So back in October of 2007 I posted The Great Hope.  Since then a lot has changed for me especially in my world and view of finances.  Back then I was struggling to pay things off and hanging onto promises made by employers that were never kept.  Today I am a Dave Ramsey zealot!  So what I am getting ready to talk about is a bit out of my new character.

In June of 2007 I had told my Father in Law (very good with money) that if I invested 10k right then and there I would get a 70% average return.  Well go back and read the old post, because I did a bit better than that.  Dave Ramsey teaches that we you should not invest in the open stock market unless your a pro or you have dealt with all your other investments as he calls out in his Financial Peace plan.  Mainly he encourages heavy investment in Growth Stock Mutual Funds which over time average around 11.8 to 12.4 percent.  With that said though I have done ok with my Virtual Portfolio and I would gladly have placed my own cash in the same setup.

So on to the nitty Gritty.  In june of 2007 I “invested” 10k.  Today the market value of that “portfolio” which includes changes I have made to trim poor performers  (less than 7 changes three years) is:  $$30,320.84 so in less than 3 years that is a gain of $20,320.84 or a total of 72.83%.  Not bad.

The key players that are active in my “portfolio” are:

Mastercard who made most of their headway early on and Netflix who is trending upward well right now.

The poor performers are:

As usual Novel.  I just have a soft spot for them and think they could surprise us all someday.  And here is the SHOCKER…VMWare.  What who how…  I am so confused by this one that I don’t know what to say.  Yes I bought when it was already up there but not at some crazy google like $400 per share.  No I paid 110.94 close to its peak in 2007.  So here I am holding a stock that plummeted and yet the company is the biggest name in virtualization.  I’m sure someone much smarter than I can tell me exactly how a company that is taking over a massive markets stock drops like a rock then stabilized but I don’t get it.

The truth in all this is if I did have $30,000 invested right now I would pull it all pay my Cap Gains and dump it all on debt and be moving on to Baby Step Three in the Dave Ramsey program.  But as usual it is interesting to see how my picks are doing and this is more fun that fantasy baseball for me and takes a lot less time.  So about two years from now I’ll have to post on this again and see how the Great Hope is doing.