Investment Performance July 2010 (+6.17%)

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.

July Highlights:

Our monthly performance was a disappointment compared to our benchmark (6.17% vs 7.02%).
This marks 6 months in a row that our benchmark, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index (VTI) has beat our portfolio. Not a good recent track record.
We made some purchases at the beginning of the month as stock prices were still reeling from June. We purchased some additional shares of Genworth and Bank of America and we believe both of these companies are trading very cheap compared with their historic earnings rate.
Our recent monthly returns were: Jan 09 -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%, Jan '10 -2.34%, Feb +2.25%, Mar +5.88%, Apr +2.54%, May -8.13%, June -5.64%, July 6.17%.....

July 2010 Investment Report:

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Comments (2)

Why not use passive investing via index funds?

You are taking stock market risk, and you have no reason to expect you will be able to pick the winners, in fact, the overwhelming evidence shows you will lose to the market after costs in the long run. Its probably good thing that you are losing early on. Its pretty inexorable stuff.

like your site,

Posted by LH | August 30, 2010 3:30 AM

LH,

Thanks for the comment. Readers have beaten me up over this very point a couple years ago which is why I track this so closely. By far our largest investments are in passive index funds - primarily in our 401(k) not included in our report.

At some point I'll have to evaluate the data collected so far and see if that continues to drive some investment changes on my part. I suspect what I will find is that our passive benchmark has outperformed our remaining investments over time.

Posted by 2million | August 30, 2010 9:42 AM