The Economy is in The Pooper

Driving home after I picked up lunch late this morning, I was listening to right-wing talk radio, which I do often these days, and the host was bitching about how we need to use our own resources for oil since our avoidance of this is causing lots of commercial establishments to go out of business.

Here's the big news about 36 retail stores closing their doors...

"Information technology related companies that are closing stores include CompUSA going out of business, Sprint Nextel closing 125 locations, Movie Gallery closing 560 movie rental outlets, and bankrupt Sharper Image shutting down 90 to 180 stores.

Other retailers shutting down shops are: Ann Taylor, 117 stores; Eddie Bauer, 29 stores; Cache, 20 to 23 stores; Lane Bryant, 150 stores; Talbots, 100 stores; Gap, 85 stores; Foot Locker, 140 stores; Wickes going out of business; Levitz going out of business; Zales, 105 stores; Disney, 98 stores; Home Depot, 15 stores; Macy's, 9 stores; Pep Boys, 33 stores; Ethan Allen, 12 stores; Wilsons, 158 stores; Pacific Sunwear, 228 stores; Bombay Company, 384 stores; KB Toys, 356 stores; and Dillards, six stores." -- http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/06/24/retailers-close-hundreds-stores

Yikes!!!

Guess those rebate checks didn't work. Big surprise. I finally cashed mine. It's going to pay off what I spent in Israel. Sorry Bushie.

The economy is really f'd up right now. I'm sure you've figured that out for yourself. I don't know enough about economics to determine if this is a normal downswing in the cyclical pattern of the markets, or if we're kind of screwed ala 1929.

What I do know is that my Sharebuilder and Vanguard accounts are suffering. I know now is really a good time to get in on investing because the economy is in the dumps, but it's still hard to watch the little money I have turn into even less money!

I've been tracking my investment accounts separate from my liquid cash for about a year now. That includes all accounts my money lives where some risk of losing that money is involved, plus my CDs because I'm at some point going to move them into my Roth IRA or some other investment account.

The problem in really figuring out what the numbers mean is that I've added money to my investment account throughout the year, and while I could go back and calculate just how much I've added I really don't have the time to figure that out. What's more telling is my individual ETF and stock investments, and even more so my Vanguard funds where I pretty much know how much I've invested.

So a year ago on 6/21/2007 my total investment account was worth $21,014.57.
I liquidated about $5200 of a CD and moved that into my cash accounts, so that brought the account down to $22531.18 after it had increased to $27552.65 (not because it was performing well, but because i had been investing more aggresively than in the past and actually saving some money).

At the moment, my total investment account is worht $22,511, but I have some debt in my cash account because I spent like a mad woman on vacation. Luckily all should balance out next month when I'm paying just $550 for rent & storage in between moving and finding a new place to live.

So my investments are pretty much staying at the same base point. That's mostly because the CDs and prosper account and monthly deposits have kept that stable. I'm sure I've actually lost more money in those accounts than what it looks like at first glance.

This is maybe more telling...

My Roth IRA account that I started, like, two years ago, was at $4019.73 on 6/21/07
I did not add or subtract any money from that specific acccount since then.
That account, the Vanguard Retirement 2050 account, is at $3759.84 at the moment.
I'm pretty sure I invested $4000 in that account, so it's down, and it will likely keep going down as the economy flushes down the toliet.

Looking at my Sharebuilder funds, I can see that they're all doing shitty. I was updating my spreadsheet a few times a week previously, but since I was gone for a month I had not updated it at all. I also did not invest anything more in that month.

Here is the value of each fund on 5/19 versus 6/15...

COMV: $56.48 / $52.24
EWZ: $308.16 / $273.94
KOL: $149.1 / $164.4
MCD: $206.55 / $196.1
PBD: $298.85 / $384.11 * ($100 was invested automatically in this account when I was gone)
GLD: $518.94 / $507.80
WFMI: $89.08 / $78.86
EPI: $183.74 / $144.81

As you can see, only my Coal ETF is making me any money. But it's not enough to balance out all the other losses. I really don't have a great deal of money invested in Sharebuilder because I'm starting small, it's my Vanguard accounts that have the most of my money. And they are performing better, albeit not much better, than my individual ETF and stock picks.

I'm just going to leave the money in my sharebuilder account. I plan on investing slower, about $50 a month, in the clean energy ETF and the coal ETF, back and forth, because i figure either we're going to get the energy we need from coal or cleantech, or both, but in the long run they're probably pretty good bets. My Brazil and India funds are suffering, but if I ever get a raise I'd like to push more money into those while the economy is sucking. My coal ETF gives me enough exposure to Asia, though, as does my clean energy ETF. I'm a little confused as to Gold's performance right now, as it had been going up before when the looming recession/depression was its own media gold, but now the ETF is kind of sitting there. I'm curious what will happen to it 20 or 30 years down the road. It just sucks that it's going to be taxed as a collector's item. I really need to get some of the gold ETF in my Roth so I don't have to deal with that crappola.