Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Don't peek...

Anyone who is young and is invested in growth stocks should just ignore / not look at your statements, unless you actively manage your portfolio, in which case it's a little too late. I'm serious, put your head in a hole. Here, I'll give you a glimpse: my most aggressive portfolio is a Roth I have with Vanguard. It's a side retirement account I have just for my aggressive tendencies and because I'm young. For the past five years it's done wonderful, but then December hit, and it's only gotten worse. It went from a share price in late Oct of 34.39 to currently 29.80 (and that was on the 18th). So say I have 1000 shares of this. That means I've lost a little over $4500 in the past couple months ($34390 to $29800). This month has been terrible. High of 33.90 to today's low, which means most of what I lost has been in the last couple weeks. I'm young and a big believer in just put it there and ignore it (as long as it's doing well over the long haul). It's hard to do with this downturn, as that takes a huge chunk of any returns down. I can only hope that it's temporary, and all will be gained back by the end of the year. I'd say this lends credit to the big "R" word being talked about in the media every time you turn them on.
Don't feel sorry for me, as my main retirement account is much more diversified, and not seeing nearly the losses I talked about above. But again, if you're one of those that doesn't actively manage, then seriously, find something else to preoccupy you.
BTW anyone wanting to look at the fund mentioned above in more detail, look up ticker symbol VIGRX.
I suppose it's only worse now with the current news. Even the Fed must be scared as hell if they just made an emergency cut of 3/4 point. That's huge considering their previous strategy. I'm just glad a recession won't affect me that much. :)

1 comment:

Steve Miller said...

The up-side of this is that funds have liquid and fund managers aren't stupid. Those individuals properly investing now will benefit a lot in the future because those funds are buying stocks at a bargain right now. These bargain stocks will then increase in value, as will investor's portfolios.