Testing Simple Investment Ideas in 2009

2008 was certainly a bad year for almost all investors. 2009 may be bad also, or not. However, if you sit out then you will miss the recovery, when and if it ever happens.

I thought it would be fun to track some investment ideas in 2009. Tools such as the portfolio at Google finance make this easy to do. For all of our portfolios we will hypothetically invest $10,000 and charge ourselves a discount brokers fee of $10 per transaction. We will also start with the closing prices as of December 31, 2008. Here are the initial set ups:

1. A portfolio of 10 stocks from the December 12 issue of Fortune Magazine. Fortune picked 10 stocks to own in 2009. We will buy $990 worth of each and use up our mythical $10,000 with the brokerage fee. Fortune did make these picks earlier in December and there has been some price movement since then.

Here is our starting value:

Name	Symbol	Last price	Shares	Mkt value
Altria Group, Inc.	MO	15.06	65.74	990
Annaly Capital Management, Inc.	NLY	15.87	62.38	990
Dell Inc.	DELL	10.24	96.68	990
Devon Energy Corporation	DVN	65.71	15.07	990
Diamond Offshore Drilling, Inc.	DO	58.94	16.8	990
Fluor Corporation (NEW)	FLR	44.87	22.06	990
Johnson & Johnson	JNJ	59.83	16.55	990
Medco Health Solutions Inc.	MHS	41.91	23.62	990
Pfizer Inc.	PFE	17.71	55.9	990
Potash Corp./Saskatchewan (USA)	POT	73.22	13.52	990
Valuation				9900

2. A "low risk" portfolio suggested by Daniel R. Solin in his book The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read. The portfolio consists of a total stock market index fund, a total international index fund, and an bond index fund, weighted 28%, 12% and 60%. We will use index funds from Charles Schwab.

Name Symbol Last price Shares Mkt value Schwab Total Stock Market Index In SWTIX 15.37 181.52 2790 Schwab International Index SWINX 13.16 90.43 1190 Schwab Total Bond Market SWLBX 8.93 670.77 5990 Valuation 9970

3. A "medium risk" porfolio also suggested by Daniel R. Solin in his book The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read. This is similar to the low risk portfolio except it is weighted 42%, 18% and 40%. For fun, we will use Vanguard Funds rather than Schwab.

			Name Symbol Last price Shares Mkt value Vanguard Total Bond Market Index VBMFX 10.21 390.79 3990 Vanguard Total Intl Stock Index VGTSX 10.68 167.6 1790 Vanguard Total Stock Mkt Idx VTSMX 21.44 195.43 4190 Valuation 9970

4. Rebalance. We will start with 50% cash and 50% an S and P 500 exchange traded fund. Each month we will rebalance to the 50-50 allocation, spending $10 to make the trade.

Name	Symbol	Last price	Shares	Mkt value
iShares S&P 500 Index (ETF)	IVV	90.31	55.31	4995
Cash		4995		4995
Portfolio				9990

I plan to post on the first Wednesday of each month the standings of each portfolio. I may add one or more in January, but the idea is to track these ideas going forward.

Do you have any you want to add?

Let the games begin.