On November 11, 2007, I created an investment portfolio to be frozen at that time, and evaluated on December 31, 2008, against the S&P500 over the same period.  The portfolio incorporated principles, economic trends, and technologies discussed in other articles here on The Futurist.  Dividends were reinvested, and so the price paid reflects dividend-adjusted cost-basis.  Yahoo and Google Finance do tend to miss recording some dividends, so one must go to a more reliable site like Morningstar to account for the exact dividends. 

So how did the portfolio do?  Well, the portfolio declined by 37.1% while the S&P500 declined by 36.0%.  So we lagged the benchmark by 1.1%.  Of course, this was a year when keeping money in cash would have been superior to almost any long equity portfolio. 

As always, weightage matters just as much as selection, and the largest component, IWN, outperformed the S&P500.  However, this was dragged down by IIF and GOOG.  Had I simply followed my advice on shorting energy stocks, I would have done better, but that was not a trade in this portfolio. 

At least the 2007 Futurist portfolio outperformed the S&P500 by a greater margin than the 2008 portfolio lagged by, so we are still ahead on aggregate.  Let us see what 2009 holds. 

Related :

A History of Stock Market Bottoms