How is your portfolio doing?

I just took a look at my 1-year growth rate for my investment portfolio consisting mostly of Lord Abbet and American Fund Mutual funds.

Despite all the scandals surrounding MFs recently, my portfolio is up over 14% for the last year, which makes me happy.

So, how is yours doing?

invested in gold (up seriously since the 252 lows)
and silver and gold exploration companies (got GSR at 31 cents a share and still have it at 4.00+ a share)

however due to the continuing market implosion (they are all rigged and controlled by the Exchange Stabilzation Fund and the Presidential working groups on Markets), I am selling off all the paper and, like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, going into real metals (gold and silver bullion coins).

And note that B. Gates is one of the largest insider sales for the last 3 months running....makes one wonder what he knows that we do not?

You hit the timing right! I didn't see the floor last year and so missed out on this year's rally. I've been primarily cash for the last three years, so I didn't lose anything.

Recently, I've gone 75% short, but did it a little prematurely and am down about 6%. Holding my positions.

Interesting.

Welcome to DU. :hi:

we are having to liquidate most of it to pay living expenses. My husband has been unemployed for a long time, but we still have to pay his student loans, our health insurance etc.

The Dow is up +/- 16%, and I'm up about 1/2 that. Sure as hell beats losing money hand over fist like last year and the year before.

:shrug:

Since most companies don't offer pensions, best way for us to save for retirement was to get 25% match from our companies the 401 way.

Built that up pretty good, then beginning about 4 years ago, went downhill - lost about 60% of value from its highest amount. Lost all we "made on paper" from interest, value increases, but worst of all, lost some principal.

Now it's up about 20% from it's lowest point, but don't think we will recover all that was lost (unless we work 15-20 more years, which is what we didn't want to do - over 50 now!).

I should be pretty in pretty good shape.

over the last couploe of years. This year it's up about 15 or 20 percent but I still have a long way to go. A lot of my money in the market was in the tech sector. 'Nuff said I haven't checked my Mutual funds in a while. I'm almost afraid to. .

(I start a new job Monday and left my old job waaaay back in April) I never laid a finger on my savings. At times, it was hard to resist, but our portfolio is still intact and working for us...

..I don't do gamblingstock market.

If you have a high income, it might be doable for you to save enough money for your retirement in conservative investments.

With my income in the high four figures, I have no option but to be more aggressive. I could not physically save up enough out of my earnings to provide for my retirement, even with my very modest expenses. If I lose the gamble, I have lost nothing, because I couldn't have earned anywhere near enough in "safe" investments anyway. There is nothing "safe" about being guaranteed I won't have enough to meet my expenses.

In fall of 2000, I was able to buy a one year CD for a promotional rate of 7 percent.

By fall of 2001, a 7 year return was junk bonds.

When my CD comes up for renewal this year, the rate offered will be less than 2 percent -- in other words, there is no longer any point in tying up your money in a CD, you get the same or better rate in an orange savings account.

I respect your position, and I think it is correct. It is indeed gambling when we have a situation with so many unknowables -- we don't have effective referrees in our SEC, so we have so much cheating and stealing. I'm just not seeing where a low income person has another option. Most of the low income people I know fall back on lottery tickets, which I refuse to do; that is only a tiny bit above having absolutely no chance of gaining on your investment at all.

...by good fortune I'm invested in a company not involved in the mutual fund scandals.

I'm shocked at Janus -- a lot of people really believed in them. It seems you can't trust anyone.

My partner's AARP/Scudder fund is up quite a lot too but I think he's going to roll it over anyway as a protest. We can't possibly save enough money to make up for the theft of Medicare. All that we could save in a lifetime would be used up in the first 10 days of a serious illness.

as in the past six months, things have finally turned around and I've stopped losing money and I'm seeing gains. Luckily I started long enough ago that while I'm still down quite a bit from my all-time high, I'm ahead of the game at present.

including a gold stock I bought 2000 shares of for 99 CENTS each, currently trading over $4.00 a share. . .

Still holding my positions. I check their charts every day, takes only about 5 minutes to do, total.

:evilgrin:

"Nearly depleted following 18 months of unemployment", because that's where ours sits.

The best performer being western wireless (WWCA), up 141%. It still has some wiggle room I believe. It's all about connectivity, wires and landlines.

This week I put 20K in nano-techs for the long term. For the week I'm up 4% and expect to push this pile to over 100K within 2-3 years. If anyone wants the list, lemme know, with the usual disclaimers, cautions and non-liability.