Thursday, April 1, 2010

LATE MARKET RALLY, JOBS REPORT

The rally in the market, late in the day, boosted the balances in my regular investment account and my IRA. I had returned to positive territory in my regular investment account about a month ago, recovering all I'd lost in the "great recession" and then some. My IRA account has always shown a positive return, although lately I'm only showing a 16% return overall (not counting dividends). Not a bad return on investment, but it had run as high as 24% late last year. Total returns were affected by new investments added at higher prices, since the market has recovered.

The jobs report comes out on Friday and I'm sure we'll see how that affects the market early next week. I'm slowing down on new investments in my regular portfolio until around June or July. I'll stick with reinvesting dividends in some of my core holdings and collecting the rest in cash paid to my money market account. I've noticed that the market tends to slump in the summer when people are busy with vacations and summertime activities. I plan to take advantage of any slowdown to add to some of my core investments, like Clorox and Campbell Soup, as well as buying additional shares in some of the energy limited partnerships I currently hold. My investments in the limited partnerships have done quite well price wise and pay fantastic tax advantaged dividends. Wish I'd bought more when the prices were lower.

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