The Possibility of the US Dollar Collapse
“This is part of a documentary that was recently on Dutch national television. Americans are living beyond their means and Asia is currently financing that, and the question remains when will Asians/Europeans stop financing the USA and the bubble bursts?
A $215 Refund
The workload surge in the last two months caused many slips in my life. Not only was I forced into a "sabbatical leave" from blogging, I didn't even notice that I have fallen behind on a monthly credit card payment.
The card at issue is a Discover Miles card, which I took advantage back in November for its 0% APR balance transfer offer (after a $75 balance transfer charge). While I was only a few days behind the due date, I was slapped with a $39 late payment penalty and a $176 interest charge.
I have to admit this incident is not typical of me; I have been meticulously managing all bills for many years and almost never missed a payment. Now it is very hard to swallow that my first miss in years set me back for $215.
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Monthly Update - March 2008 ($833,298, +$5,976)
The first month of net worth gain came rather late in 2008. Helped by continued strength in my day job and sideline business, our net worth edged up 0.7% in March. While we are $62,100 off where we started the year, we still increased our wealth by over $150,000 in the last 12 months.
Again, the market is testing the patience of every participant and spectator. If anything, I'm getting very good at dealing with market turbulence -- daily five-figure portfolio loss doesn't bother me much these days.
Now I don't think I'm a role model when it comes to investing -- some can easily discount me as market timer by keeping a big cash reserve, or being on the fence between stock picker and fund investor -- but I'm glad I'm true to myself and put my money where my mouth is. There are and will continue to be hits and misses, and it will surely take a long time to get better in the game. I won't mind people giving me more criticism or feedback along the way.
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Monthly Update - February 2008 ($827,321, -$25,287)
It seems that our distance to the seven-figure net worth milestone only increased in the first 60 days of the year. With another 25 grand retreat in February on the heels of the $42,790 net worth decline in January, our net worth took a 7.6% nosedive so far this year.
I can blame this to the stock market, or MSFT's unsolicited bid for Yahoo!. But either case, it just makes it much harder to achieve the net worth growth goal for the year.
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Portfolio Update - March 2008 (Down 1.37%)
I'm back to PFBlog! I know it has been a long hiatus since the last time I posted, but the last couple of months hasn't been easy. I was asked to take over a billion dollar P&L that had been poorly run and turn it around. While PFBlog is always an important source I find the meaning of life from, in this circumstance, I have to answer to the call to devote 100% of my bandwidth on this important career-lifting opportunity.
Anyway, after 6 weeks on the road traveling around the world in the last three months and countless hours of overtime poured into the work, I'm finally getting some work/life balance. This doesn't mean the hard work has been completed in my day job, but I'm satisfied that solid foundation has been built to put the business back to the right track.
So, I'm back to the blogging, and I'm starting by putting together some long-overdue monthly updates:
SUMMARY
Though the daily price change still suggested a lot of volatility in the market, the market almost ended the month where it started. My portfolio hasn't been that lucky: the heavy exposure on financial stocks still dragged the overall performance of my portfolio. It ended the month with a 1.37% haircut, versus the benchmark performance of minus 0.24%.
It is worth noting that March marks the fifth back-to-back month of portfolio decline, not something easy to swallow. During the five months' timeframe, my portfolio lost 8.36% while my benchmark index retreated 10.46%.
On a year-to-date basis, my portfolio bested benchmark by 1.70%. Still, not exactly something to brag about since I still lost dearly in the market.
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Portfolio Update - February (Down 2.78%)
SUMMARY
$54,134 is a big amount to lose in a single month, and it doesn't make life any easier when it comes immediately after another $60,000-down month.
Most of the damage is done by the untimely Microsoft bid for Yahoo! The bid, which was made public in the first day of February, immediately pulled MSFT back to the 20s, almost halved the value of my employee stock option account.
On my self-managed portfolio side, my heavy exposure to financial stocks penalized my performance -- it was a complete reversal of fortune compared to January, when these bank stocks lift the
TRANSACTIONS
Flying to safety is probably the best summary of my several trades for the month. I downsized my equity holdings by closing my positions in FSTMX and KBE.
With the reopening of Dodge & Cox's domestic equity stock, I started an initial position on DODGX before the famous fund gets closed again.
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Mortgage Mess Hits Home
The mortgage meltdown has started to put small and midsize home builders in a rather difficult position. Developers, through the aid of banks, are ablle to provide developments. But when the market turns cold, guess who’s stuck holding the bag.
As a result, builders’ problems are now threatening losses for many small and medium-size regional banks. And after being pushed out of the mortgage business by large national lenders, a lot of these banks flocked to construction lending as the housing market boomed.
Word from the Federal Reserve is it’s expected some small U.S. banks to fail due to the housing stress. It’s expected that many as 150 banks could fail over the next three years.
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