Your last year - retirement game

[ocelot_ark]

I was curious this weekend, not in how my funds were performing, but in how my shares have changed. Let's all go back to our 9/30/07 statements and compare them to our 9/30/08 and see how many more shares we have with the market going from an all time high to where it was.

Roth 401k -
Large Cap 1, from 42.4 shares to 77.8 (83.3% increase)
Large Cap 2, from 41.6 shares to 42.5 (2.2% increase)
Mid Cap, from 7.7 shares to 64.6 (738% increase)
Small Cap, from 3.4 shares to 3.7 (10.5% increase)
International, from 37.5 shares to 97.1 (158.6% increase)

Thrift Savings Plan (government employees) -
Government Securities, from 35.6 shares to 35.6 (0% increase)
Fixed income, from 37.6 shares to 37.6 (0% increase)
Large cap, from 79.5 shares to 178.2 (124.2% increase)
Small cap, from 65.5 shares to 146.7 (124.1% increase)
International, from 111.5 shares to 246.4 (121% increase)

TOTAL increase is 101.2% for all investments. I didn't change anything as far as contribution rates.

So, for me, despite market turmoil I'm pretty happy. I'm seeing pretty massive increases in volume. Of course, I've only been investing for 2.5 years, so I had relatively low starting points. So have you checked your share balances? Whose had the best luck?

[LonghornDub]

I think this would be interesting to see. Unfortunately, I personally have no funds at this point. Check back in 2 more years when I'm out of school.

[MavsX]

this is a pretty cool thread idea, so for that i will give you some rep.

i took the hassle of of downloading my e-statements from chuck schwab, now the difference is i have bought and sold a few things in the last year, before the market really went to sh*t the last few months.

roth-IRA
on one equity i had 160 shares in 07, today i still have 160 shares
on a different equity i had 570 shares in 07, today i have 1470 shares

so you can see i bought some stuff in the last year....

on a different equity i bought 50 shares this year of new stock.
and i bought 50 shares of new stuff this year..

now, i also have a work 401K, but i sold the stuff that i was originally put in because it was too conservative. And they put it in all one fund, so i went a little more risky, and diversified into 4 funds. Now as a whole i am down a bunch of money...performance wise..

but since i am almost the same age as you...(turn 27 on October)...i am not really worried about the performance of these accounts, because these won't mature until i'm like 60ish..so whatever..as mark cuban said in his blog last week "I'm going long"

[DirkFTW]

Originally Posted by MavsX

I'm going long

That's what she said.

[MavsX]

way to hijack the thead

[DirkFTW]

Hehe, sorry.

I've got diddly-squat because I was too lazy to sign up for my 401k stuff. But my dad's 401k is hosed, I think.

[Smiles]

Looking at the jump in the number of shares is a good way to see the bright side in what's happening right now. Nice idea.

I am not looking at the investments at all right now. Just keep putting $ in, and thanking God we weren't planning to use it in the next couple decades.