I get no love from my Equity Portfolio

The BBQ Pit
1

Boy, I can remember the good times. It was just three years ago that I thought it would last forever. I’d never been happier. I remember how you used to frolic gaily about the efficient frontier. You and I need not have concerned ourselves with such mundane trivialities as asset allocation and diversification. Our love was special and it would last forever.

They said it would never work between me and fickle you with your overexposure in technology, but I loved your pe multiples sitting up there so firm and oh so very high.

And, I remember when things got bad back in March of 2000. Everybody else told me to cut and run, but did I listen? No. I stuck. I stood by you!

For three long years I have been there for you, through your crashes, your depressions, your unreasonable swings. When the charges of accounting fraud, I was still there. I refused to beleive I refused to leave.

And when I found it was true… I was crushed.
You hurt me bad Equity Portfolio. You hurt me real bad.

It’s been long and it’s been hard, and you’ve betrayed me in ways I never could have imagined.

And still I’ve stood by you. I’ve never lost the faith.

Until now.

Spring is almost over. I see others gallavanting gayly and taking random walks with their portfolios. People are happy again. People have moved.

But you! You Equity Portfolio just sit there. It’s almost as if you’ve finished depreciating and started decomposing.

I want to live! I want to run in the Sun! I’m still young, you know?

I’ve wanted so badly for you to come with me, but I see that is not to be.

Goodbye Equity Portfolio I am leaving you. By the time you read this the orders will already be placed, at the market, no limit.

I’m gone.

God knows I’ve tried my best. The fact is that there is another.

I have found a new equity portfolio of good solid diversified old economy companies with low and saggy PEs and high dividend ratios.

She’s not firm and tight and exciting like you. But let’s face facts: You’re not that gal either. The fast living has caught up to you. You’re not the gal you once were, and it’s been a long time since I could look at you and be excited.

The thing is that I know my new gal will be there for me. The times we had together were fun, Equity Portfolio, but I’m moving on. I’m grown. Those days are behind.

Good luck with your new economy.

Goodbye.

2

Happens to the best of us. Not that I’m necessarily a member of the best, but I’m sure it happens to them to. The best, that is.

I knew that the dot coms were on a bubble, and had taken great pains to stay away.

I forsaw banking problems in Oceana, and cut loose my overseas technology investments.

I did everything right, or so I thought, but the investment world took me for a death roll at the bottom of the swamp just the same. Half of everything I had ever saved vanished, while I watched like a desperate gambler praying to the slot-gods. The rest I cashed out and put into some overpriced property.

I was supposed to be comfortable. I was supposed to be happy. Now I pray to die before I retire.

3

Don’t worry. She’ll come back. They always do.

4

I’m glad I got my cash out when I did. A 2% return in my savings accounts beats some of the horrors that happened to my old funds.

5

Just when she needs you the most, at her most desperate hour, you dump her. You cad.

Don’t you know this is America, the land of redemption? After a couple of years of rehab, after she dumps the bad companions, she will rise like an under valued stock in a takeover battle. Then my friend, you’ll regret your shoddy treatment of her and she will laugh at you from great heights.

6

If only you’d invested in phone sex.

7

If you wan tit to rain, wash your car.
If you want a stock to climb, place a sell order.

8

For the entire length of the three years of hell you mention, my entire 401K was sitting in a money market fund because of my laziness WRT putting it into “something better”. That fund was the only fund in my plan that showed a profit over those three years.

Sometimes, procrastination pays off.

-lv

9

My stock wasn’t a hot, sexy Swede named Sven.

My stock was a sturdy, reliable German named Fred.

I turned about two thousand dollars into about six before my mother sold it. She put the money into real estate. I no longer have a car payment because the return on the house we bought covers that, and the car note’ll be paid off a year early.

:smiley: :stuck_out_tongue:

Robin

10

I have a bit of money invested with a firm I’ll call Storgan Manley. The IRA is down about 50%. The biotech stock is no longer being traded (last quote $0.06/share). And last week I get a statement showing that the piddly little $1000 I invested in a mutual fund highly recommended by their stockbroker is down about half, AND they have instituted a $30/yr “management fee”. Bad timing, you bastards. As soon as I get my quarterly statements, I’m moving all my money elsewhere. There’s your fucking thirty bucks, assholes.

Oh yeah, my “financial advisor” split for Nashville to pursue a career in the music business.

11

Hah. At least you have the option of selling your funds and buying new ones. I have just shy of seven thousand dollars (Canadian) in an RRSP that I started years ago when I was an undergrad. The funds involved have been losing money for years, but I can’t move them to a better fund because I’m living in the States and you have to be an Canadian resident to invest in an RRSP fund. And if I cash them out now I’ll just get kicked in the teeth in income tax. So I just get to sit and watch the money bleed away from statement to statement until I can get a job in Canada, which won’t be for at least another year, all the while cursing my stupidity of several years ago. Wealthy barber my ass.

12

Want to make money? Invest in the DCU Contra Fund. It buys when I sell and sells when I buy. It’s a guaranteed winner.

13

Yep, I know the feeling. I was a technophile, and I paid the price (except for Ebay).

Now, I stick to the big four: booze, tobacco, oil and drugs. The classics will never let you down.

14

Your portfolio was giving you no love? Count yourself lucky. Mine was sodomizing me with a broken broom handle. The splintery end.

15

Dewey: izzat an ETF?

Scylla: Think! Do you really want to massage her feet at the end of the day, every day, for as long as you keep her around? Wouldn’t it be better to find another Firm, Sweet Young Thing?

Seriously, I’ve found that diversification actually works. In my 401k, I have a piece devoted to the company stock, which is a big cap company. Then I put a much larger piece into the Russell 2000, an index of small companies, thereby giving me diversification in the stock universe. Then I keep a portion in bonds, and the remainder in a high yielding fund that mostly invests in GICs (Guaranteed Investment Contracts). I’ve found that this gives me reasonable stability when the stock market goes down and a nice return when the stock market is going up. Most importantly, it keeps me from switching around like mad and making stupid mistakes.

16

Really, I feel obligated to taunt you now!

  1. why is this in the pit! I could have missed it!

  2. since this is the pit… HAHAHAAH, I laugh at you and your ex-portfolio! Remember, its BUY LOW, SELL HIGH! HAHAHAHAH

  3. how do you feel about the fact that your money all went to a few lucky bastards that sold to you :wink: Not me of course, 'cause I wasn’t even playing!

  4. Next time, invest in good companies when people don’t even want to talk about the stock market, such as last October…

  5. Me+MyPortfolio 4ever! :wink: Yeah, give it to me baby!! Making money is so easy!

17

Stop your bellyaching. I bought 2,000 worth of Cisco at 35.00 a share and $ 4,000. worth at 25.00 a share. Want to see what’s it’s worth today?

18

Oh, man…you want investment advice? Do the exact opposite of whatever my dad says to do. My dad is a…broker.

The one time he told me to sell, I held (some Qualcomm I bought in 1994)…hoo boy, was that ever a good ride!

The one time he told me to buy, I did (EuroTech, bought by me at $5, now trading for less than 20 cents). Ouch!!

No love? I got the equivalent of a nasty divorce without the benefit of the pre-divorce sex!

19

I’ve been very pleasantly suprised at how little I ended up losing whilst the market was down. Maybe only $35,000 at worst, which is…well, it’s a small percentage. And I’m already back up now to $5,000 ahead of where I was before 9/11. And I’m certainly no “Witch of Wall Street” either… :confused:

20

Yeah, I think you can get as good or better results then the so-called fucking (I can say that here, right?) analysts with a dart board. As an example, while my porfolio has done about 16% since last October, my wife picked up stock at random in a virtual portfolio with the sole criteria being that they are “interesting” and she is up 57%. Argh, damn it!

Of course, it all depends on when you actually buy and when you sell if you are doing it at random… Oh well, at least the company I have are good ones.