Investment Performance September 2008(-10.93%)

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.

September Highlights:

September was a brutal month all around. Our investment trailed our benchmark by ~1.25% largely due to the collapse of Wachovia stock price in a fire sale of its bank to Citigroup.
Its a tough pill to swallow when your investments decline by ~10% a month, but it hasn't really phased us as we are too busy wrapping up our assignment in China.
We add small amounts to Pfizer and USG investments as part of our automatic DRIP accounts.

We picked 25 additional shares of the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index (VTI) as shares continued decline.
While not shown in this report, according to my 401k website, my 401k is down 24.1% YTD at the end of September.

September 2008 Investment Report:

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Investment Performance January 2014 (-2.94%) (Feb 23, 2014) January 2014 Investment Report: January Highlights: January was a bad way to start out the year, but our portfolio performed slightly better thank our benchmark (-2.94% vs -3.17%). We made our regular monthly investments in our Roth IRAs, and some...

Investment Performance December 2013 (+2.20%) (Jan 10, 2014) December 2013 Investment Report: December Highlights: December was another subpar for us as our portfolio performed poorly compared to our benchmark (+2.20% vs +2.58%). We made our regular monthly investments in our Roth IRAs, and some dividends & dividend reinvestments....

Comments (1)

This was a great post! There is so much turbulence in the market today, and people need peace of mind more than ever. I wanted to offer your readers a link to another blogger who is doing great work. He writes about our 'childhood money messages' and how the best approach to stability in today's market is to resist letting these emotions control our buying/selling habits. It is really fascinating work, and something you should all check out. His name is Spencer Sherman, and you can view his blog at http://www.curemoneymadness.com/blog.

Posted by Lacey | October 6, 2008 2:58 PM