Archive for the '• Investing' Category

$SPX $SPY $$ A Lost Decade? Not With 426% Return It’s Not

August 09th, 2011 Comments(0)

Investors have heard many decry the decade of the 2000s as the “lost decade.” A dollar invested in the S&P 500 on the first trading day of 1999 saw it worth just 65 cents a decade later (3/31/09 is our cutoff point). This “underperformance” is seen by many as a failure of the U.S. economic engine.

If we look at the Top 20 performers of the S&P 500 during that same time period, we see a vastly different story. Instead of a 35% loss during that time, the Top 20 earned an average 426% return in stock price, excluding dividends. What accounted for this differential performance during this “lost decade?”

The rest is kind of TLDR, but if you’re curious, the source:
Lessons from S&P Recession Survivors [PDF]

“Lazy Canadian ETF” Portfolio Update – Almost 4 Years Later $$

January 24th, 2011 Comments(3)

This is known as the “Couch Potato” approach, and you can read about my hypothetical portfolio here. I started tracking it in May 2007 and finished a year and a half later.

This “lazy” method seems to be popular in Canada, and is profiled in many financial magazines almost every year. Truly, it’s the land of the extremes – either full-on penny stock speculation, or boring index fund investing :)

Here’s a look at how that initial $10,000 is doing now. Note:

  • I chose not to re-invest the distributions.
  • Profit/loss includes paid out distributions.
  • Commissions are excluded because they’d be like $5 for the initial buy-in, doesn’t affect anything.

Click to enlarge

Here’s a visual representation of the same. I assume the “amount invested” is going down because of the inflation.

Components

CDN Composite (XIC) – 45%
CDN S&P 500 (XSP) – 25%
CDN MSCI EAFE (XIN) – 30%

Initial Investment

Approximately $10,000 one-time in May 2007.

Was It Worth It? $$

March 09th, 2010 Comments(0)

Amazing. Today’s WTF find, with W being “why???” in this case.

She lived in a tiny one-bedroom cottage in Lake Forest, Ill.

She bought her clothes at rummage sales, didn’t own a car and worked most of her life as a secretary for a pharmaceutical company.

Yet after her death at age 100, Grace Groner left Lake Forest College a gift of $7 million to be used for scholarships. The money came from three shares of stock she bought — and held on to — in 1935.

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