A better way to track fund performance

I am sick of watching the value of my portfolio go down and down. It's depressing. I know I know, people like www.mymoneyblog.com and www.simpledollar.com and just about every other money dude would state the "buy and hold" mantra as well as the "you are buying it cheap" dollar cost averaging thing.

They'd also probably tell me not to check my mutual fund balances every day, but that's like asking a kid to sit quietly at an ice cream store/petting zoo/big ball pit/buzz lightyear superstore. Yeah right, of course I am going to look.

Even though I know these things, I still freak out. So my new plan has these features:

• I will still get to look obsessively at something.
  
• The values will always go up.
• When the market is doing terrible, the values will go up even faster, making me happier when the market is bad not depressed.

Here is the plan: monitor the number of shares I own not the cash value of the funds. When the market is cheap, I will buy shares at a faster rate, which will cause the values to increase. That will make me happy, which is the right emotion to feel when the market is slumping.

Additionally, I can estimate what the value of the fund will be in 40 years by compounding it by 8%. So if I want a cash value I can still have it. I can use this cash value to know when to rebalance.

Here we go

I don't know about you, but I am PSYCHED that the stock market is going down. Why? because there is going to be another year where the stock market goes waaaaay up and when that happens life will be good.

Here's my evidence. Every single one of these mutual funds has only had one negative year between 2000 and 2006, and then the next year there were some huge gains.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=DODGX (lost 10% then gained 32%)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=NVSOX (lost 18% then gained 36%)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CRIMX (lost 16% then gained 41%)

If history repeats itself, we will be out of this quagmire and into soaring profits once again!

Just for completeness here are some that had more than 1 negative year :
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=FDIVX
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=VINIX
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=VEXAX

Joke of the day

Here's the joke. I hope it makes you chuckle.

Here is where my company automatically put my funds when we switched management companies:


Notice, no morning start rating, no historical performance either. Great, so maybe I will look at the prospectus:



Here is the screen I found. Notice the footnote: "Fund prospectus not requires for this fund" Ha!
What the hell!

Why you shouldn't check your mutual fund balances every day

Ok. This is some advise just for everyone else besides me. Don't check your mutual fund gains every day only look at 3 to 5 year performance.

Of course I never do that. I personally like to look every day just so I can feel that pain and guilt for making the wrong investment changes.

Anyway, so I'm finally happy with a day's returns. I want to capture it here so I can feel good. Observe the following gains:











A while ago, after Artisan went up 10% I sold a bunch and bought Dodge. Then Artisan went up 10 more percent and Dodge went up like 1. I has been hard, since I am obsessed with watching the totals every week, to not buy Artisan back.

Well look at the chart. Notice how Dodge & Cox has gone up while Artisan Mid Cap has gone down 1%? Take that Artisan, you volatile pile of junk. I will not surrender to you. I will not come back and buy you just because you are doing well now. I am better than you. I will not be controlled!