made the purchase) and the setback tested my investment acumen. The fundamental reason why I had invested had not changed, so I kept the debentures. In October 2010, I swapped half the debentures for (secured, convertible at a relatively low equity price) notes in the same company which has turned out so far to be a good decision. Result: The TFSA ended 2010 at $20,486, which after adjusting for the $5,000 deposit, is a return of 13.5%. Given the risk, however, I would judge this as a poor performance.
The two-year annualized performance (adjusting for deposits) of the TFSA was 72%. Again, this number will not likely be repeated in the future for 3, 4 and 5 year periods – this number will be going lower.
In 2011, after transferring in $5,000 into the TFSA at the beginning of the year, there is approximately CAD$5,500 sitting in the account that is currently languishing. I have been researching investment candidates and while I could deposit the proceeds into a relatively low risk investment that would yield around 6-7%, this is below my return threshold. The TFSA is still sensitive to the performance of First Uranium debentures and notes which should provide some element of growth in the portfolio (should be around 15%), but the rest of the cash needs to be deployed otherwise it will drag performance. I do not wish to invest in any more First Uranium at existing prices.
I do not want to invest cash for the sake of investing cash, so I will be patient and continue looking for opportunities. Such a bland strategy of holding zero-yield cash is boring and does not make for good writing, but it is disciplined.