steady she goes

When I first started reading about personal finance as a young pup (aka fresh out of college), one of the things that seemed to echo throughout was the importance of saving. Sure, investment gains are great, but a big key to growing wealth was to save.

Circumstances (low income, student loans, bad spending habits) prevented me from saving much in the first half of my post-college life, but since (ironically) I've moved back in with the parents, my net worth has skyrocketed. A lot of it has to do with gains in investments made possible with savings, but primarily, I attribute the rise to socking more money away.

So here's a quick update (from approx. the beginning of the year through June), again, because I'm in such a good mood due to the market.

• My net worth has risen about 87%.
• My brokerage account has jumped 131%, mostly due to my participation in my company's ESPP program.
• My 401(k) has gone up over 90%, thanks to my contributing 15% of my salary and my company's match.
• My Roth IRA went up 24% (it'd be almost 40% if you factor in July's goings-on).

Though the month is only halfway over, my net worth has already grown 8.6% since the end of June. Usually, the growth is due to savings but this month has been special. This month, the growth's been mainly due to Baidu.

Let's hope earnings are good come July 25. ;)

back (kinda)

It's been a long hiatus, with some soul-searching in between, but for now, I'm back. Here's an update (primarily because I'm feeling so good about how things have been turning out):

Not counting my mutual fund holdings, which totals a number of contributions since the start of the year, below is a table that shows my stocks and ETFs, with performance from when I purchased them this year.

Holding	Buy Price	Current Price	% Gain/Loss
YHOO	$ 28.02	$ 26.58	-5.14%
HOT	$ 72.00	$ 75.09	4.29%
EPP	$ 123.59	$ 154.38	24.91%
ADRA	$ 31.76	$ 36.42	14.67%
BIDU	$ 120.50	$ 212.84	76.63%

I'm really happy about the above, of course (especially Baidu's run-up). However, I'm happier about the fact that I've outperformed the major indices (for now):

Average Portfolio % Gain	23.07%
DJ Index	11.59%
S&P 500 Index	9.46%
NASDAQ	12.08%

I'll be taking subscriptions to my investment newsletters now. ;)

useful how-tos

JLP at AllFinancialMatters recently posted three great articles about calculating returns. He explains things much better than I would, so here are the links:

• How Total Returns Are Calculated
• How To Calculate the Expected Return on a Portfolio
• Calculating Personal Rate of Return

Definite must-reads!