Month End Summary – October 2007

October was another good month for me in the markets as I maintained my 35% return over the past 12 months.  On top of the quite nice gains I had, my wife and I cut expenses at our house tremendously.   Almost everything we buy goes on our Amazaon Visa which gives us points towards stuff on Amazon. (Hint to family members reading this, expect your Christmas gift to arrive from Amazon.)  Our bill, which we pay off monthly is typically around $3500-4000.  The October month end balance was only $2100.  With both of our jobs schedule to end in the next two months we are cutting expenses fairly tight, but not overly extreme yet.  We still entertained two brothers-in-law who were in town and bought presents for my father-in-law and went out to eat a couple of times and got our clothes dry cleaned, etc.

That outflow reduction allowed me to send another $4000 to my Ameritrade account today and grow our checking account cushion a little more while we figure out what’s in store for us over the coming months.  If I don’t take a hit today before the deposit hits, my account balance will pass the $80k mark.  With the interviews we’ve both had recently we could both have new job offers we like as soon as next week.  If that happens, I’m sure we’ll have to have a good blow out month of spending on everything we’ve held back on recently. 

On to the numbers…

- Current Account Value: Ameritrade: $76,457.46, Quicken $75,738.91 (discrepancy could be due to a trade on the 31st that hasn’t settled yet.)
- Deposited $4000 on 10/1/07
- 12 month trailing return: 35.77%
- Annualized return year to date: 35.11%
- YTD return (using quicken report Average Annual Return Current Year): 27.04%

For Comparisons to my YTD returns
- S&P 500 change year to date: 9.55%
- Dow Jones Indu change year to date: 12.66%

- Market Volatility:
- CBOE Market Volatility Index (^VIX): 18.53
- Nasdaq Volatility Index (^VXN): 23.11