The "Digging" Report Q1 2002

March 29, 2002

My Personal "Mutual Fund" OTC:RASXX

Note: OTC means Over The Counter. The ticker symbol is fictitious; please don't ask your broker to buy it. In the rare event that such a ticker does exist please inform me at once, in order to change it. I don't want to mislead anyone.

The year started with a sour note in the markets, in the general economy and also on my personal finances. The industry sector my employer serves has virtually halted all new expansion and has cut deeply all capital expenditures. It is quite sad that the increase in the freedometer ratio is due to a cut in pay rather than an increase in the Fund's assets. Worse yet, such pay cut is already jeopardizing some of the Fund's assets.

After the rally from the September 2001 bottom, all the major indexes retreated during the first two months of 2002. A late February rally kept the Fund from losing to much ground. However, the trend that is taking place at the end of the period cast dark shadows on the future.

Performance as of 03/29/2002

NAV: 18.30

* Annualized compound return

The 1, 3, 5 and 10 year periods are counted backwards starting from the report date

Performance is before personal taxes. Maintenance and research costs (my personal time doing the accounting, trading and web publishing; time spent on the web and investment books) are not taken into consideration.

Freedometer ratio: 5.58%

Scale: 0-10 Worthless slave; 11-25 Rank and file; 26-40 Lowest level privileged; 41-75 Candidate for temporal release; 76-99 Almost free on parole; 100+ § A free person!

§ Unless you can't make ends meet with your present salary.

Quarter/Year to date

Since Inception

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