Bye Bye 2005

Merry Christmas everyone!

Well 2005 is drawing to a close and it is getting to that time to look back and reflect on a year of investment successes and failures.

Time is short this morning but here are a couple:

Biggest success: Google

I was lucky / clever enough to buy GOOG at under $200 back in February. A few months later it was at $306 and I sold. I then bought in at $316 and watched it zoom up to $420. Not a bad little earner. I recently sold some GOOG to invest in another opportunity but I am still bullish about it and laugh at all the articles about how overvalued it is when actually it is cheaper than Yahoo (based on the forward PE) and growing much faster.

Biggest mistake: Verisign

I managed to avoid catastrophic mistakes in 2005 but buying VRSN after a bad earnings release in July does not look to clever now. Instead of recovering the shares kept falling and are now stuck in the 10% loss range. I should probably sell VRSN but I am not very good at selling at a loss and think it is undervalued and is one good earnings release away from showing a profit so I will hold for now.

Anyway my growth portfolio is showing a 56% gain for the year (%36 if you subtract the effects of contributions in) so 2005 has been a great year by any standards.

More reflections soon.

In the meantime Happy New Year!