Mother's Little Helper portfolio was UP today +$0.43 (+0.00%). Overall GAIN YTD: +$99,995.43 (+0.00%). Our benchmark index, the S&P 500 will be tracked January 1, 2018 http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/sandp/ "The stock market is a giant distraction to the business of investing." - John Bogle (founder of Vanguard Funds) Today I made my buys for 2018, you can see the new portfolio by clicking the portfolio link on the web site or (Click Here). Last year I was a bit like a child counting the days until Christmas or Summer vacation, I won't be doing that this year. No Stocks & No Treasury Bonds The biggest change this year is that there are no individual company stocks. I've talked in several

Mother's Little Helper portfolio was UP today +$599.47 (+0.07%). Overall GAIN YTD: +$266,011.02 (+45.56%). Our benchmark index, the S&P 500 is up +19.82% Year To Date. http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/sandp/ Today is the final day of the 2017 Mother's Little Helper Portfolio. We started the year with an audacious goal of creating a DIY portfolio of stocks to see if we could beat the market. The portfolio consists of a selection of stocks, traded on U.S exchanges, that any individual could have bought on their own. Each stock was purchased with a roughly equal amount of money, I did not allocate more money to one stock vs. another (known as weighting). No sales or additional buys were ma

Mother's Little Helper portfolio was UP today +$1,683.04 (+0.20%). Overall GAIN YTD: +$266,590.86 (+45.66%). Our benchmark index, the S&P 500 is up +19.85% Year To Date. http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/sandp/ Be thankful that we don't get all the government we pay for. - Will Rogers Taxes First a disclaimer. It is not and never was the purpose of this blog to espouse my political opinions or that of any particular party. How I come down personally on the tax bill or anything else in politics is not relevant to this blog. It should be noted that my abstinence on politics and the fervor d' jour caused a number of subscriber defections throughout the year. My only responsibility was to cr

Mother's Little Helper portfolio was UP today +$755.78 (+0.09%). Overall GAIN YTD: +$264,954.07 (+45.38%). Our benchmark index, the S&P 500 is up +19.91% Year To Date. http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/sandp/ There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction. - John F. Kennedy Recently I was having a conversation about how the portfolio had performed over the course of the past year. My friend was impressed by the 45+% growth, but wondered how much risk there was in the Mother's Little Helper portfolio vs. a professionally managed portfolio or a S&P 500 index fund. Turns out there is this thing called BETA that's used to measure th

Mother's Little Helper portfolio was UP today +6,585.06 (+0.79%). Overall GAIN YTD: +$252,206.68 (+43.19%). Our benchmark index, the S&P 500 is up +18.94% Year To Date. http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/sandp/ This Friday morning I will be interviewed on The Bigger Picture, a New York based Facebook Live talk show. The show is hosted by actress Jordan Baker and entrepreneur Risa Hoag. The show airs this Friday December 15th 8:00am EST (5:00am PST), I think I come on about 8:30am (5:30am PST). Go to this link to tune in or check in at a more reasonable hour, all the past shows are available The Bigger Picture Ready For Lift Off? Interest Rates: Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen announced a

Mother's Little Helper portfolio was DOWN today -$5,296.88 (-0.63%). Overall GAIN YTD: +$245,655.88 (+42.07%). Our benchmark index, the S&P 500 is up +19.00% Year To Date. http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/sandp/ The Markets are waiting on tomorrow's Fed decision, which is expected to produce an increase for the fed funds rate. The tax reform reconciliation process should generate some attention tomorrow. Anecdotally, Bitcoin was up while gold was down? Are investors switching to Bitcoin instead of gold for a safe haven? Only the algo's know for sure. Even though I got the day count wrong in my last post, Day 346: Bitcoin's Future, it became the most read post so far. In fact it's been r

Mother's Little Helper portfolio was UP today +$9,566.39 (+1.16%). Overall GAIN YTD: +$251,010.99 (+42.99%). Our benchmark index, the S&P 500 is up +17.78% Year To Date. http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/sandp/ Bulls read about the future. Bears read history. When markets crash, bears preach the Dutch tulip mania of 1637, the Banque Royale of 1719-20, the railway speculation of the 1840s, the great crash of 1929, Beanie Babies craze in the 1990s; regardless of whether or not they apply to current conditions. ― Clay Baker BitCoin I was walking through Stanford Mall today, my daughters will be happy about that, and every where I went I overheard people talking about bitcoin. One guy mentioned

Mother's Little Helper portfolio was DOWN today -$6,836.84 (-0.82%). Overall GAIN YTD: +$242,116.55 (+41.47%). Our benchmark index, the S&P 500 is up +17.45% Year To Date. http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/sandp/ I grew up with six brothers. That's how I learned to dance - waiting for the bathroom. ― Bob Hope Sell Already! The past week or so has been hard on the portfolio with a number of external factors and one technical, internal factor impacting our returns. All told we've slipped from a tad over 49% down to a year-to-date increase of 'only' +41.47%. The knee jerk reaction would be to sell and capture those big profits. The problem with that theory is that we all have lives apart fro