Rule One Investing Blog

One of the major components of Phil Town’s book Payback Time is telling you to ditch your Mutual Funds. He provides a few great points about how these funds make money regardless of if you make money and that they HAVE to make money even in a decreasing stock market. All valid points in my mind and someone with a stronger investing background may be able to argue his points. However, this got me thinking that I need to analyze my Mutual fund performance….

Note: The numbers below are not the actual numbers but rather a percentage which shows the performance of the mutual funds. This is to protect myself (from what I’m not exactly sure).

The market value as of yesterday (Feb 1st, 2011) the value was $50,217. The book value of the mutual fund is $50,000. This works out to an interest rate of 0.4% over the past 4-5 years. How horrible is that? I realize that it’s been a down market and we are regaining, however, if I could have invested in GIC and had a much higher value.

These are the risks that I accept when investing in a mutual fund and I realize that. However, I wonder what I would have as an interest rate had I committed to rule 1 trading (investing). Luckily, I’m still young and can afford this sort of learning experience.

This provides the ‘kick-in-the-ass’ that I need to get in gear and to find some Rule 1 stocks to start investing and stockpiling. Stay tuned for my analysis and stock-picking ways.