Tuesday 12 June 2007

US Stock Portfolio Update

After reaching a high of over 20% annulualised return on investment (XIRR) my "Little Book" portfolio of US stocks suddenly plunged to have an XIRR of around just 7% last Friday. Although the stock market had been in decline for a few days, the magnitude of this plunge seemed too large compared to the wider market and NASDAQ index, so I looked at each stock in my portfolio this morning. It turns out that one of my sotcks, EPIQ, had done a 3:2 stock split last week, which my google spreadsheet doesn't take into account. I'll have to have a look at my formulae and work out how best to adjust for stock splits without causing problems. I may have to create an new column to hold the original number of stocks purchased as well as the current holding. Anyhow, in the meantime just take the performance figures quoted in the side bar with a grain of salt ;)


The other concern was why the price of my newest purchase, AVCI, had suddenly dropped the day after I bought it ("just my luck" I thought) - it turns out that there was a special $2.00 dividend, and the stock went ex-dividend the day after I'd bought my holding! This will be a pain as I'll have to pay income tax on this unexpectedly large dividend, but it's much better than a loss.


Enough Wealth

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