After quite some gut check, I made a stock purchase in early Thursday:
Stock: American Express Company (AXP)
Price: $56.66
Quantity: 150 shares
Commission: $8 (via Fidelity)
I was quite fortunate that I bought those shares near the intra-day low, and Fed acted decisively on the next day to cut the rate of the discount window by 0.50% and improve liquidity and confidence of the overall market. At the weekly close price of $58.89, I'm already 3.8% ahead in my AXP holding in less than two days.
Of course I'm not a trader so I will likely keep AXP in my stable for quite some time. Seriously though, American Express is a great company that is apparently ahead in the game, and the price of 17 times trailing earnings is very reasonable compared to that of Mastercard or Discover network.
So this brings us to the mid-month tally of portfolio performance:
In a nutshell, I'm still 15 grand off since the end of July but I continue to best my benchmark. It is worth noting that my foreign equity exposure took most of the damage -- my foreign equity funds are dropping even faster than EFA (ISHARES MSCI EAFE), their counterpart in the benchmark index, by almost 1% so far this month. On the other hand, my individual stock positions are faring very well and returned over $5,000 so far this month. My concentration on diversified financial firms like Bank of America and Berkshire Hathaway didn't disappoint so far in this financial turmoil.
For those of you who pay attention, I added a target price column. I found I should be more disciplined in setting exit price of my positions. I was greedy last month not to sell COP at $90. And I should drop PFE earlier when I still can at $27 or above. Anyway, I hope by clearly setting the exit price I will be holding myself more accountable for rational selling.