Investment Performance November 2008(-6.89%)

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.

Once we get settled in a bit more I will work on making this report more comprehensive.

November Highlights:

November was a better than October. We even eeked out another percentage point gain over our benchmark. Thats 2 months in a row that we beat our benchmark.
We continued to buy more investments, mainly indexed investments including the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index (VTI).

We picked up 100 additional shares of the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index (VTI) and 100 additional shares of the KBW Banking Idex (KBE).
We also added to investments in GE, USG(not shown), COP (not shown), and our IRAs.
InBev's purchase of Anheuser Busch completed in November and our 105.72 shares were converted to cash for a nice profit on a three year investment. I had planned to reinvest all of this money into index investments, but we put a house under contract and wanted to hold onto as much cash as possible through closing.
While not shown in this report, according to my 401k website, my 401k is down 40.4% YTD at the end of November.

November 2008 Investment Report:

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Comments (2)

I'm glad to see you're investing through indexes. I like the Total Market Fund (I use Fidelity's equivalent) but I don't like to use sector funds (such as the KBW).

I've been reading the Intelligent Investor (the Benjamin Graham book) and there is a lot of wisdom in there. If you haven't read it yet, I suggest you check it out.

Posted by Thisson | December 13, 2008 2:11 PM

I am also a big believer in indexing instead of speculating. Why not go in all ETFs instead of individual stocks. I see you have alot of energy stocks, why not just go in to an Etf like XLE

Posted by Bill M. | December 13, 2008 10:46 PM