Win some, lose some

In the short term I'm a better financial advisor than political prognasticator.

On April 2 I fearlessly predicted that Hillary and Obama would come to a deal whereby she would agree to be his running mate. It still could happen, but my two weeks are up and it's looking less and less likely every day.

The same day I offered some investment advice: VGSIX (since up 8%); AAPL & LUK (up 20% each); KHD (+15%); FLVCX (+11%). During this time the market as a whole is up 6%.

In fact, of the 13 investments (7 funds and 6 stocks) in my retirement portfolio, all but one (Vanguard Health Care) have beat the market (on average my 12 winners have done twice as well as the S&P this month).

I don't own the following but recommended them as well: DODFX, PRASX, FAIRX, JSAVX- together they have more or less matched the market.

And the stocks I advocated (but don't own) were: WFR (-22), MTW (-3), BUCY (+26), FCX (+31), GFA (+6), & NVDA (0) since I added them to my watch list on 3/24 (S&P is up 3.3% since then). I've since taken WFR, MTW and NVDA off my list and added SNHY, LAYN & TRN.

Yes, late at night, when I'm too tired to read and other people are watching TV or playing video games I play stock games with myself. And Sudoku.

You can check out the performance of my virtual mutual fund here. I like the part that says, "For the six month period ending December 31, 2007 Runalong outperformed 95.9% of the other funds on our site."