Portfolio Project

Christopher Seifert’s Portfolio Project

Focusing on diversification I invested in a broad range from banks to bonds. Given that all markets are volatile now and most investments will be risky, I decided to be aggressive with my picks. The following is an overview

of my investment choices and why I picked them, along with graphical data to illustrate my buying and selling dates. After making my choices I decided to distribute my $100k evenly $10k for each group, and made each investment on February 23. The two major market common stocks I invested in were Bank of America and Citigroup. I invested in these companies because, simply, the US government invested in them so I felt they were a good buy.

My over the counter common stock is Oracle, because they are a very reputable company that is known world wide. The American Depository Receipt investment is British Petroleum; which I picked because gas prices are only going to rise in the future.

My preferred stock is Pacific Gas and Electric Company; I picked PG&E because they have a very large market share and have been granted monopoly rights in many areas on the west coast. The last dividend they offered was $.42 per share. With only 285 shares my total dividend was only $119.70, on April 14.

The closed-end fund I chose was Blue Chip Value Fund, INC (above), because they deal with stocks that have a high value, thus this fund has a lower risk in my opinion. For my first mutual fund I picked BlackRock Focus Growth A, which is a large cap fund because I trust the folks at yahoo and this was at the top of their list. My second choice was Nicholas Liberty which is a Mid-Cap Growth mutual fund that was also at the top of yahoo’s list.

For bonds I picked JPMorgan CA Tax Free Bond Instl because I wanted to invest in California and at the same time have some tax relief. TCW Emerging Markets Income I Is my final choice for mutual funds, this is meant to be my risky pick because emerging markets are usually where the largest profits can be found.

Below is a balance sheet to go along with all the graphs above.

BAC C ORCL BP plc (ADR) PCGA XBLUX MDFOX NLBTX JPICX TGEIX

Bought 2557 shares 4672 shares 630 shares 258 shares 285 shares 4115 shares 6849 shares 1233 shares 984 shares 1700 shares

23-Feb09 $3.91/sha re $2.14/sha re $15.86/sh are $38.65/sh are $35/share $2.43/sha re $1.46/sha re $8.11/sha re $10.16/sh are $5.88/sha re

Sold $10,000

BAC

$10,000

C

$10,000 $10,000

ORCL BP plc (ADR)

$10,000

PCGA

$10,000

PCGA

$10,000 $10,000 $10,000 $10,000

Total $100,000

6-May-09 $12.69/sh are $3.86/sha re $19.06/sh are $46.13/sh are $25.78/sh are

$32,448.3 3 $18,033.9 2 $12,007.8 0 $11,901.5 4 $6,651.24

Dividend $119.70 $3.03/sha $12,468.4 XBLUX re 5 $1.72/sha $11,780.2 MDFOX re 8 $8.04/sha NLBTX re $9,913.32 $10.16/sh JPICX are $10,000 $6.43/sha TGEIX re $10,931 Broker Fee $12/ trade ($120) $136,13 Total 5.58

Below is data that maps out my entire portfolio on the date of purchase and the next page displays the change and what my portfolio looks like on the day I sold my investments

As we can see I made a total profit of $36,135.58 mostly due to Bank of America and Citigroup. I lost the most money on my preferred stock which is typically your most conservative money maker. On my mutual funds I made a much smaller profit than was predicted by the so called “experts” at yahoo; however I did make a profit overall with my mutual funds. The only place I could have saved more money would have been to make more trades thus incurring a smaller broker fee. All in all my portfolio did quite well; I know I could use an extra $36k every couple of months.