Portfolio Update - July 2007 (Down 1.83%)

(08/01) [Comment function is fixed. Please feel free to drop your comments.] ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY The market situation in July has been a rollercoaster ride. The first three weeks couldn't be better -- when Dow Jones index set its all-time high on the July 19th, my portfolio is up my $15,000 compared to June close. However, in a matter of days, my finance-stock-intensive portfolio suffered a $30,000 hemorrhage with the general market collapse. My employee stock account is not immune either. An appreciation of $16,000 by the middle of the month is only followed by a $20,000 dive. So all combined, my portfolio is $50,000 under by July 31st compared to the intra-month high it once fetched. Alas, the volatility of managing a portfolio of one's own money in the market of this volatility is not for the faint heart. On ... Read Full Post (1 Comment)

Monthly Update - June 2007 ($756,924, +3,438)

(07/07) With hardly any investment income from my self-managed portfolio, I feel quite lucky that I can still post a modest positive net worth growth of $3,438 in June -- several extra sources of income more than offset the bleeding in stock option value. This also wrapped up the bumpy but still fruitful ride of 1st half, which put us in a good position in achieving our stated annual financial goals: 1) We achieved a net worth growth of $125K in the last six months, or more than half of our annual growth goal of $230,000. With a sizable bonus and more vesting of stock option and stock awards coming in September, we should be able to overshoot our year-end goal of $850,000 in net worth. 2) My investment also performed well with benchmark-beating year-to-date return of 7.7%. This is only ... Read Full Post

Portfolio Update - May/June 2007

(07/04) Life has been busy with workload and multiple trips lately, and I couldn't find time to post a portfolio update last month. Nevertheless, my portfolio has been prospering, and handily beat my benchmark by a full percentage point in the last two months. ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY My portfolio performance is helped by three factors: 1) A couple of individual domestic stock bets are paying off: APOL returned 22% in June and my biggest holding COP returned 12% in May, more than offsetting the weakness of my financial stocks. 2) On the foreign equity side, my hand-picked funds are performing exceedingly compared to benchmark (EFA). 3) Increased exposure to both domestic and foreign equity positions (vs cash position) further improved performance. So, here is some highlights of my portfolio in the 1st half of 2007: - Portfolio grew from $712K at ... Read Full Post

Monthly Review - May 2007 ($753,486, +$30,033)

(06/03) Stock markets continue to set new records, and so does our net worth. With over $26,000 gain in our diversified portfolio, coupled with strong cash flow production from Money Manager Co. and Perfect Future Publishing Co. but offset by some increased tax exposure, our bottomline improved by 30 grand in the month of May alone. In another record, for the first time, our net worth improvement over a rolling 12-month period exceeded $300,000. MONTH-END BALANCE SHEET (The above view was produced by Microsoft Money and an offline Excel template.) Read Full Post

Prosper Personal Lending Update

(05/12) Approximately one year ago, there was a time when I was glued to the social personal lending site Prosper.com every morning, seeking and funding good loan proposals. In a matter of a few months, I underwrote 163 loans with a total of $14,880 at an average interest rate of 17.6%. I was hoping to make double-digit returns on my cashpile, satisfy my loan shark ego, and, maybe, benefit one soul or two in this world who will either use my fund to pay for grandkids' tuition, or start up a garage business. (PFBlog report: here, here, here and here.) Things didn't go as expected, and with the uncomfortable development of late payments, I decided to stop lending any more back in September. It seems that I made the right choice -- the performance of my loan portfolio only went downhill ... Read Full Post

Portfolio Update - April 2007

(05/06) Let me start this month's installment of portfolio update with the announcement of changed format. As you can see below, the new design brought a few important changes: 1) Grouped by asset class (domestic equity, foreign equity, cash, etc.), instead of investment type (mutual fund, stock, cash, etc.) to better represent asset allocation 2) Improved breakdown of month-to-month changes; now investment gains or losses are separated from cash flow related to purchases and sales. 3) Comparison of portfolio performance vs benchmark Read Full Post (5 Comments)

Monthly Review - April 2007 ($723,414, +$45,748)

(05/01) A booming stock market is behind the stellar performance of our household finance in the past month. With over $38,000 in portfolio gains in the month, and continued cash flow generation from my day job and sideline business, our net worth broke into the 700's. The monthly improvement of $45,748 is the second best in record, only behind October 2005 when we sold our house and booked the real estate appreciation. Read Full Post (10 Comments)

Setting Up Portfolio Benchmark

(04/16) One of the commentators to my last monthly portfolio update rightfully pointed out that I'm not using the right benchmark to measure my portfolio performance. Given that I'm positioning my portfolio for a sizable exposure to international equity, it is unfair to use S&P 500 as the benchmark. To fix this, I'm going to construct a meaningful benchmark for my portfolio. As I explained in my "Reengineering My Portfolio Management" series, excluding my employee stock option account, I'm planning my portfolio for the following allocation: • 50% Domestic Equity • 35% International Equity • 15% Cash & Equivalent To map to this allocation, my benchmark portfolio will include the following components: • 50% in Vanguard Total Markets ETF (VTI) • 35% in iShares MSCI EAFE Index (EFA) • 15% in Cash Read Full Post (9 Comments)

Is $1M Still Enough?

(04/04) Back to 2003 when I started this blog, I wrote a post "Is $1,000,000 enough?" Then, I crafted a statistical model to argue that if I spend thrift and invest wise, one million dollars can be a good goal to support a happy retirement at 40. At that time, I just purchased our first house and started the American Dream of getting rich while our net worth was at $120,000 and went up $3,000 a month. It has been three and half years since that post, and many things have changed, mostly for the good. For one, with over $670,000 reported in our balance sheet, the million-dollar goal seems to be within reach in the next two years. Also, our sideline business has been minting money since 2005, which should provide a good cushion if I ever leave my full-time ... Read Full Post (23 Comments)

Portfolio Update - March 2007

(04/02) My portfolio performed quite well in the month of March. The monthly gain of $13,120, or 1.9% of the portfolio size, is almost a full percentage point above the S&P 500 gains. The gain is helped by my sizable foreign equity exposure, and an opportunistic gain in a particular stock position. Below is the breakdown of my portfolio at the end of March: Read Full Post (9 Comments)

More Entries

(04/02) Monthly Review - March 2007 ($677,666, +$24,212)
(03/14) Citi Cards Payment Partner Program Gives One More Reason To Try 0% APR Balance Transfer
(03/09) Running Household Finance As A Business, The Introduction
(03/03) Monthly Review - February 2007 ($653,454, -$7,582)
(03/03) Portfolio Update - February 2007
(02/27) Shanghai Sneezes and The World Catches Cold
(02/26) RMPM, Part IX: Building Out My Mutual Fund Positions
(02/24) RMPM, Part VIII: Revisiting My 401(k) Account
(02/24) RMPM, Part VII: My Individual Stock Portfolio -- The Sell Side Considerations
(02/21) Reengineering My Portfolio Management, Part VI: My Individual Stock Portfolio -- The Buy Side Considerations
(02/20) Reengineering My Portfolio Management, Part V: Portfolio Construction
(02/18) Reengineering My Portfolio Management, Part IV: The Asset Allocation In Percentages
(02/17) Reengineering My Portfolio Management, Part III: Asset Allocation - The Investable Asset Classes
(02/16) Reengineering My Portfolio Management, Part II: Portfolio Objectives & Constraints
(02/15) Reengineering My Portfolio Management, Part I: Introduction
(02/05) Portfolio Update - January 2007
(02/03) My First Realized Double-Bagger
(02/01) Monthly Review - January 2007 ($661,036, +$29,785)
(01/31) My Mileage Program Strategy, Part I
(01/30) Free Tax Filing for 2007: The Rules Have Changed (Again)
(01/29) What Did I Learn from My 2005 Tax Return?
(01/25) TiVo Is Entering China!
(01/02) Monthly Review - December 2006 ($631,251, +$26,716)
(01/01) Portfolio Update - December 2006
(12/30) Financial Plan 2007: Strategic Intentions and Financial Goals
(12/23) Financial Plan 2007: The Landscape
(12/09) Sales Tax Deduction Stays (For Two More Years)
(12/02) Monthly Review - November 2006 ($604,535, +$28,543)
(11/28) Eloan Has More Money Than It Can Handle?
(11/25) Home Sale Anniversary

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