The "Digging" Report Q3 2004

September 30, 2004

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.

It is said that no bad news are good news. This quarter ended with mild losses for the broader indexes and my account. The same can't be said of the NASDAQ, which ended down more than 7%. It appears that August saw this year bottom. There are good prospects that the last quarter will see a sizeable rally that may carry the averages into positive territory for the year. The USA elections are always a factor to influence the market. A pro-business Bush favorable prospects for re-election bodes well for the market. However, these prospects don't look so certain. Certainly, an election as close as the last one will throw the kind of uncertainty that markets abhor.

Performance as of 09/30/2004

NAV: 15.41

* 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: 3.58%

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 to date

Year to date

Since Inception

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