Investment Performance June 2008 (-8.55%)

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.

Its still a work in progress, any feedback is appreciated and may be incorporated into future monthly reports. 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.

June Highlights:

What an ugly month for the stock market. The total stock market index was down over 8% for the month. On the plus side I finally was able to have my portfolio's return match the benchmark, a small achievement, at this point I'll take what I can get.
Big dividend month with most of the companies we hold paying dividends (Pfizer, Wachovia, Anheuser Busch, Exxon, Johnson & Johnson).

GE paid a dividend in May, but didn't record it so I have added it to this month's report to try and keep up with it. On that note, I don't have easy access to a couple holdings (Duke, Spectra, PG, Medtronic, etc) so I am currently not recording dividend payments/reinvestments for those holdings. I will have ot figure out a way to handle this once I get back to the US and get this information.

The Vanguard ETFs (VWO, VXF, VTI) all split 2for1 in June.

I added more to our Wachovia and KBW ETF investments. The financial industry bloodbath continues with no end in site. I don't know what will happen, but I'm drooling over the valuations.

June 2008 Investment Report:

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Comments (2)

Have you tried using Yodlee to track your 401k?

It might let you add your investment that way then you can pull once a month to get the values.

Posted by Ken, Seattle, WA | July 2, 2008 1:07 PM

2mil, you still appear to own a hodge podge of investments and your return matching the benchmark seems to be a coincidence rather than an achievement. Why do you think that anything you did made your portfolio investment returns match the VTI return?

Cheers,
ETFnerd

Posted by ETFnerd | July 3, 2008 9:16 AM