The "Digging" Report Q4 2003

December 31, 2003

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.

Although the major averages continued their up moves, my account not only failed to follow but lost ground. Finally, my personal problems got the better of me. Without a doubt, it would have been better for me to just buy the market (i.e. SPY) and not look at my trading accounts while I worked on solving my problems. In fact, the problems impaired my judgment and my ability to make good trading decisions. For the whole year my fund grew less than 6%, at a time when the S&P500 did more than 26%. A substantial amount of the underperformance occurred in this quarter and the second. It is only because of the capital additions that my freedometer ratio bumped up a little. This does not bodes well for the future. The worst part of it is that the cause of the situation has not been resolved and therefore the likelihood of underperformance continues. Recapping the year, 2003 was a very good year for the market averages while it was not good for me. Let's hope that 2004 will bring better results. 

Performance as of 12/31/2003

NAV: 16.69

* 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: 3.28%

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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