As of the market close a few minutes ago, my investment portfolio is now above where it was on January 1, 2008 (diswcounting new investments).
It got trashed last fall and I waited too long to bail out, and at one point it was down 40%. I got back largely on the basis of two stocks that I held, ABB and GE. I sold some investments in mutual funds and put almost all of the money into these two stocks, which I could find no good reason not to. Both are strong, very profitable companies, and their stock was extremely cheap. I got ABB for around $10/share in late fall, and it is now at $14.22 and has been going up slowly but steadily.
I bought GE in February for $8/share, watched it fall below $7, then saw it steadily rise to $12.65 today. I’ve made over 50% in GE.
They are both poised to go higher as investment in electricity generating altenative fuels increases. The hard part will be diversifying my portfolio and selling these guys, as I think both of them are still ridiculously underpriced.
The bad part is that despite this great growth, I haven’t made a dime in over 15 months. Still, I think this is grounds for a Friday night celebration.
I think we’re still quite a bit under, my husband having inherited an insufficiently-diversified portfolio he felt inadequate to mess around with. Oh how I wish we’d just paid off the house.
Prior to this sucky year, I had been invested entirely in index funds, and decided to make the leap to equities a few months ago since I had a bunch of spare cash and a lot of stocks were really cheap. I bought many shares of GE, Wyeth, Coca-Cola, Home Depot and a small amount of Citigroup for near dirt.
ABB is a Swiss engineering company that does a whole bunch of things, but one thing they do is to reduce the loss of electrical power as it moves along transmission lines. Every company or municipality that produces electrical power - whether from coal, hydroelectric, nuclear, wind, or solar - can use this company’s products and services to make more money. They are an extremely well run company and their CEO is a GE guy.
I really feel that this comapny is poised to be the Bell Telephone/AT&T of the 21st century. They are poised to be the go-to players in the new energy market.