So what do you do, anyway?

A question we all eventually ask of each other on the 'net. "So, I've been chatting with you on xyz blog for a year now, and I know a lot about you. But what is your "real" job? What do you do- besides blog, I mean."

Me? I'm in finance. Investments. So when quarter end rolls around, and tax season, I get REALLY busy. Then things slow down, gearing up for the next quarter end. Since it's both quarter end AND tax season right now, my life has been crazy. So I thought I'd share a little of what I do. This is the market commentary letter I wrote yesterday to send out to our clients with their first quarter reports.

So.....here you go. Market commentary brought to you by AFSister:


Enclosed is the First Quarter 2005 performance evaluation of your portfolio. When we were compiling this quarter’s return figures, I jokingly said, “Maybe we should just print everything on red paper this quarter instead.” EVERYTHING is down, even bonds and foreign securities. Of the major indices we track here, only the MSCI Emerging Free, United Kingdom and Lehman Long Treasury indexes had positive returns for the quarter, but even they had negative returns for the month of March. This year is certainly not coming in like a lamb!

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down (2.59%), the S&P 500 was down (2.15%) and the NASDAQ was down a whopping (8.10%) for the first quarter. Mid caps did a little better than large and small caps, with the S&P 400 down (.40%) for the quarter. Domestic bonds were also down slightly. The Lehman Treasury Composite is showing a negative (.49%) return for the first quarter, and the Merrill Lynch High Yield Index was down (1.44%).

Foreign securities haven’t done much better than US securities so far this year, but there were some positive quarterly returns posted. The MSCI Emerging Free Markets Index was up 1.20% and the United Kingdom was up slightly, at .16%. The MSCI EAFE, however, was still down for the quarter, showing a negative (.77%) for the year.

The S&P 500 remains 23% below its all time high of 1527, reached about 5 years ago. Utilities, Consumer Discretionary, Telecom, and Information Technology sectors have all been showing negative returns over the past five years, keeping the S&P 500 from pulling out of its slump. Perhaps the sun, which is FINALLY shining on Ohio, will touch Wall Street and make the second quarter numbers much easier to look at.

TA-DA!

Now- tell me. I've been chatting with all of you on xyz blog for a while now, and I know a lot about some of you. But what is your "real" job? What do you do- besides blog, I mean.