Investment Performance March 2012 (+2.35%)

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.

March Highlights:

March's market gains weren't nearly as strong as the first two months of the year, but its hard to complain with nice growth. We posted a +2.35% increase in our portfolio compared to our VTI benchmark increase of +2.63%.
I've now been tracking our monthly investment performance for over 3 years and recently posted an analysis of long term investment performance. I'm still mulling over what actions to take from the review, but likely will be moving more of our investments into Vanguard's Total Stock Market Index as a result. I still feel compelled to manage at least a portion of our portfolio as I view becoming an above average investor an important component to being financially free.
March was another quiet month transaction wise. We made no additional investments beyond on normal monthly cadence.
We made our regular monthly investments in our Roth IRAs and Conocco Philips DRIP, and had some dividends and 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%, May -1.56%, June -1.63%, July -2.71%, Aug -5.42%, Sept -7.06%, Oct +9.88%, Nov -0.39%, Dec +2.10%, Jan '12 +4.03%, Feb +4.68%, Mar +2.35%.....

March 2012 Investment Report:

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Comments (1)

The stock market is a zero-sum game and investors lose to the indexes due to higher expenses incurred from expense ratio & trading.

If you put all your money into VTI or a combination of low-cost indexes you should become an above average investor due to lower expenses, not by actively managing any part of your portfolio.

Posted by Andrew | April 19, 2012 9:20 PM