This is an ongoing monthly update on how our equity investments are performing. Please see this background on the investment tool I developed and how I am using it to track our performance against a benchmark to measure our progress or lack thereof.
The only equity investments not covered are:
1) my 401k which is invested in institutional index funds through my employer that I haven’t found a tracking symbol for.
2) investments roughly worth less than $500, simply because I don’t have the time and energy to keep up with them. I am thinking I will sell these off at some point and add the proceeds to my current investment portfolio because they are too much work to track.
December Highlights:
- Our investment performance was very poor compared to our benchmark. Our benchamark was up 2.85% for the month, but our investments only gained 1.85%.
- During the last few days of the years we decided to sell of our remaining Well Fargo position to realize additional losses
- We also sold off our Radian holdings which was nothing more than a bet that mortgage insurers were undervalued. With a 20% return after just a few months I had no desire to hold on
- Our monthly returns for 2009: Jan -4.98%, Feb -9.94%, Mar +8.45%, Apr +10.88%, May +4.65%, Jun +0.89%, Jul +9.94%, Aug +4.36%, Sept 3.15%, Oct -2.34%, Nov +5.83%, Dec +1.85%…..
December 2009 Investment Report: