2009 – what a year!   I became a mother and an aunt, James graduated from BU and Emmett hit some major milestones.  I think most of my immediate family members regard 2009 as one of – if not THE – best year yet, and I could not agree more.

Emmett’s first Christmas was great.  We headed up to Maine for Christmas Day with James’ family and then back down to Boston to meet my parents and sister for Christmas round two.  Needless to say, Emmett got a lot of good loot.

Emmett's first Christmas, in Maine

New Year’s Eve was pretty quiet.  I co-hosted my company’s Internet marketing podcast in the afternoon, which was a lot of fun.  Then James, Emmett and I spent a relaxing evening at home that included some yummy Thai takeout, a cozy fire, watching the ball drop and drinking champagne at midnight.

Perhaps the coolest development of the past couple of weeks, however, was the fact that Emmett took his first steps (literally fewer than 24 hours after my parents went back to New Jersey after Christmas)!  In fact, in less than a week, he’s become a real pro.  Check out a video of some of his first few steps below …

Now that the hustle and bustle of the holidays are over, I have to focus on my next big project — Emmett’s first birthday party!  Considering it’s only 2 weeks away and I still have a lot to do to prepare, I should keep myself pretty busy.  I’m getting excited though; I just bought some pretty awesome themed decorations online

Check out the various Baby Lump photo albums on 2009 at http://www.flickr.com/photos/littlebabylump/sets and videos at http://www.youtube.com/pamelump.

Cheers to 2010 and to more milestones, happiness and love for Baby Lump, and thanks for reading along in ‘09!

Happy New Year from LittleBabyLump.com!

In January of 2009, I began my foray into the world of investing. Not long after that, I decided to throw this blog together and post weekly updates on the status of the various portfolios I was considering for my own investments. In late January, $150 was added to each of the portfolios and the race was on. It’s now been almost a year, and with 2009 over and done with, I think it’s time to look back and see just how each of the portfolios did this year.

The first month or two of the year was definitely not a very good one to be invested in. The continuation of 2008’s meltdown was still going strong, and stocks were preferring to move down rather than up. However, after that, the market rebounded with a fury and by the end of the year, more than one portfolio vaulted itself into the realm of absurdity. Not a single portfolio lost money on the year, and that’s as good a place to start as any. However, while profitability is wonderful and all, absurd profitability is even better. Let’s explore the results, shall we?

Rethinking CAGR

In the weekly comparisons this year, I have been providing a number under the CAGR (compound annual growth rate) column for each portfolio. This number was the so-called single-investment CAGR. In other words, it reflected the annualized return you would have earned had you invested one lump sum in that portfolio at the start of the comparison and added no additional money. In some ways, I prefer this number, and it certainly has its uses, but the portfolios’ actual internal rates of return are both less confusing and less theoretical.

I’ve explained this before, but essentially, the IRR (internal rate of return) is the yield you would have to earn on your investment in order to match the performance of the portfolio. This takes into account when you added or removed money. Because stocks don’t earn a constant rate of return, and because you can buy additional stocks at either higher or lower points, these two measures of portfolio performance can be quite different at times. I’ve randomly decided to begin using the IRR instead of the single-investment return. As a result, whenever you see CAGR, you can from now on assume IRR. If I want to talk about the single-investment CAGR, I’ll explicitly say so.

The Results

Because of the shortened week, as well as the desire to focus on the review of 2009, the next weekly update will happen next week. This post is already on pace to be something like 1500 words, and I’d hate to make you read two short novels in such a short time span.

Next, here’s the table summarizing the results for 2009. Each portfolio started the year with a value of $0 (which I’ve pointlessly included in the table), and $1650 of new investment was added throughout the course of the year. One additional $150 investment will take place in a week or so, but that’s unimportant for this table. Anyway, take a look:

It looks like, at least for 2009, the Magic Formula really was magic, managing to beat the broader U.S. market. I can’t say the same about any other portfolio, but that doesn’t mean I can’t say anything. Here are my thoughts about each of the portfolios:

• I began this comparison before the meltdown from 2008 had finished. As a result, the first three stocks I purchased for the MFI portfolio started the year with a resounding thud, as the portfolio was quickly down nearly 30%. It rebounded with a bang, however, as stocks were added and the bull market of 2009 took effect, ultimately rising to stratospheric heights, reaching a peak in mid-October. After that, it took a small step off a large cliff, rejoining the other portfolios in the real world. Nonetheless, the remainder of the year was positive once again, leading the portfolio to finish on top.
• The next best portfolio this past year was none other than TMW, representing the broader U.S. market. At least for this year, proponents of the buy-and-hold investment strategy have been vindicated. (I don’t expect this to be true in the long run, however.) Like the MFI portfolio, this one declined for the first month or so, but then began rising fairly consistently, without the mini-bubble the MFI portfolio experienced. All in all, another solid choice this year.
• Coming in third was the Caribou portfolio. This portfolio was designed as a replacement in case Decision Moose ever disappeared off the internet. In the end, it soundly defeated its inspiration, but fell short against the broader U.S. market. While Caribou avoided the early-year declines by holding onto gold, it also moved into cash and missed a good portion of the bull run. This is par for the course with a momentum model, which reacts slowly to changing conditions. Nonetheless, the end-of-year results were quite good. However, it failed to beat the market, and that makes all the extra work and trading rather pointless, doesn’t it?
• Next, we have my baseline benchmark, the precious metals portfolio. Composed of gold and silver, this portfolio tracks one potential measure of inflation (though there are other market forces acting on the prices of precious metals) and serves as my minimum level of acceptable performance. With a CAGR of over 33%, this doesn’t say anything good about the performance of the U.S. dollar this year. I haven’t been seeing prices rising much at the grocery store, but even if there is inflation once again, there’ll be some lag before it affects consumer goods. The rise was remarkably consistent, with only three corrections during the year.
• Decision Moose comes in fifth, making 2009 one of the model’s worst years, as far as I can tell. Like Caribou, it was slow to get out of cash (missing the bull run) and more recently, has been in ILF, which has been marginally less profitable than Caribou’s EWZ. Still, one usually wouldn’t sneeze at a 28% return, but since it failed to beat the precious metals, and with the other options available, this portfolio was definitely a 2009 disappointment.
• Rounding out the comparison, we have Berkshire Hathaway. This company has been known for its steady returns over the years, and is one of the single best places an investor could have put his money over the past twenty years. Nonetheless, this year it comes out quite short. Like the other stock portfolios, this one began the year by declining before rising again. Unlike the others, BRK-B has done essentially nothing since July. Some people have suggested that Berkshire Hathaway is quite undervalued right now, but I suppose only time can answer that question. For 2009, however, this portfolio was a dud of epic proportions. Then again, it still handily beat a savings account or CD.

Single-Investment CAGR

Before wrapping up this post, I think it’s worthwhile to take a moment to examine how things would be different if I had simply invested $1650 in each portfolio back in January, and then let the strategies work their magic without the constant meddling. (Doing this with the Magic Formula portfolio would have been more complicated, but it was certainly doable.)

Don’t try to compare the dollar values with the other table, as this method has had more money invested for longer, so it’s only natural that the totals are larger. However, I think it’s important to note that none of the portfolios managed to beat the precious metals. In my mind, if you can’t beat a bunch of shiny rocks, you’re simply not performing well enough. Mind you, both TMW and the Magic Formula came close, but neither could quite make it over the hump. That said, I don’t believe all of this year’s rise in the precious metals is attributable to inflation, so things aren’t quite as dire as they might seem at first. Nonetheless, I sincerely hope that the various portfolios are able to beat the metals in the coming years.

Final Words

Caribou will be sticking with EWZ for at least one more week. I have no idea when the signal might change, but EWZ has been the choice for over three months now, with nothing else looming as an obvious replacement. One of my goals for this year is to explore potential improvements to the model, but it’s not as if the current model is showing any signs of being broken.

I may be adding $150 to each portfolio again this week, which will be the final investment. (This may be delayed, so don’t be surprised either way.)

In conclusion, 2009 was a great year for investors, regardless of their investing style. It was hard to lose money this year, which was a welcome change from last year, where making money was the exception. With 2009 behind us, we can now look forward to the investing challenges of 2010. Will the recovery turn out to be false? Will gold skyrocket to $5000 an ounce? Will the portfolios make money or lose money? Heck, I don’t know, and neither do you, unless you’re from the future. One thing I do know is that, win or lose, the whole investing experience is a whole lot more exciting than watching a bank account rise steadily. Whether that’s good or bad is up to you.

In any case, I hope everyone had a great holiday season and a happy new year, and let’s all look forward to whatever 2010 will bring us. See you next week (or in a couple of days as the case may be).

Disclaimer: This post is a description of my own forays into investing, and should not be construed as investment advice or the recommendation of any particular security over any other. Please consult your investment adviser or accountant before making any investment decisions. What’s right for me is very likely to not be right for you.

Pastor G <<

Happy 2010!!

Here’s looking forward to many, many fantastic medieval novels being published in 2010. 

from your faithful scribe, Linda

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all!

I am currently working on building a sound infrastructure to educate the general public on these issues as fast as possible.  I am also looking into integrating network marketing with teaching, and should have a good plan set forth by the end of this week or, at most, the end of next week.

• Will be meeting with District Director Lisa Pinto of Representative Henry Waxman’s camp on January 7th.  Look for a summary of our conversation posted after.
• Also have a meeting with representatives from Rep. Patrick Kennedy in the works.
• Corporate Structure, along with State and District Directors should be promulgated for our organization very soon (within the next one week to two weeks – by Jan 9).

So this was the week of Christmas as you may or may not know XD JK so anyways this week was pretty smooth. Chris stood over my house on that sunday and we hung out and junk.
On monday we went to the mall and I traded in some games and bought a bunch of games X3, it was fuuun, then we went back to my house and we sang karaoke with my sister all night, it was fun xD

Tuesday we went to the library and we stood for the last Teen Tuesday before ‘10 and it was pretty fun. I had a very interesting conversation with Aurora about College (she runs the Teen Tuesday program) and I’ve decided I’ll go off to UAT in Arizona, it may be scary and far, but it’ll help me in the long run. So I’m going through with it, there’s no doubts in my mind anymore.

Weds the people who were staying at my house finally left, my sister and my bro-in-law seemed a bit pissed about the fact of how long they were there and how things went. I kept to myself and continued playing BlazBlue. I went to school like normal and we all cut to go hang out around the city. Anisaa had money to go shopping, and we all went along, first we had Sushi, and there was more sushi involved in that day then mosts days in my entire life XD.
Vicky had a spider roll and it looked something like this ^ XD

Well Thursday it was Christmas eve and I was ready to go to the family party, when I got there one of my Aunt’s was already drunk, before anyone else was there. As more people came and the party got full of all my family members my aunt seemed to get more and more drunk, so much that she ruined everyone’s night. She made us give out the presents too early, and wouldn’t let anyone but herself talk. Then she finally collapsed in the bathtub when she went upstairs making her the laughing stock of the party. It was pretty humorous considering how annoying and rude she had  been ruining everyone’s night with her drunk ass Dx.

Christmas day was pretty mellow, nothing interesting happened…

SATURDAY I went shopping and bought four books, new headphones, 3 months of xbox live time, Tales of Vesperia, a new hoodie, and went to a buffet. Me, Chris and Mike hung out at the mall the entire day and I finally went home, and had a talk with Mike about Danny… ugh… how I’m loathing talking to Danny again, I know he may need my help right now, but he’s… he’s…. I don’t want those feelings to come back… No matter what happens… I won’t let them win…
Sunday was family day and me, my sister, my mom, and my bro-in-law all went to the mall shopping, we really didn’t buy much, but I bought my mom and my sister gifts from Bath and Body Works. They were happy, and then we ended the day off by eating.

That was all for this week… I’m not looking forward to when Mike tells Danny that I want to talk to him… my birthdays exactly a week from today… heh…

Treehorn is so excited with the new updates released this week. Out of all the updates, she chose favorites which she will probably buy for this year’s New Year’s ballroom:

Luxury Shop: Palace Staircase (Just Arrived) and New Year Feast Table (This Week’s Special)

Furniture Shop: Palace Chair , Palace Teddy , Palace Flower Decor, Palace Sofa , Palace Hall Chest, Palace Side Table, (all JA)

D.I.Y. Shop: Golden Palace Winter View Window, Pink Palace Wallpaper (TWS); Palace Door , Palace Winter View Window, Red Carpet Floor, Palace Wallpaper (JA)

Food Shop: Luxury Sparkling Berry Juice, Apple Soda Drink (JA); Luxury Sparkling Grape Juice, Peach Soda Drink, Ballroom Cake, Ballroom Cupcake (TWS)

Clothes Shop: Princess Golden Tiara, Princess Ball Gown, Princess Golden Shoes (TWS); Chic Party Hair Ribbon, Chic Party Dress, Chic Party Shoes (JA)

Gadget Shop: Palace Chandelier (TWS), Palace Wall Light (JA)

~*~*~

All pics are from the Pet Society blog. For prices, check out Pet Society World. ^_^

It has now been two weeks since the last complete portfolio update, and the ride was nothing short of a roller coaster. While last week’s returns were unimpressive, this week turned out to be much more friendly to investors, especially on Wednesday and Thursday. Of course, even so, only half of the portfolios ended the two-week period up, but things aren’t quite as grim as they might initially seem.

I had originally planned to post this update on Thursday or Friday, but I realized that Caribou wouldn’t be generating any signals until Friday night as usual. Since I like to keep everything in one long, incoherent post, I ended up settling back into my usual schedule. Other than that brief nugget, there aren’t any other logistic comments to make about this week’s comparison. I did make some minor changes to reflect the fact that this is a two-week comparison, but that’s just good sense. In any case, let’s look at the table and chart:

Once again, it appears as though some kind of separation is developing between the various portfolios. Each line is even visible at the moment, but as we all know, things can change quite rapidly from week to week. Let me briefly summarize each portfolio’s performance over the last two weeks:

• The best performing portfolio these past two weeks has been the Magic Formula portfolio, which has easily vaulted itself back into first place. This portfolio has now had two good weeks in a row.
• The broader U.S. market also did reasonably well, with TMW ending up. With the U.S. markets currently at highs for 2009, this comes as no surprise. Despite an unimpressive outing last week, TMW rebounded this week to take second place.
• The final gainer in this two-week period was the precious metals portfolio, which finally began resuming its upward movement on Wednesday. Neither gold nor silver are particularly close to their highs, and gold is actually down in the past two weeks, but silver’s stronger performance has carried the portfolio.
• BRK-B tried its hardest to make some gains, but in the end, ended up right back where it started. Steady long-term gains is the name of the game when it comes to Berkshire Hathaway, but the portfolio hasn’t done much at all since August.
• Finally, we have Caribou and Decision Moose, who are both still invested in South America, in EWZ and ILF respectively. At first glance, the results look terrible. However, both funds have recently announced dividends, and while the ex-date has passed, the dividends themselves are not payable until December 31st. Therefore, I expect much of the loss to be made up in the coming couple of weeks as the dividends actually show up in the virtual account.

As it turns out, waiting for Caribou was unnecessary, as the model continues to hold onto EWZ. I am unable to identify what the next potential signal could be, though ILF and EPP remain the highest ranked alternatives. Almost everything has been working this year, so the model isn’t even really offering any insights. Who knows if that’ll change anytime soon.

Anyway, here’s the MFI portfolio detail:

Our old friend SCMP took the opportunity to make back some of its losses, but it’s still nowhere near parity. As usual, there were some strong gainers, and some losers. With 33 stocks in the portfolio, it’s difficult to focus on any one individual stock. It was certainly a lot easier when there were only three, but that’s hardly enough diversification. In any case, what matters is the performance of the portfolio as a whole, and that remains outstanding. But again, everything has been working this year, and I think the comparison will be much more interesting in a year that isn’t so “easy”.

Disclaimer: This post is a description of my own forays into investing, and should not be construed as investment advice or the recommendation of any particular security over any other. Please consult your investment adviser or accountant before making any investment decisions. What’s right for me is very likely to not be right for you.

The group is still continuing with the last checkpoints.

Luis Basantes has taken over group leadership for the next 2 weeks.

May all your Christmas wishes come true and may those wishes be filled with medieval books!

I wish each and every one of you a blessed and Merry Christmas.  

From your faithful scribe, Linda

Good Day to you all!

Did you know that many of our Christmas traditions are Pagan based?  It is my belief that the Catholic church–in an effort to convert more people to Christianity–relented in denouncing the Pagan beliefs altogether and instead incorporated them into Christian celebrations. 

I invite you to visit About.com: Medieval History at http://historymedren.about.com/od/dailylifesociety/a/xmas_traditions.htm to learn about a few of these beliefs. 

Happy reading from your faithful Scribe,
Linda

• Working on filing our organization with the State and IRS/Fed
• Spoke with the American Cancer Society earlier today – details will be posted later
• Need to garner funds, fly to DC to meet with various legislative officials
• Working on improving the ACCESS Act and Genomics and Personalized Medicine Act of 2008 to realize viable improvements in molecular medicine and terminal patients’ access to experimental therapies.  We are also looking into proposing added provisions to stimulate the investigation of drug cocktails (combination-therapies, with multiple mechanisms of action working at the same time).

Well folks, I’ll have to say I haven’t been very active on the blog lately.  How unfortunate for my many many readers (2).  Here’s an update.

I’ve been working on my pre-license real estate course work, and its a bit more involved that I suspected, but definitely not quite a big deal.  Alot of memorization, which I despize but can endure.  I can’t believe how amazing learning can be when you make the decision that you want to learn.  In school, learning always came naturally to me, but in college, I started to really get annoyed by “having to learn”.  Its great when I know exactly what I want to know, and then I reach out and get that knowledge and put it to good use.

As the year comes to an end and you find yourself with a little extra free time around the family, it can be a great time to review and reflect on your accomplishments and mistakes of the past year and look forward to some new goal setting.  Take the time to sit quietly and get focused on creating new goals for you and your family in the new year. 

Happy holidays to all my wonderful reader(s).  Make 2010 the best year yet.  Remember to make progress every day, in every way you can.