MMBPM Stock Portfolio Check-In

I’m not the type of person to obsessively check stock quotes throughout the day, but I think I’d like to start documenting my stock performance periodically. I last did this two months ago for my MyMoneyBlog Play Money portfolio (tracked at OpenPortfolios), in my post MMBPM beats the S&P 500! (*by pure luck). Since then, I haven’t made any trades, although I have been doing more and more reading into ETFs. I’m really considering selling all my stocks and rebuilding my portfolio with ETFs instead, but I don’t think I’m ready yet. Anyways, here’s my current snapshot:

Performance Since Inception                 Current Holdings

Year-To-Date Performance as of 8/14/05:
2005 return of 3.95%
outperform S&P by 2.17%
outperform Nasdaq-100 by 5.73%
Fund Value: $5,507.83

I always buy my stocks in $500 increments, so you can see by the pie chart which ones have done well and which haven’t. My worst performer is Pfizer (PFE), which is down 35%. A good recent performer is Rinker Group Ltd (RIN), an global (Australian-based) building materials company. This is one of those companies you just hear about and you think it’s a good story and you buy it. Hey, I never said I was Warren Buffett.

But how’s this for a business model:
1) Buy land that nobody wants in the middle of nowhere for cheap.
2) Mine rocks out of it and sell as concrete, asphalt, and even those stones people buy to put in their front yards to look good.
3) Do this for 20 years at a nice profit, until your middle of nowhere land is all of sudden near suburbia.
4) Get paid to let the builders dump their excess dirt and rubble back in your big hole
5) Now that your hole is filled, cover it up and make it look nice.
6) Sell your land at an enormous profit, as it is now prime real estate and is going to be some mega-mall or condo development.

Pretty good, eh? I sure thought so. Anyways, I need to stop playing around and at least learn more about short-selling, options, calls, etc.