Recession? Depression? Either way, it sucks.

I know, I know, I know that investing is a long-term investment. Turning 25 next month, I've got plenty of time to recover. Still, watching the money I put in stocks over the last two years completely tank is a pain in the ass. I've lost about $5000 thus far out of maybe $23000 total invested. I can only imagine how painful this all must be to people who have even more money in investment accounts, esp if they're closer to retirement.

Me... well, I'm trying really, REALLY hard to try to view this as an opportunity. The key word is actually trying. It's hard. While my sharebuilder stocks are being hit the worst, my Vanguard funds aren't doing much better. According to my Vanguard account...



So I've invested about $13,200 in my Roth IRA and non-IRA Vanguard accounts. The value of these accounts is $8966. Yikes!

Vanguard Losses: about $4000. -22% in this year alone.

I'm not pulling my investments out, however I realize that while this recessdepression isn't going away anytime soon, my money just may be going, going, gone.

Sharebuilder is even scarier. Really scary.

How scary, you ask?

Well, what better to do at 2:30am than to make a chart of my total investments throughout the last year versus their current worth. I've been bad about tracking my Sharebuilder investments because i'd put a few hundred dollars into it per month as an experiment, hoping that it would make me some money, but not enough to completely destroy my life if the "experiment" failed. I'm still not sure if this experiment is a failure, since I plan to go long on all of these. I'm tempted to buy more of some of them now, or soon, but I'm also tempted to stay out of the stock market outside of my Roth IRA for the foreseeable future.

Of my total 9 investments in my Sharebuilder account, only one of them is currently "up." That'd be my McDonalds stock. I paid $181.22 for what's currently worth $190.

But that's the only good news in an otherwise bleak account. Overall, the entire account is down 32%. Not surprisingly trending with the stock market, it's gone from a 17% loss to a 32% loss in just two weeks. It was last "positive" in May, when it was up 2%. Since then, it's just been sad to watch my stocks suffer.

Looking at the last two weeks, the hardest hit stocks & ETFs were PBD, EPI, and EWZ. I guess my other stocks had tanked deep already, while these were really hit by the lastest turmoil after surviving the earlier mess.

*EPI (india ETF)
of $372, I was down $62 two weeks ago. As of today, I'm down $130, or 35% of that investment.

*PBD (cleantech index)
of $356, I was down $70 two weeks ago and I'm down $167, or 47% of my initial investment today.

*EWZ (brazil ETF)
of $245, I was down $62 two weeks ago, and I'm now down $126, or 51% of my total investment.

SHAREBUILDER OVERALL
PERFORMANCE 2008
Total Investment: $2158
Current Value: $1465
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Current Loss: -$694

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March -2.2%
April -2.4%
May 1.2%
June -2.1%
July -5.8%
August -9%
Sept -21.6%
Oct -32%
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