Any Investors out there?

[ZacFields]

I'm pretty sure there was a handful of investors here on IAF so I figured I would start this topic calling out to you, and hopefully giving some information to people who aren't investing but would like to be.

I guess my biggest question is: How are your investments doing in these less-than-perfect market conditions?

I just started investing again in late March. I had been waiting for the market to sink down a little more so I could buy my stocks at premium prices. I've gotta say: So far, so good. I definitely made the right choice by coming back.

Here is a graph of my performance compared to an S&P 500 Index Fund. For those who are unfamiliar, the S&P 500 Index fund seems to be the fund of choice for most people who are interested in Mutual/Index funds. It spans about 500 stocks and is considered a pretty good indicator for how well the stock market is doing overall.

My line is the green line. The S&P is the blue.

[attachment=0:2m1kf3dz]stockgraph.png[/attachment:2m1kf3dz]

As you can see, I've had some pretty good luck this go-round. This particular graph is deceiving as it calculates gains on a time-basis. My stock overalll is up 19.76% in the last month (as of the close of the day, April 24th. Does not include another 3.67% gain in after-hours trading).

Seems like the market has been doing a little better in the last rolling month than it has in the last few months overall. Hopefully some of the rest of you are starting to see a little bit of gain. I know if you've been in index/mutual funds you've probably lost some money. My unrealistic gains are due to the fact that I got back into the markets a month ago and I chose a very small selection of stock. So I'm not very diversified at the moment :)

[ZacFields]

Oh, also for those who were not around to witness my "glory days" on the market when I was young and stupid and investing in penny stocks. I still have the screenshot from the first day one of my penny stocks blew up.

I don't invest in them anymore. Too risky now that I'm older and have a mortgage. I'm into small and mid-cap stocks. Occasionally I'll also take the consistent large cap if they're looking like good long-term stocks.

You will see in the screenshot the reason why I loved penny stocks, and also the reason why I'm no longer investing in them. I had 5 stocks at the time (this was 2004 I believe) and two of them had very good gains (one wasn't really a penny stock though) and the other three had decent sized losses.

[slobalt]

the begining of the year was brutal for me. I sold alot of my portfolio off in the first couple months. I thought it was safe and started buying back only to get hit again. My chart is not as pretty as yours but heres my weekly gains and losses. I'm finally up again and sold some just to cover some of my losses from the begining of the year. I've had one volatile year so far.

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa197/lightninbalt/portfolio.jpg

Lately I've deicated a larger portion of my portfolio to high yielding div. stocks, the financials have been improving lately too with all this talk of govt. help and possible bail out. I've been holding back infusing more money into the stock portfolio. I'm gonna watch it a little more and use what I already have to fund any new purchases.

[ZacFields]

It actually looks like you're doing pretty good now Slobalt. My 401k is down like 12% on the year I think. That's the problem with putting your money in all small-cap funds. I'm not too worried though because I gained 24% last year. So if 12% loss is the worst it's going to get, then I should be good. I'm kinda starting to like those time-weighted graphs because they put everything in perspective a little better than just saying "my stock is up X percent." Because you could have bought your stock really low, and then it went up 25% within the first 6 months (which is good) but if it remained up 25% for 3 or 4 years, that's not very good because you're not continually making gains on your money.

Right now I think the best types of stocks to be in are:

Alternative energy: People have been dumping money in to alternative energy heavily for the last 4 or 5 years. Solar Power IPO's tend to do very well. A little over a year ago I was reading through a list of upcoming IPO's and I found "First Solar" was coming out. I wanted to buy some stock in it, but we had just moved into our condo and I didn't have any money to invest at the time. Needless to say, I nearly shed tears when I checked the stock about 3 months ago: http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?s ... R&time=3yr (http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=FSLR&time=3yr)

Companies that make lots of money on exports: With the dollar being so low, these types of companies are said to be "recession-proof." Any company that makes a high ratio of its sales through exports should be benefiting greatly right about now.

IPO's are starting to flare up again: I woke up at 9:00am on the day the Visa IPO came out to be one of the first people in line to buy Visa stock. Their smaller competitor, Mastercard, has been lingering in the $150-$250 per share range for quite some time. Visa is the largest and most profitable credit card company in the world, and their stock was coming out at a measly $44 per share. I purchased the stock on their first day at $59, and today (one month later) it's trading at about $75 per share. There have been a couple other IPO's that have come out since then that have been doing better. Visa may very well have jump-started the IPO market again.

For anyone thinking about starting investing soon (if you're looking to pick stocks rather than funds), go with those suggestions as starting points.

[slobalt]

Speaking of Alternative energies, I purchased FSLR back in Sep for 118, after it took a nose dive in January I had to sell it. I should have kept what profit I had made so I would still have a couple of shares, instead I panicked and sold them all. Broke one of my own rules there.

Visa has been a very good buy. Its was part of the those finance stocks I recently bought. I'm hoping Visa will eventually give out a dividend.

My main stratagy is to buy stocks that pay me a dividend, though there have been a few exceptions, probably why I like the financial sector right now. I think they're close to bottom.

I'll definatly check up on some of those export companies see if any catch my eye.

[ZacFields]

You bought Visa stock too Slobalt? Definitely a smart move. I remember thinking it was such a no-brainer when you've got a smaller company (Mastercard) trading for over $200 per share and still rising. I expect Visa to follow suit and be in that range within two years barring any major setbacks.

[Fire Hawk]

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.
-------------------------------------

With Enron,
you would have had
$16.50
left of the original $1,000.00.

---------------------------------------

With WorldCom,
you would have had less than
$5.00 left.

---------------------------------------

But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of Beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have had $214.00.

Based on the above, current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

[ZacFields]

I've gotten that email forward too Micah. It should include the hundreds of thousands of people who have made millions on the markets. Or even guys like me and Slobalt who have managed a 5%+ increase during a "recession."

Rule number one about buying stocks: Do your homework... really research the companies you're about to buy into, and you will gain a lot more than you lose. I've never heard of a good investor that hasn't made himself some good money overall.

On a side note, my Visa stock hit about a 25% gain (overall) on Friday. Slobalt and I are very happy. 25% in approximately one month of an investment is pretty insane :)

That $1,000 investment (ironically how much I put into that stock) is now worth $1.250 one month later.