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.Good Morning Friends,
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today is Wednesday December 30, 2009
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.See what I mean? About the stock market, that is. So, there I was all pumped up yesterday and thinking the market was in decent shape and that it was going to continue its upward momentum. And, then what happens? Well, there is sort of a sell-off world-wide, more or less. Actually, the losses in my portfolio were fairly minimal yesterday, with some of my Canadian equity funds actually showing gains. But, the damage seems to be occurring in the commodities sector, you know, things like oil and gold. And, these are the things that propelled the Canadian market higher this year. Well, now they are in decline as you can see. I just finished reading a Bloomberg article detailing how some of the big U.S. equity funds never recovered from the tech meltdown at the beginning of the century. Like some are down as much as 67% or so. Now, that is brutal indeed. But, it is also a stark lesson for all of us I think. The market is a dangerous game based on greed and fear. That is what it is pure and simple. And, that is why I run a defensive portfolio - because I can sense the dangers that lurk in that place known as the market. I am currently up just over 13% for the year and I am trying to hold on to those gains as you might expect. Anyhow, I will be doing a post over on the main part of my blog, mostly likely tomorrow night showing my year end and quarterly returns for my portfolio.
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Work was kind of slow yesterday, but not a write off though. I made a bit of dough and I got to test out my GPS a little more. I used it most of the day actually even though I really did not have to of course. I just wanted to get the feel of the thing that is all. There were a couple of instances though where it helped me out. I thought I knew what I was doing in Chilliwack, for example, but the GPS located an address and I didn't really realize that that is where it was. I even drove by the street that the machine told me to turn right on because I thought it was making a mistake. So, I drove back and discovered that it knew what it was doing all along. The thing about the machine though is that it keeps you from trying to locate addresses on buildings and that kind of thing. It makes you lazy in a way. So, that is something that I am going to have to get used to. The machine will have to do all of the work knowing what the addresses are. I am going to have to give up some power to the machine and rely on its ability to know what the addresses are. So, hopefully, with this new realization that the machine knows best I will be the better for it. Like, for example, I was in downtown Vancouver at the end of the day and I let the machine guide me from an area to the south of the core to an area that I was not totally sure of right downtown. I wanted to see if the machine could take me to an address that was fairly foreign to me. And, it did it without a hitch, detailing and leading me by the hand in downtown rush hour traffic. So, that will be a plus for those streets that I am not totally confident with. And, there are lots of these kinds of streets let me assure you.
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So, just a couple more days at work and then we can wrap things up for another year. That means telling you about my portfolio performance as I stated above and cleaning up the other areas of my life as well. I suppose the big thrill for me right now is the opening of the track on the weekend, starting on New Year's Day on Friday. So, you all know what to do if you are popping into town. Talk to you all later.
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