One Year At Scottrade

One year ago we bought Timberland (TBL) and the results were unfortunate. If we measure from that day, we achieved 5.27% increase in our total portfolio. Not stellar, but not terrible for our "shakedown cruise". I believe most people of at least average intelligence can do better with stocks than mutual funds. As we progress, I expect we will do that.

The one year mark is not necessarily a true measure for a couple reasons.

1) We deposited only 9.32% of the total funds we would deposit on April 6,2006.

2) We didn't deposit the other 90.68% of our funds until August 22, 2006.

How would we account for this lack of opportunity to invest funds? We could have possibly included the interest earned by the other funds from April 6 to August 22. I prefer to multiply each percentage by the amount of time the funds were available. I don't know if this is the way "they" do it. I am learning and looking for a reasonable method of calculation.

9.32% x 365 days = 34.02 days

90.68% x (7 months & 15 days or 31 days + 30 + 31 +30 + 31 +31 +28 + 15 =) 227 days = 205.84 days

34.02 + 205.84 = 239.86 which rounds up to 240 (days with the ability to invest)

365 days divided by 240 days equals 1.52

1.52 x 5.27 = 8.01

8.01% is closer to the respectable increase for which we are hoping.

Without Timberland we could have been in double digits, just by investing in a stock that broke even. The Google Finance page on TBL is below. In our back office at Scottrade, when I search TBL, they have its S&P ranking listed as 1 star (strong sell). I'm not exactly sure of all the ins and outs, but my guess is that that is not a good sign.
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=tbl

After the remainder of the money was deposited here are the first two posts. The very first post on this blog is quickly available by clicking on the title of today's post.

http://businessownerinvestment.blogspot.com/2006/09/up-day-did-you-think-i-forgot.html

http://businessownerinvestment.blogspot.com/2006/09/we-beat-them-again.html
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Business Owner Investment

We Finally Took The Hit With TBL

We started this experiment April 6, 2006 and now we have faced the music with Timberland (TBL), the first stock we bought. We sold it for a loss of 24.55% less than half and hour ago and it's currently trading below the price we got for it.

Click on the title of today's post for the Google Finance TBL page or click below for Bloomberg's.

Bloomberg TBL page

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Business Owner Investment

Timberland Looks Like A Great Place To Work

Timberland (TBL) gives employees the opportunity to volunteer and get paid for it. If you check out their benefits page, you might want to apply to work there. Check it out by clicking on the title of today's post.

We bought Timberland in April and the stock took a dive within weeks as did the rest of the market, except we're still down almost 12% in this stock. We're grateful to be there compared to where the stock was, and I'm guessing that we have a 75% chance of selling it for a loss in a couple months. We'll see...

I want to urge those who haven't joined the music technology revolution to buy a Zune. I'm enjoying the heck out of it. The Blasters sound great on my computer right now [!] and so does Mozart, Talking Heads, The Jam and The Clash and Lone Justice and Oingo Boingo and Beethoven and Johnny Cash and Social Distortion, Wall of Voodoo, Norah Jones, X, Roger Miller, various composers, Los Lobos, George Winston, Jon Anderson...it's truly fun to keep saying, "Oh, yeah. I almost forgot about them!' And it only crashes as often as other Microsoft stuff.





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Business Owner Investment