Investment Performance April 2011 (+3.04%)

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.

April Highlights:

Our performance beat our benchmark for the month (+3.04% vs +2.90%).
We made a number of transactions in April to maximize our retirement contributions for 2010 before the deadline. This included final Roth IRA contributions for 2010 for my wife (T Rowe Price Equity & Retirement funds) and I (Windsor II) and a SEP IRA contribution (Vanguard International fund).
We sold off my remaining employer stock options that we set to expire in August 2011 and realized about an $8k cash infusion. I'm content to sit on the cash for now for the most part.
The only other notable activity was some additional investments in financials (BTC & BAC)
We also made our regular monthly investments in our IRAs and Conocco Philips DRIP, and had some dividend reinvestments.
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%. Aug -4.87%, Sept +8.48%, Oct 2.47%, Nov -0.96%, Dec +8.01%, Jan 2011 +2.06%, Feb 2.57%, Mar +0.15%, Apr +3.04%.....

April 2011 Investment Report:

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