Investments

My ongoing experiment involving investments is going well. It’s going especially well if I’m hoping to prove that I should not be allowed to make investments.

I’ve more than doubled down. I had invested a total of $1750 in the last few years. In the last month or so I’ve upped my total investment to $4000 – a nice, round number – and invested in various cleantech stocks in support of my belief that (a) the market had struck bottom and (b) an Obama presidency will be good for cleantech stocks.

Well, I think the first belief has been pretty thoroughly disproved. It will take some months or years before the second belief can be proved or disproved.

The thing to remember is that this is a long-term experiment. It’s likely – probable even – that the stock market will recover one day. If I can hold onto my investments until that day and beyond then this experiment will not then appear to be the exercise in fiscal irresponsibility that it currently resembles.

What’s unknown is when that day of recovery will be.

For now, though, my portfolio is worth about $2250. This means that I’ve lost $1750 of my $4000 investment.

$1030 of my losses is accounted for by stocks that I own from my original $1750 investment. They’d lost some money prior to the massive losses in the market from late September. They’ve lost more since then, and those stocks are now worth $720 or so. It’s more complicated then that, of course. There was a lot of buying and selling of stocks. There were a lot of small gains and a couple of massive losses before I ended up with that set of stocks from my original $1750 investment. Let’s pretend that it’s simple, though, and say that at this time I’ve lost $1030 of that.

The really brilliant bit comes next. In October I said to myself “Obama is going to be our next president, and he’ll be good for the market and good for the environment. Let’s invest accordingly.” And so I did. I infused an additional $2250 into my portfolio and bought stocks with decent PEG ratios that were on my cleantech radar. Many of them I bought at their historic lows for the last year or two

They all have new historic lows. I’ve lost about $720 of that $2250.

I’m hoping – someday – to sell at their historic highs from the last year or two. If that happens then I stand to turn my original $4000 into nearly $9000.

I’ll keep you informed of my success or failure as this story continues to unfold.