Investment Performance September 2009 (+3.15%)

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:

Our investments did not perform as well as our benchmark for the month of September.
Our major transaction was to sell another 100 shares of IBM. We have been overweight in my employer's stock through its ESPP plan. For the past couple of years we have been slowly reducing our holdings in IBM. For now the proceeds will sit in cash until I see an opportunity to invest it.
We also picked up an additional 6 shares of Markel, which I don't like as much as Fairfax Financial, but feel like it currently has more updside potential.
As I stated in May I feel that I have been hesitant to throw a lot of additional capital into my investments since the market has seen strong gains since March.
My 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%.....

September 2009 Investment Report:

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