Well, my portfolio of stocks is back in positive territory again! I went down as much $1000 into the red with about $12000 invested in stocks. But the market, or at least the stocks that I own have come back around. Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS) is still well down, and it had been one of my highest flyers 6 months ago. I still believe it is a great investment. Michaels (MIK) and PetSmart (PETM) have been down pretty much since I bought them. Cabellas (CAB) is down as well, but that is a long term speculation, and I didn’t buy much of it. I am still waiting to see what it does. The rest are in the black which is great considering that most of my stocks were in the red a couple weeks ago.
Grrrrr! Google bought BlogSpot, now I wish they would put a leash on their spamming users! I get a ton of comment spam. I manage to block most of it through filters. Every comment goes through moderation, so not a single spam will see the light of day on my blog (unless they somehow make it look like a legit comment). I am getting close to adding blogspot to my list of banned words!
To reduce Wordpress comment spam, I checked “An administrator must approve the comment (regardless of any matches below)”. For some reason, a lot of the spam messages contain words like poker and variations texas holdem, and other words that are unlikely to appear legitimate comments on my site, so I have added those words to my Comment Blacklist box.
So at this point I am getting a small number of comment spam, but I can see that number increasing as my exposure in Google increases.
Still I wish that Google would somehow rein in their spamming users! A large chunk of the spams that do show up for moderation have links to to something at blogspot.
Regular Brokerage Account:
| Name | Sym | Shares | Value | Gain/Loss |
| Advance Auto Parts | AAP | 31.228 | $1,252.24 | $10.41 |
| Amazon.com | AMZN | 23.495 | $971.05 | $224.07 |
| Cabela’s | CAB | 26.247 | $424.41 | ($73.49) |
| Carnival Cruise Lines | CCL | 20.549 | $1,077.38 | $76.23 |
| Citigroup | C | 0.047 | $2.18 | ($0.05) |
| Dick’s Sporting Goods | DKS | 52.390 | $1,694.29 | ($146.65) |
| eBay | EBAY | 25.911 | $1,084.89 | $80.74 |
| US Real Estate Index | IYR | 8.764 | $539.95 | $26.52 |
| Lowes | LOW | 24.912 | $1,541.80 | $47.48 |
| Michaels Stores | MIK | 18.271 | $615.37 | ($132.19) |
| PetsMart | PETM | 49.012 | $1,230.20 | ($264.77) |
| Red Robin Gourmet Burgers | RRGB | 21.043 | $1,127.48 | $53.48 |
| Target | TGT | 17.444 | $1,005.65 | $53.45 |
| Total | $12,566.91 | ($44.79) |
My Roth IRA Account:
| Name | Sym | Shares | Value | Gain/Loss |
| DJ Select Dividend Fund | DVY | 0.061 | $3.73 | ($0.04) |
| MSCI Emerging Markets Index | EEM | 21.882 | $1,793.67 | $299.78 |
| US Real Estate Index | IYR | 50.293 | $3,098.55 | $44.23 |
| S&P SmallCap 600/BARRA Value | IJS | 23.839 | $1,516.16 | $15.93 |
| Pengrowth Energy Trust A | PGH | 24.255 | $516.63 | ($1.10) |
| Primewest Energy | PWI | 20.276 | $567.73 | $52.14 |
| Total | $7,496.47 | $410.94 |
Wife’s Roth IRA Account:
| Name | Sym | Shares | Value | Gain/Loss |
| S&P MidCap 400/BARRA Value | IJJ | 14.418 | $993.54 | ($3.46) |
| US Real Estate Index | IYR | 32.304 | $1,990.25 | ($3.71) |
| Total | $2,983.79 | ($7.17) |
401k:
| Name | Value |
| INVESCO 500 INDEX TRUST | $50,627.74 |
| DREYFUS MID CAP INDEX | $52,183.39 |
| ROYCE LOW PRICED STOCK | $53,949.92 |
| AIM INTERNATIONAL GROWTH | $53,833.71 |
| Total | $210,594.76 |
My Red Robin stock had been down lower than when I had bought, but jumped back into the black today as it was upgraded by Oppenheimer. Way cool! Most of the rest of my stocks are down today. But that is okay.
I am playing a little bit with my theme to see if I can get a better click through rate for my Google Adsense banners. I put a leader board in the header to see how that works. I noticed that CNN had a leader board on their site. So maybe it is a good revenue earner. I think I will maybe a theme that sort of resembles the CNN page layout figuring they know what they are doing, and have experts that figure out how to get the most revenue out of their online real estate.